OCI - Washington DC Tracker

Our Status

:)
Here is the status of our applications.

Mailed documents on 10/7/06
Documents delivered at embassy 10/10/06
Date of Acknowledgement 10/26/06

Registration Status: UnderProcess
Photo/Signature: Scanned 10/26/06


Looks like the database gets updated realtime Washington time or may be by a batch process nightly India time. I have been checking my status a couple of times almost everyday since 10/11/06. To be honest, I don't know why! May be for the heck of it. I had checked the status at 2:00 PM yesterday and it said, our applications were not acknowledged. At 4:45 PM yesterday, it showed the above status. I hope to see the status change to "Granted" today. Am I too optimistic? May be!!

A couple of observations, sending the photographs as per the recommended
specifications makes a lot of difference!! I would say, do not send any
emails to MEA or embassy until at least 4 to 6 weeks after your application
was delivered. I guess, you know what I mean.


Cheers!
Hamara Bharat mahan!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Printed but Not Dispatched, Almost 10 days!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Shareef_Aadmi,

Hope your issue is resolved, and if so what steps did you have to take.

I am having the same issue for my son's OCI(The rest of the family's OCI habe been dispatched): Printed on October 18, 2006, but still showing Not Dispatched.

Registration Status Granted On 18-OCT-2006
Photo/Signature Scanned On 17-OCT-2006
Documents Printing Status PRINTED
Documents Printed On 18-OCT-2006
Documents Despatched From Delhi On NOT DISPATCHED
Documents Received at SAN FRANCISCO NOT YET

Any tips you can provide me to resolve the issue.


shareef_aadmi said:
The prefix for Washington is USAWI

harry2005, my status got updated again to say printed on Oct. 14th. So I hope this time they will actually despatch it soon
 
Steps taken

Hi ebay_sfo,

I sent the email to the same 3 email addresses that are listed in this thread
usoci-mha@nic.in
usnri@mea.gov.in
usds@moia.nic.in

I did not get a response from them but a day after I sent it they removed the printed date and then 3 days later it said printed again. Then they mailed mine on Oct 17th from Delhi. Today they have received it at Washington. So I am planning to mail my passports to the embassy tomorrow.

Hope this helps.
 
Steps taken

Hi Shareef Aadmi,

Good to hear that your OCI is in Washington. I have taken the steps that worked for you, and now am waiting with my fingers crossed.

Thanks again
 
Our Status again!

:)
Mailed documents on Oct/6/06
Documents delivered at embassy Oct/10/06
Date of Acknowledgement Oct/26/06

Registration Status: Granted Nov/04/06
Photo/Signature: Scanned Oct/26/06

Documents Printing Status: PRINTED
Documents Printed On: 04-Nov-2006
Documents Despatched From Delhi On 06-Nov-2006

Documents received at Washington: NOT YET

One more observation.
MEA processes applications in a batch. All the applications that were acknowledged between Oct-26 through Nov-4 were granted/printed on Nov-4 and were dispatched from Delhi on Nov-6. BTW, it is 133 cases to be exact from Washington DC. So, your processing will be pretty fast if your application just gets in or around the day MEA is processing a batch. The
applications that were ackowledged on Nov-4 were also granted/printed on the same day.



Be optimistic, but a little!!
 
It has been a month since I mailed passports for U-visa stamping. No sign of returning them. No way of tracking them. Yes, they are delivered to embassy. I don't understand what these people think. I would have thought they would know better, than keeping somebody's passport for months for no apparent reason. Silly me. These are essential travel documents for God's sake. And its been more than 3 months since I sent OCI applications.

Any ideas how to get them to move their butts? Short of driving to DC, anything else I can do to get my passports back with or without OCI stamps? I just want my passports back.
 
Thanks, Shareef_Aadmi and Harry2005. With your help and guidance you both provided, our entire family got our OCI cards, just in the nick of time. We are going to be visiting India next week.

ebay_sfo said:
Hi Shareef Aadmi,

Good to hear that your OCI is in Washington. I have taken the steps that worked for you, and now am waiting with my fingers crossed.

Thanks again
 
harry2005 said:
It has been a month since I mailed passports for U-visa stamping. No sign of returning them. No way of tracking them. Yes, they are delivered to embassy. I don't understand what these people think. I would have thought they would know better, than keeping somebody's passport for months for no apparent reason. Silly me. These are essential travel documents for God's sake. And its been more than 3 months since I sent OCI applications.

Any ideas how to get them to move their butts? Short of driving to DC, anything else I can do to get my passports back with or without OCI stamps? I just want my passports back.

This is definitely not normal for your passports to be not back for this long.
I had gotten my passports back in 2 weeks from the day I sent them out.
I hope you did send them the extra 15$ for return postage along with the OCI app fee.

I would call them on all the numbers you can find on their web site (not just OCI enquiry number).
Email them
Send Fax to them

Let us know if you make any progress.
All the best!
 
Still not received passports back

I too have not received my passports back from the embassy yet. It was delivered to the embassy on Nov 1st but no response or any way of tracking if they have sent it or why it is taking this long. I did include the $15 fee with my application.

This is just ridiculous. If you call the OCI number, nobody picks up and the mail box is full so you cant even leave a message. This is the height of incompetence and stupidity. To date it has been over 2.5 months since I mailed my application.
 
All cases despatched from Delhi on Nov-6 reached Washington DC on Nov-16.

All cases despatched from Delhi on Noc-6 have reached Washington DC on Nov-16, even though, it is Nov 15th in the US today. This is one more confirmation that the database is updated from India.

Our cases are 4 of these. I'm planning to send our passports tomorrow. The thing that worries me is that I have noticed a couple of case where embassy has not returned the passports more than two weeks after they were delivered to the embassy. I hope that does not happen to me!!
 
Any update??

harry2005, any update with your situation? Did you get your passports or were you able to get hold of the embassy folks to get an answer?
 
shareef_aadmi said:
harry2005, any update with your situation? Did you get your passports or were you able to get hold of the embassy folks to get an answer?

Nope :( Tried every phone number I could find. As expected, nobody picks up, can't leave message. Also sent several emails. No success there either. Unfortunately OCI guys in India can't do much about it either. I don't know what to say. How can they be so hopeless? It will be six weeks by the end of this week since I sent passports. New York completes the whole OCI processing in less than half that time. I will give them time until Monday to resolve this matter gracefully. Then I will start spamming their email and fax machines every 10 minutes until they take notice. We will see what happens.
 
Finally got it

Sorry to hear that harry2005. I finally got mine today after sending them an email from their "Contact Us" section on the embassy website. I had sent them the email on Monday evening or Tuesday Morning. My passports were mailed yesterday (Wednesday) and I got them today.

I dont know if it was the email or they were going to mail yesterday anyway, but I did not get any response to my email anyway.

Hope this helps.
 
shareef_aadmi said:
Sorry to hear that harry2005. I finally got mine today after sending them an email from their "Contact Us" section on the embassy website. I had sent them the email on Monday evening or Tuesday Morning. My passports were mailed yesterday (Wednesday) and I got them today.

I dont know if it was the email or they were going to mail yesterday anyway, but I did not get any response to my email anyway.

Hope this helps.

That little message box they have on their 'Contact Us' page? They read that? Strange that they ignore regular communication channels and pay attention to this. Thanks for the info, sent a message from that page.
 
Send a snail mail.

harry2005 said:
That little message box they have on their 'Contact Us' page? They read that? Strange that they ignore regular communication channels and pay attention to this. Thanks for the info, sent a message from that page.

Hi harry2005,

Sorry to hear what you are going through! Since, you already have exhausted almost all the options one could have, try sending a snail mail to the OCI section of the Embassy. Please mention your File No. and Web Registration number in the letter. Also do not forget to mention the date when the passport was delivered at the Embassy. Did you mention the File No. when you sent the passports?

Hope this helps! Good Luck!
 
Passport Return Timeline - 2 wks

Got my passport back by the 10th business day.

For those of you stuck in delays, I wonder if the OCI section is short on people who help with 'special causes' such as temporarily misplaced passports, those triggering further information, etc. due to higher volume of visa requests associated with December travel?

That begs a question, could Jan-Mar and Jun - Sep, be better months for both visa and OCI requests?
 
Help Toronto

We applied 11Jul2006. Granted 08Aug2006. No further movement. Called the consulate in Oct told try back 2 weeks later.
Sent emails to delhi and toronto. No reply.
Ideas please :
confused:
 
Online status update

Here are my details:-

Despatched: Nov 1
Acknowledged Nov 11th
Current Status: Under Process

I have seen that normally they grant/scan etc., in 4 working days. Should I worry? How do they communicate issues with the application?

I followed every instruction except that I did not notarize or self-attest the photocopies of the document - I hope this is not a deal breaker.

Thanks all, especially ALT

Ram
 
infy said:
Hi harry2005,

Sorry to hear what you are going through! Since, you already have exhausted almost all the options one could have, try sending a snail mail to the OCI section of the Embassy. Please mention your File No. and Web Registration number in the letter. Also do not forget to mention the date when the passport was delivered at the Embassy. Did you mention the File No. when you sent the passports?

Hope this helps! Good Luck!

Infy,

I tried snail mail option too. I sent a letter with file numbers and online registration numbers, with all the dates including when the passports were mailed and delivered with tracking numbers. I will just wait a week or two I guess. One good thing is I don't have any travel plans right now. So, I can afford to play this waiting game.
 
testram said:
Here are my details:-

Thanks all, especially ALT

Ram

Yes, thanks ALT (and everyone) for taking time to post information. Appreciate you sticking around even after your OCI was received. These forums have been a great help since my F1/H1 days. I encourage everyone to share their relevant experiences, good and bad.
 
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