Venting about CHCH branch

[sharkalopodous]

Just getting a bit frustrated with the CHCH branch...when I submitted my skilled migrant application in Nov, 2012, it said 2 months to be allocated a case officer...now over 3 months later, I've called and they have said now it will be 6 months before I will be allocated a case officer (and then another 6-9 months after that!) and I'm still just in the managed queue somewhere. Meanwhile, the banks won't give us a mortgage until we have residency. First they said 30% down payment and we could buy and then when we said ok we will do that (borrowing from family, but we didn't tell the bank that), they said actually not until you have residency. So meanwhile on top of this immigration thing costing a fortune, we are just throwing money away on rent which could be towards a mortgage. and we all know how over inflated the rent in Christchurch is. I'm just extremely frustrated, as what was supposed to take 6-9 months when I applied will now be taking 12-15.

Rant over...

[mylesdw]

It seems that everything moves at a snail's pace in Chch these days not least the traffic which is a nightmare. A new record the other day was 1 hour from Blenheim Road to the art gallery on Montreal! It's worse than the UK and that's saying something.

[G-Mo]

All published times are simply (gu)estimates... May take more time, may take less. Depends on the workload and complexities of those ahead of you in the queue. My estimate was 3-6months, but in reality it only took 3 weeks.

[sharkalopodous]

Yea doesn't seem to work that way if you are already living in NZ...going on 5 months of waiting...no case officer yet....*sigh*