💬 Consulate appointment system in New York needs serious fixing

I needed one document attested at the consulate. Simple job, nothing unusual about it. The booking site either timed out halfway or showed no slots at all. For weeks. I checked at every hour. A friend mentioned that new slots seem to appear at odd times, like 6 in the morning. Nobody at the consulate says this anywhere. It's just something people pass around. I got mine by accident. I was on my lunch break, opened the page out of habit, and there was 1 slot. I clicked so fast I made a typo in my own name and had to fix it before it timed out. I had given up on my planned checks by then. The ones I'd set alarms for never worked. After the appointment I sat in my car for a minute, laughing, because it had taken 5 weeks. Then I mentioned it in a local community group. 6 or 7 people said the exact same thing happened to them. So it wasn't just my bad luck. Everybody is refreshing and guessing, and nobody knows the pattern. A waiting list would fix most of this. Or an email when a slot opens. Even a text message would do. My neighbour is still trying. Week 4 for him now, and he checks it on the train every morning. I sent feedback through the contact form after I got my slot. It was a short, polite message. I'm not expecting a reply. These forms usually go into a drawer nobody opens. If you're stuck with the same portal, try early morning and late night. It's not a great plan, but it worked once. Tell me if you find a better trick. I don't want to do this again in 3 years.

Went through this exact frustration for a document notarization appointment two months back, eventually got lucky on a Sunday morning check purely because I happened to be up early that day for a completely unrelated reason. Sent the same feedback everyone else here mentions sending, equally doubtful anything changes, but glad this thread exists so newcomers know it is not just them.

Same story here for an attestation appointment, checked obsessively for a full month before a coworker mentioned the trick of checking right after midnight instead of the usual daytime hours everyone assumes work best. Worked on the second attempt, wish this kind of tip was written down somewhere official rather than passed around purely by word of mouth like this among people who got lucky.

Local Hyderabadi group chat here in Jersey City has an informal slot alert system now, someone spots an opening and posts immediately for everyone else in the group to grab, works better than anything the consulate itself officially offers right now. Might be worth starting something similar in your own area if a big enough community group already exists somewhere nearby you.

I filed feedback too, after my OCI application turned into a mess. All I got was an automatic thank you. That was 8 months ago and there's been nothing since. Not a phone call, not an email. Good on you for trying, though. Most people fill that form once, hear nothing and never go back. I'd say try the community group route first. At least those people reply within the hour.

There is a browser extension a few people in my building use that auto refreshes the booking page and pings your phone the second a slot appears, saved me from staring at my screen for hours during a passport renewal last year. Not official obviously, but it beats the manual refresh approach by a wide margin for anyone dealing with this regularly.

Needed a PCC appointment last spring and burned through nearly six weeks of daily checking before finally catching a slot, at nearly eleven at night of all times, not the six in the morning window you mentioned.