VFS Global Arvostelua 

Last week, Lighthouse Reports — a nonprofit investigative newsroom that co-publishes with Le Monde, Politico, and Semafor — released a year-long investigation into VFS Global involving 14 media outlets. The findings are worth knowing before you trust this rating.
The headline: VFS staff are paid low base salaries and awarded bonuses contingent on meeting monthly sales targets for add-on services, creating perverse incentives to sell. Services like SMS notifications, courier returns, and "premium lounge" access are technically optional — in practice, applicants in lower-income countries routinely report being told they're mandatory. Undercover footage from the Democratic Republic of Congo showed a VFS staff member allegedly offering guaranteed visas in exchange for additional payments. Lighthouse ReportsThe Federal
The financial picture makes the incentive structure obvious: visa applications increased just 15% from 2017 to 2024, but the company's profits increased fourfold. That gap doesn't come from efficiency — it comes from upselling a captive audience that has no alternative. Lighthouse Reports
The investigation also found repeated mishandling of personal data, amounting to what experts described as "manifestly serious violations of the GDPR." Internal documents show that contracting governments know about these violations, but rarely take robust action. Lighthouse Reports
Now back to this Trustpilot page. VFS operates multiple separate profiles here — the honest one sits at 1.6 stars. This one, at 4.2, is padded with solicited in-person reviews from applicants who had smooth biometric appointments and were prompted by staff to rate. The people who couldn't create an account for three weeks, got their passport lost in transit, or were coerced into paying for "optional" services they didn't need — they don't come back to review. They just cut their losses.
VFS's owners include a major donor to Donald Trump and Dubai's ruling family. Governments outsourced a core state function to a company with no competitive pressure and direct financial incentives to extract money from the world's most vulnerable travellers. The Trustpilot rating is the last piece of the PR apparatus. Lighthouse Reports
Read the Lighthouse Reports investigation: lighthousereports.com. Search Reddit for your specific country and visa type. Ignore this number entirely.

Cannot get an appointment for passport renewal. Unfortunately, it's mandatory to use VFS for biometrics on renewal.
Have tried for a month now and cannot get close, no availability of contact.
Probably the worst service company I have ever experienced in my 60 odd years of ecistance.

I am absolutely furious with VFS Global. I paid $128 USD specifically for passport delivery to Victoria, but instead, I got a stressful logistics nightmare and terrible communication.
Here is the timeline of their incompetence:
* May 28: I received an email stating that my passport would be ready for pickup in Victoria on May 30, and that I had 30 days to collect it.
* June 3: Only three days later, I received a shocking email stating my passport was now in Vancouver. There was absolutely no mention of Victoria in this email. Instead, they bluntly threatened me, stating I had to pick it up from Vancouver immediately or they would send it back to the country of origin.
Because they completely changed the location without explanation and gave me an ultimatum, I had to urgently take a day off work and spend a lot of money to rush to Vancouver.
To make this complete mockery of customer service even worse: while I was already on my way to Vancouver - after I had sent them a ton of emails - they finally replied saying that I actually could just pick it up in Victoria this coming Saturday.
They created an artificial emergency, forced me to waste my time and money due to their conflicting updates, and used threats instead of proper communication. Paid a premium fee for pure stress. Highly NOT recommended

My experience with VFS Global was extremely disappointing. I honestly do not understand why the Indian government continues to use this company for OCI services.

First, after waiting in a queue for over an hour at the Goswell Road office, we were told that we needed to go to the Hounslow branch instead. When we arrived at Hounslow, the staff informed us that OCI applications are not accepted after 12:00 PM. After a lengthy argument, they finally agreed to give us a ticket.

We then waited another four hours before being called to the counter. When our turn finally came, the staff member appeared unwilling to help and rejected the application almost immediately. He asked for a consent letter from my wife, even though I was present with my minor daughter and my wife was sitting in the same office. He did not even give me an opportunity to call her over or make any corrections.

When my wife came to the counter, the staff member then started looking for additional forms and requested more paperwork, which we completed. Despite this, he ultimately told us to book a completely new appointment.

The overall atmosphere was very unpleasant. A customer in front of me was shouting and swearing at the staff, which upset my young daughter. At that point, I decided it was best for my family to leave.

Throughout the entire process, nobody seemed interested in helping us. The staff showed very little customer service or understanding. Instead of assisting applicants, it felt like they were looking for reasons to reject applications and make people book new appointments.

Overall, this was one of the worst customer service experiences I have had. The process was confusing, poorly managed, and unnecessarily stressful for families.

This is a total organised scam service. Horrible experience and total waste of time and money. They should be taken to court for fraud

The worst vfs ever the srilanka France vfs the staff should stay at home no point of wasting time in the vfs. Dear students who are applying for student visa be carful from the beginning of your application we had to call them and clarify everything after waiting for longtime on call please make sure once you submitted the visa to track the application by calling the vfs since even they say that will call us once decision reduced they will never call even decision has received we need to call them to collect the decision this happened to one of my friend. And we had the worst experience.VFS France/Colombo pls go home your not earning in proper way.

I have had continuous issues with the visa appointment system operated by VFS Global since March, and the experience has been extremely frustrating and stressful.

From the beginning, I have faced repeated technical issues including account creation failures, login problems, and being kicked out of the system during the appointment booking process. Despite multiple attempts over several months, I still cannot complete a booking successfully.

Whenever I contacted customer support, I was given generic responses or asked to repeat the same steps, including creating new accounts. However, even after following their instructions, the problems continued. I am now unable to even create a new account because I do not receive OTP codes, which completely blocks access to the system.

There is no proper escalation process, no effective technical support, and no meaningful resolution provided. I have been trying since March and still cannot secure an appointment, which has caused significant stress and uncertainty for my travel plans.

This system is not user-friendly, not reliable, and does not provide adequate support for applicants. I hope this review reflects how broken and unresponsive the process has been.
Rating: 0/5 (if possible)

Horrible experience!!
The website doesn't work most of the time. Its not clear as to which forms you need for what. The worst thing is that they don't have walk-ins. Not even like a slot to help someone who is not that tech savvy. The security lady is extremely rude and has no manners.
I can go on & on... Totally discourages to have any property in India or any kind of dealing with Govt paperwork.

VFS Global is the absolute worst website experience in the world. I dare you to come up with a comparative time-wasting, non-functional, high promise-low performance monstrosity such as this. Three weeks, 16 IT emails back and forth, countless work arounds, different devices, different Internet, different browsers, incognito … and still can’t get passed stage 4 to confirm the appointment in Atlanta for a passport, let alone pay, which I hear is another impossible hurdle should one get there.

The review asks for a “date of experience.” How does one enter the whole month?

Absolutely disgusted by this site with its giant monopoly and giant incompetence.

It's surprising that they are even allowed to operate. Their app VFSGlobal is the only mode of booking short-stay Schengen visa which they don't mention in the website, but you receive that info when you call them on their (premium) number. When you try to book appointments via their app, it locks you out for no reason and you have to wait 48-72 hours before you are able to log in again. On top of this, if you manage to somehow login, there are no visa slots available for even 2-3 months. Worst company ever!!!

Rediculously incompetent customer service. As far as I can tell, the website creates impediments purposefully. They upsell relentlessly - and you, the captive client, has little other choice than pay for their "premium" services.

Extremely poor business and social ethic. For goodness' sake.

They are so awful. No transparency, customer service is the worst I have literally experienced in my entire life.

Extremely frustrating experience.
There is no meaning for appointment timing.
Basic customer service of processing appointments in the order was also missing.
Had to wait for more than an hour beyond my appointment time. Multiple appointment kiosks were empty.
When asked.. the response was ‘we are sorry’.

If I could i wouldnt even give the organisation 1 star
Rubbish VFS netherland appointment system
After waiting for 1 month the window that opened I couldn't proceed with payment as it crashed and then got blocked after only 3 attempts never to open again in the window period.

Very poor design. Have spent ages trying to work out why I was charged an extra £200. It transpires that they assume you want the premium add-ons as a default. Paid a jaw dropping amount for a lounge.

I am paying a lot of money for the visa, which is highly expensive, but how come they give you an appointment on the same day to leave you on your tip toes to upload and organise your documents. Their booking calendar is very strict to one day booking for unknown reasons. Many applicants are complaining about the service. A family member who applied reported the same issue ??? Deserving below zero honestly

Applying for France visa. Excellent support and dedication by Deepti Advani

Wish I could give them a ZERO star. The two of us went there this morning 19/05/2026 and the service was trash🚮. After submitting all documents we were told to pay £52.86 for the courier service, a service which we didn’t even ask for, like who does that? I told them that I wanted an option to come and collect the passports myself but the employee told me that there’s ONLY ONE OPTION that of the courier, that is ridiculous considering that in March I went to their offices to collect the passports myself for a previous visa application. I asked to see the manager and guess what he came after about 20 minutes of waiting for a reason I don’t even know. The manager did not give me a proper answer when I asked him why we were told to pay for the courier when infact we needed to do the collection ourselves. I asked him why on their website there was still information about collection times which says (Mon to Friday 16:00- 17:30hrs) but he dodged my question. I left the building fuming and later on sent them emails which I know they won’t respond to. It’s crazy the way they are siphoning money out of the customers. VFS GLOBAL LONDON 66 WILSON STREET you guys are nonsense and you should be held accountable for your actions. Stop taking peoples money and do a f* proper job🚮

worst website & customer service. unable to reschedule & lost money. complained to remove them from visa processing to irish immigration service

In the last few weeks I have been desperately trying to make an appointment for a passport renewal via de website of VFS Global. It took me several e-mails and phone calls to get the information to manually change the URL.

I could have easily given up because it was such an ordeal!

It is very simple to fix this technical issue - so I have to wonder why they make it so difficult / impossible.

To make an appointment you need to go to:
their main page
Then you fill in The Netherlands and South Africa:
It brings you to this page to make an appointment:
However if you click on 'book now' it goes to:
...'zaf/login'...
After many phone calls and e-mails you get the tip to change this URL to:
...'zap/login'...
And then everything works as it should.

I cannot imagine that I am the only person who runs into this obstacle. This is serious and deliberate obstruction of the process of passport renewal for expats in The Netherlands. This little scam has cost me a tremendous amount of stress and time wasted.