Partnership work visa, entry expiry query

[Euan]

Hello All,

My 1st post hopefully some questions can be answered. Recently I helped my wife apply for a partnership work visa, This is the second time we've applied for this visa, we applied back in 2009.
In 2009 the entry date for the work visa was two years from the date the visa was approved, on my wife's latest visa the expiry for entry is only 4 months from June until October 2019. This has caused us some headaches as we weren't planning to travel to New Zealand until at least 2020.
Has anybody had the same happen to them? Wondering if we cannot somehow adjust these dates with NZ immigration through applying for an extension , or is this shortened expiry date related to the fact we already applied for a partnership work visa 10 years ago.
Thanks in advance for any replies

Euan

[JandM]

Many of the regulations and routines at INZ have changed several times since ten years ago. My guess is that this is the norm *now*, and not anything to do with yourselves personally.

You could try contacting INZ and ASKING if your wife's visa can be given a different last-use date. I've no idea if this will be possible. If not, she could make a trip purely to activate the visa, then leave again until you had planned to travel. I know this is expensive, but it would be better than wasting the visa - if you look around on the forum, you'll see the fall-out from the bad times INZ is going through means that there are hideously long queues for processing.

[Euan]

Thanks JandM, for your quick reply and advice, we've actually thought pretty much along the same lines.
My wife sent a message via the INZ website's message system as they don't seem to have an email address?! Hopefully we get a reply from this, the one time I tried calling the international phone line, I was on hold for over three hours, so don't feel like doing that again(but I will if it's the best way to contact them).
You make a good point about crazy processing times, my wife's visa was all done in about a month we must have been lucky.
Hoping that some forum members have had a similar situation, and have altered their last-use dates.