An interesting and expensive adventure today, trying to organise working holiday visas for Canada. A couple of months back, when looking into the relevant visas, we looked up the Canadian consulate in Australia’s website, and found that working holiday visas for the coming year were issued on a first-come, first-served basis from 2nd January 2001. No problems. We’d just jump online at that time, and grab a form, because the site clearly stated that the forms were available through the site from that date. In fact, their first instructions on how to get a visa form were “Download a form from this website from 02 January 2001.”

So, on 2nd January 2001, we dial up to grab the form, and find the site does not have the forms. It has, however, been updated and now features the line “Forms will not be available over the internet.” which was a bit of a turn-around. Also, very confusing, because just down the page a paragraph or two later is the original text stating “Download a form from this website from 02 January 2001.” - huh???

We decided that they must have updated the site to reflect the fact that they were actually not going to issue forms over the net, and forgotten to remove the other bit of text when they made the changes. As a result, we called the phone number in Sydney to get a forms sent to us.

Engaged at first, finally the line cleared and we were able to go through a series of menus until we decided we had all the relevant information and wanted to get back to the previous menu to register our contact details. Not possible, since the menu had no “go back” options. We had to hang up and call up again, having wasted the first 8 minutes.

On the second call, we sped things up since we knew the appropriate buttons to press on the menu system, and got to the point where we were to register our contact details. I pressed the option to do so and instantly got a strange voicemail message saying something very quickly, and then it just informed me to “press 2 if you want to leave another number”. I had not managed to leave the first one, I thought, but then took a guess that perhaps it had worked off my phone number and that from that information, it would mail to the address. Seemed a bit stupid though, in case someone wanting to apply had been calling from a phone box in the street, so I decided to contact the receptionist, and went to get put in the queue. Not possible again, due to a lack of “go back” options built in, so I had to hang up and call back. Another 6 minutes wasted.

After calling back and waiting for the receptionist for 12 minutes, I decided that it might be time to go look at the website again. After all, it was the middle of the day, and we were calling long-distance, so we were accumulating phone charges quickly, just to listen to recorded on-hold classical music, and the occasional bi-lingual “we’ll be with you shortly” message interrupting every 60 seconds.

The reason for looking at the website again was that a different URL was given in the recorded message to the one that we’d been looking at previously. A local phone call cost (more phone expense) as I connected to the net, and I found that the new site was simply a redirectional URL for the one we’d looked at. I decided to see if I could get around the automated phone service and see if there was an alternative office number which I could ring and sneak in the back door, so to speak. A quick hunt through the White Pages online, and I had a different number. Disconnecting from the net, I went back to the phone.

It answered instantly, but the receptionist simply told me to “hold the line please” and disappeared for another 8 minutes. Coming back just as I was about to give up in disgust (the phone had literally left my ear and was heading downward to be hung up when I heard the voice come through), the rather frazzled receptionist told me that the form was going to be available on the internet. However, the reason it was not on the net today? Because the site (even though a .com.au domain) was maintained from Ottawa, and it was not the 2nd January in Ottawa yet.

She was obviously not impressed with the situation, and told me that the last three hours had been basically spent trying to figure out why there was a problem, and then trying to see if there was anyone who would work on a public holiday just to upload the form, and then trying to answer all the Aussies and Kiwis calling in asking how to get a working holiday visa form since the website gave conflicting information and the recorded message service was not functioning properly.

Presumably there is a form already created, and presumably it would take 10 minutes to go in to the office, make the necessary changes and then upload the form, but that is obviously not going to be fixed today. Then again, presumably they were aware of the fact that with only a limited number of visa applications being granted on a first-come, first-served basis, when it became 2nd January in Australia, there might be some Australians wanting to get the forms. However, it would appear that nobody ever considered the date line or time differences in the planning stage, and thought “well, if we make it the 3rd January in Australia, then that means nobody has to come in on the public holiday in Canada to do anything”.

In the long run though, what it means is that we ended up on the phone to Sydney for roughly 40 minutes, paying peak long-distance charges, all because some SPOTD didn’t think about the fact the world is not all on Ottawa time…

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001