Consulate General of Germany — Local services in San Francisco

I am giving 5 star rating because my experience with consulate was very good, got my passport with national VISA stamp in just 7 days, Waoo Great Service, if you have all the documents are in place.

if you have all the required documents in place than i think you no need to worry.

here is my visa appointment experience:

I was having visa appointment this week, i was reached little bit late because of traffic jam, so reached approx 20 min after the appointment time. also, very tough to get parking at street.

Security Guard let me inside the consulate after initial screening of our passport and matched my family members name in the list and after detailed security checking....don't forget to keep your phone at silent mode.

In a bigger room there was some chairs and a big table with 02 windows, one window were occupied by another applicant and appointment was going on with officer.

a lady called my name from the second windows and asked me to show all the documents.

I have already created a 02 set of copy of all originals documents (Total 03 set, 2 xerox copy and 1 originals) and gave all the required documents (Application form, contract letter, reference letter, Power of Attorney, Marriage certificate, degree, health insurance, airline inventory, pay cheks, bank a/c statements, son birth certificate.. and two passport size photograph as per the requirement mentioned on website.

discussion went well, i have already arranged my documents based on priority (Application, reference, contract at top and other are after that) it saves lot of officer time to regroup and arrange.

he said, he don't see any issue into my documents and took all the passport and collected our finger prints and ask to pay VISA fee and passport shipping cost fee (fedex courier i hv to write our home address for passport delivery after visa stamping)

After completing fingerprinting, officer gave me receipt number with tracking number o it and ask me to wait for 2-4 week to process the National type D VISA.

Very friendly:

Even i forgot to signed on a documents but they asked me to sign during our discussion.

we are very happy with the staff, they are friendly, nice and treated us very well and cooperative all the time (my 15 month old son was crying and making...

Unfortunately, my recent experience has been rather sad - and I'd like to share a heads up for anyone who plans to go to LA instead.

I've been trying to schedule an appointment for document renewal for 6 + months, without any success. I've tried the famous 3pm PT scheduling slot (when new appointments get released) several times, however I would get server outages and/or no appointments left. In between I'm just stuck solving captchas, so it became a huge waste of time, especially if you have a day job where you cannot just play around with broken online processes every day. I'm a German citizen, living for 10y in the Bay Area - when I had to visit the embassy ~8y ago, everything went rather smoothly, so I'm not sure when things deteriorated.

In an attempt to escape this Kafkaesque situation, I went last week to the LA embassy. They had several open appointments and I was delighted. However - when I came to the appointment in LA, the lady dealing with my case immediately launched into scolding me about the fact that I should never have come to LA, as that embassy is not supposed to serve customers belonging to the SF district. She clearly voiced her frustration over the fact that too many SF-customers would come to LA and taking up most of the additional appointments they had opened up for their LA-customers. I have to say that I wasn't aware that this was such a big issue, though I admit that I also didn't pay attention to all text on the website when scheduling my appointment, as I was too thrilled to see slot openings at all.:) I'm very grateful as she graciously agreed to process my document renewal anyways, though she made it clear that she would start sending away future SF-customers. I'm hoping that the lady in the LA embassy will also share her frustration with her colleagues in the SF consulate, so they can address the root cause. I'm spreading the word here as well, just in case the LA embassy starts being less accommodating in these cases and people don't take a trip in vain. Overall a shout out to the LA embassy who still seems to be able to provide these essential services quite smoothly and I hope the situation in SF will get...

As many are aware, you have to book your appointment online months ahead. Or you can visa the website daily to see what appointments have opened up. The system to book the appointment is very easy and anyone should be able to use it.

If you are trying to reach them by telephone, be sure to try to call them right as they open up. This will ensure you get to speak to at least someone. Though, be ready to have to explain yourself multiple times due to some language difficulties.

I went for a student visa for my internship/ study in Germany (Baden-Württemberg). I would suggest if you have the option, book your appointment right when they open. This will allow you to be the first person in line and essentially be first. It only took me 15 minutes to have the appointment and that was mostly to check that I had all documents. As others have stated, it is standard to wait outside the gates until the security guards allow you to enter the grounds. They will force you to keep your telephone outside in a locked locker. You will simply walk up to a segmented room and wait for your queue.

The application fee is around $80 and if you live out of state, be expecting a shipping cost of around $26. They will take card but be ready for it to charge your card in Euros. I was told by the receptionist that completion of the application should take roughly 3 business weeks.

They do have a restroom for all those who are in the segmented room. It is somewhat challenging to find as the door matches the wooden inlay of the room. You should be able to find a sign or as an attendant to help you.

Overall, my experience has been great. I am hoping that it doesn't take long to receive my passport back as my flight to Germany is soon after the 3 business weeks. The whole staff (security and attendants) were kind, considerate and fast. I will extremely stress that you should show up with all needed documents (possibly more than what is needed) and they will be thankful. They will also seem to prioritize your application as it is easier.

Best of luck working with the German...