Check dates carefully or you may lose your visa

[yialanliu]

Good luck in your next visa. Now I have an even better reason to do 88 day cycles. I used to think it was just cause 88 was a better number.

[CapnKernel]

chinadude2006: Which particular agency?

[panda23]

Ah, you were feeling bad anyway. Seriously though, my assumption is that the people issuing those visas do not want the potential hassle of someone overstaying or getting into trouble and then the PSB trying to track down who signed off on the visa. So if they spot that you've overstayed before, they may well decide that you're not a risk worth taking. I suspect the agent in HK may specifically ask if you've overstayed or been refused a visa before, not sure.

if the agent doesnt, the application form certainly will...

and since you say they've stamped something into your passport that says you must leave China within ten days, lying on the application form wont really work.

i suspect you might not be given any more visas, but your case still furthers our knowledge of what happens when foreigners get into visa messes...

[CapnKernel]

"Visa guinea pig": Yep, gotta put that on my resume..

[chinadude2006]

The agency is called Forever Bright Trading Limited.

http://www.fbt-chinavisa.com.hk/

There website looks like a 10 year old created it, but there office is quite nice and conveniently located. They are professional, answering emails promptly and the process for getting the visa is simple.They'll get you your visa in a day, go there and hand in your passport before 1pm and then go back and pick it up after 6pm. Payment is required when picking up your passport and costs HKD$2000 for a 6 month mulitiple entry, no limit each entry.

The application form is only two pages, asking for your personal details, not like the 4 or 5 pages you need to fill in if you apply for the visa through the visa office. They don't ask if you have previously overstayed, but they do get the visa from Shenzhen, which my hurt your chances. No harm in trying.

If that fails you could try other agencies or go down the official route of applying for a new visa from the China Visa Office in Wanchai, but you're only likely to get 30 days.

[roddy]

I've used FBT a few times with no problems.

'Course, I wasn't a 惯犯 ;-)

[CapnKernel]

Awesome info chinadude2006, thanks heaps.

[CapnKernel]

Re the FBT website. I was going to say that it fills me with the urge to vomit, but it appears someone has already beaten me to it.

Blink tag: What were they thinking?

[CapnKernel]

I just rang FBT. They say that with a black mark against my name, they can't issue a visa. Damn.

Any other good ideas?

[icebear]

Any other good ideas?

Lose your passport. Only helps if new passports are issued with new numbers. (They are in the US).

[roddy]

While that's a possibility (and for reference, UK passports also have new numbers. It's a passport number, not a person number) bear in mind that you may still get asked about visa refusals / overstay and have to fib, and it's not impossible you're going to run across the same police folk if you're heading back to the same place. They won't necessarily have forgotten you.

Edit: Just checked, the visa form I saw specifically asks if you've ever overstayed or been refused a visa, and asks for details. If they sussed you'd overstayed twice, then got a new passport and not declared your record - well, a hefty fine if you're lucky, I suspect. If I were you I think I'd be researching alternative countries.

[CapnKernel]

Just thought I'd post an update to this thread.

I went to the Chinese consulate in HK. They told me that since I've been a bad boy, they can't offer me the same day visa service - I'll have to wait four days. So I applied for an L visa, with a four-day wait. And waited.

Four days later, went to pick it up. No dice. Gee, I wish they'd told me that earlier! The consul suggested that I might have better luck in my home country (Australia).

Two weeks ago I went to the government sanctioned visa agency (kind of an outsourcing deal, the consulate here only deals with this agency now), and applied for a 1-year F visa. After four days they hadn't rung me to tell me there was a problem, which was a good sign, and indeed, the 1-year F visa's been granted. I didn't have to change my passport or do anything dodgy.

As a little postscript, I'll mention my post-exit adventures.

- Left China for HK, so glad to put the bureaucracy and insanity behind me. No need to keep saying the 就是中国，就是中国 mantra.

- My return ticket to Australia was via Guangzhou a month hence, so I paid a considerable amount of money to move my flight up a month, and buy a short-notice ticket from HKG to Guangzhou. I would have liked to catch the train, but hey, no visa! :-(

- Plane left HK an hour late, so I missed the flight back home. China Southern said they'd put me up in a hotel. Which means getting a visa. Sigh.

- I sweated for an hour while Chinese immigration were off doing unknown things to my passport and wondering what to do with me.

- They finally gave me a 24-hour stamp-pad visa. If I'd known I could have got one of those, I'd have caught the train! Sigh.

- The hotel exercise was a joke: Van driver insisted on completely filling up his tank, while I sat there and fumed about his bad planning. Then we drove all of 200m to the hotel. Argh!

- The checkin desk told me to leave the chain off the door, as if they got another guest that night, they were going to put them in the same room as me. Oh no you don't! I told them if they were going to pull that kind of stunt, I was going to ask China Southern for a different hotel. My bluff worked.

- As it turned out, I was the only guest in the entire, new, hotel.

- In the morning they woke me up at 5am, because heaven knows, you need to be at the airport 4 hours before an international flight.

Let's just say I knew I was back in China, and the most joyous thing was getting on that plane and hearing the door close.

[chinadude2006]

Is that a multiple entry F visa with 30 day limits on each stay? Wasn't that the same visa you had as before? I wonder if that means your "record" is clean and you can apply for a longer term no limit on each stay visa through an agency.

[roddy]

Thanks for keeping us up to date.