Inept, ineffective and Irritating service of CKGS- share your horror stores here

[Liberty48]

Don't complicate please

I agree with most of you. If you have an old expired/unexpired Indian passport and a US passport, it has all the information they need to process a new passport or OCI. They can track the details of the old Indian passport and get all the information they want. For most of the applications, it should be a two-page application form, original passports (Indian passport for passport renewal, Indian (own or parent) and US passport for OCI), original birth certificate (for first timers) and one photo. The process they have is just a red-tapism from decades ago.

CKGS/Indian Consulate/MEA, if you are reading this, please make it is easy. There is no need for all those copies and notaries for most of us. For the complicated ones, please ask them to visit the consulate and help them. Once again, please help.

[click2siva]

Ckgs horrible customer service

HI FRIENDS


I JUST APPLIED FOR PASSPORT RENEWAL FOR MY DAUGHTER, i have paid all the necessary fees of $110.69
Now they have a made a rule saying if we make any changes then application cannot be processed. I made a mistake in my daughters old passport file number.

Hence i wanted to chk with CKGS customer care , but looks like CKGS seems to be worlds first customer care who charges money for providing basic information and processing details . Initially they told me for first time customer get 5 minutes free and following minutes will be charged $2.5 app for every 1 minute.

Customer care suggested me to withdraw my application and apply for refund and recreate a new application. I spoke totally 9 minutes and they put me hold for 2 minutes and i was initially charged $ 5.18 and then within 5 minutes they charged me another $ 25.90 and then another $53.69 and it kept on going.

Please friends never provide ur credit card details to CKGS, they are literally SCAMMING every individual.

Credit card charge details
===================
COX & KINGS PASSPORT $53.69 Feb 4, 2019
FIRST CALL COMPUTING I $25.90 Feb 4, 2019
FIRST CALL COMPUTING I $5.18 Feb 4, 2019
COX & KINGS PASSPORT $110.69 Feb 4, 2019

They have charged total of $195.46 and its just my first day experience with CKGS.

[sinnerman26]

Horrible experience with CKGS Chicago

I am undergoing a horrendous experience with CKGS Chicago office for passport renewal.

I fell out of legal status and had to apply for passport renewal. I followed the process exactly laid down on their website, provided the Notarized No Status Affidavit along with two witnesses information. I told them that I'm married to an American citizen and we are about to file for my green card but I need a valid passport before I can begin the process. They said ok we will forward your application to the Chicago consulate. A month later they now say "Chicago consulate requires legal status as there is no legal we will be sending the application back."

I escalated the case and explained them the situation and told them to have someone from Chicago team contact me or atleast tell me what else can I do to get a valid passport. Without passport I cant even go back home as no airlines will let me board the flight. For the last 48 hours Ive called them and all they do is provide escalation numbers and say that they are waiting for a response from the CKGS Chicago team. I am now afraid that they might have lost my passport. There is no direct line to contact the Chicago office. Their number will reach to a call center in India where they dont know anything.

Anyone else had the experience dealing with CKGS Chicago? Any tips and advice are much appreciated.

[ProNRI]

OCI reissue requirement is illogical, counter-productive and anti-NRI

Good post. The issue is, most people deal with these issues, like in India, and do not complain, and do not even get outraged.

I agree! This policy is a total waste of time and money. Not to mention, very anti-NRI and counter-productive.

Jaydeep

[hoolahoous]

tweet this message to Sushma Swaraj on twitter.... You will get some response soon...

did that already couple of times. no response.

[sunrag1]

seems my mail was sent to thrash. no response at all even with free help offer. meanwhile applicants continue to suffer. disappointed.

tweet this message to Sushma Swaraj on twitter.... You will get some response soon...

[hoolahoous]

i did and got canned 'thank you' message.

seems my mail was sent to thrash. no response at all even with free help offer. meanwhile applicants continue to suffer. disappointed.

[hoolahoous]

i did and got canned 'thank you' message.

[gcwait]

Currently the website is designed to replicate the actual form filling and not from perspective of how a customer, who has no idea about details/requirements , will find/fill information.
Even though govt makes inconvenient rules, here are some of improvements CKGS can make on their site..

1) I used latest chrome browser but they still show the message that their site is only compatible with latest chrome, firefox etc. It is not hard to detect the browser and show message only to browsers which are not valid.
2) Lot of their forms ask for same information again and again. They could cache that information and fill everywhere. Or better yet, instead of making people fill the up form, they can come up with a 'my account' (not the current application based on, but based on username/password). People can fill in their details in one questionnaire and the site could fill the form automatically.
3) Entering a date is pain in their site. the widget forces you to pick year, month and date. takes tons of click. there are several javascript widgets available on internet where people can type freely and still convert it to standard format. further the date picker format is not same everyone on site. some place it is mmm/dd/yy and someplaces it is mm/dd/yy
4) the checklist is not consistent with actual documents !!! yes believe it or not, the 'additional particulars form' is not mentioned in multiple checklists but it seems to be required. i just happened to browse 'my documents' section and see that there is additional particular form. so I attached it in my packet.
5) checklist they have is pre-canned pdf which has lot of 'if SFO then this, if NYC then that' stuff. It should be trivial to generate the doc list on the fly based on information user has provided in original forms.
6) they don't seem to have a strong QA team for their software. After you pay, it gives a link to get your fedex label. that errors out. I did some searching and found it under my documents later.
7) the email which is sent out with status has text like 'To ‘Track and Trace’ please visit: {Tracking_Link} and use your tracking ID' . That {Tracking_Link} needs to be actual link.
8) track and contact at bottom takes almost 1/3 of screen.
9) here is flow they could implement to make life easier for customers in following order-
a) ask what services a customer is looking for (checkboxs - visa, renunciation, oci, etc...)
b) ask very basic info - jurisdiction, category
c) based on (a) and (b) ask on ONE form all the information that is needed (passport numbers, name, address etc)
d) ask for payment (single consolidated amount for all services requested)
d) generate list of all form required for all required services from that jurisdiction including FEDex label and payment receipt
e) generate customized checklist for the services requested.
f) package (d) and (e) in SINGLE PDF which customer can download print.

e) bonus - if they can fill out US govt forms on their site directly without redirecting customers to their site and making them come back on their own site. yes, that is possible and doable (assuming there are no govt rule prohibiting that).

That will not only make customer's life easier, but also CKGS's life. Less complaints and less incomplete paperwork.

If CKGS is reading this message, I can offer consultation for free to make these improvements. I have been working on internet software for last 20 years so I think I know a thing or two about what I am talking about.

Great! You may want to send this to [email protected] or [email protected] or http://ww1.in.ckgs.us/feedback/
Don't think they would do anything/or request your help... at least we can do our part.

[hoolahoous]

CKGS improvements

Currently the website is designed to replicate the actual form filling and not from perspective of how a customer, who has no idea about details/requirements , will find/fill information.
Even though govt makes inconvenient rules, here are some of improvements CKGS can make on their site..

1) I used latest chrome browser but they still show the message that their site is only compatible with latest chrome, firefox etc. It is not hard to detect the browser and show message only to browsers which are not valid.
2) Lot of their forms ask for same information again and again. They could cache that information and fill everywhere. Or better yet, instead of making people fill the up form, they can come up with a 'my account' (not the current application based on, but based on username/password). People can fill in their details in one questionnaire and the site could fill the form automatically.
3) Entering a date is pain in their site. the widget forces you to pick year, month and date. takes tons of click. there are several javascript widgets available on internet where people can type freely and still convert it to standard format. further the date picker format is not same everyone on site. some place it is mmm/dd/yy and someplaces it is mm/dd/yy
4) the checklist is not consistent with actual documents !!! yes believe it or not, the 'additional particulars form' is not mentioned in multiple checklists but it seems to be required. i just happened to browse 'my documents' section and see that there is additional particular form. so I attached it in my packet.
5) checklist they have is pre-canned pdf which has lot of 'if SFO then this, if NYC then that' stuff. It should be trivial to generate the doc list on the fly based on information user has provided in original forms.
6) they don't seem to have a strong QA team for their software. After you pay, it gives a link to get your fedex label. that errors out. I did some searching and found it under my documents later.
7) the email which is sent out with status has text like 'To ‘Track and Trace’ please visit: {Tracking_Link} and use your tracking ID' . That {Tracking_Link} needs to be actual link.
8) track and contact at bottom takes almost 1/3 of screen.
9) here is flow they could implement to make life easier for customers in following order-
a) ask what services a customer is looking for (checkboxs - visa, renunciation, oci, etc...)
b) ask very basic info - jurisdiction, category
c) based on (a) and (b) ask on ONE form all the information that is needed (passport numbers, name, address etc)
d) ask for payment (single consolidated amount for all services requested)
d) generate list of all form required for all required services from that jurisdiction including FEDex label and payment receipt
e) generate customized checklist for the services requested.
f) package (d) and (e) in SINGLE PDF which customer can download print.

e) bonus - if they can fill out US govt forms on their site directly without redirecting customers to their site and making them come back on their own site. yes, that is possible and doable (assuming there are no govt rule prohibiting that).

That will not only make customer's life easier, but also CKGS's life. Less complaints and less incomplete paperwork.

If CKGS is reading this message, I can offer consultation for free to make these improvements. I have been working on internet software for last 20 years so I think I know a thing or two about what I am talking about.

[arnott]

OCI process is horrendous. I do not blame CKGS for this, its our dump government officials who made such requirements. In this modern world, can you imagine we make multiple copies of the same application and send one copy to Embassy and another copy to CKGS and also upload the same documents to their website. Really stupid idea. I am pretty sure they may scan all our application load again. At the end I am sure they will throw all our paper documents. JUST IMAGINE HOW MANY PAPER DOCUMENTS ARE WASTED FOR THIS STUPIDITY.

Notarizing is ANOTHER STUPIDITY: It is a waste of time and money. None of the Notary in America check the validity of your document. They simply affix their stamp.

Photo upload and Signature upload: I don't know who is that real DUMP who created that page with size limitation and pixel limitation. Majority of the common people doesn't have any knowledge of pixel correction of their photo and signature.

Another one is the SIZE limitation of your documents to upload.

There are many to point out. Is a real waste of my time.

Good post. The issue is, most people deal with these issues, like in India, and do not complain, and do not even get outraged.

[gcwait]

OCI process is horrendous. I do not blame CKGS for this, its our dump government officials who made such requirements. In this modern world, can you imagine we make multiple copies of the same application and send one copy to Embassy and another copy to CKGS and also upload the same documents to their website. Really stupid idea. I am pretty sure they may scan all our application load again. At the end I am sure they will throw all our paper documents. JUST IMAGINE HOW MANY PAPER DOCUMENTS ARE WASTED FOR THIS STUPIDITY.

Notarizing is ANOTHER STUPIDITY: It is a waste of time and money. None of the Notary in America check the validity of your document. They simply affix their stamp.

Photo upload and Signature upload: I don't know who is that real DUMP who created that page with size limitation and pixel limitation. Majority of the common people doesn't have any knowledge of pixel correction of their photo and signature.

Another one is the SIZE limitation of your documents to upload.

There are many to point out. Is a real waste of my time.

[karrph]

Once I got in touch with their leadership, CKGS has been extremely responsive and helpful. I was very impressed with how efficiently they were able to turn everything around.

I wish they had provided an escalation path so I could have been connected to the right person from the beginning. It would have helped immensely and avoided a lot of frustration.

Thanks CKGS for coming through!

[xman]

All resolved, hopefully ?

[karrph]

I've just sent you an email with details. At this point, my travel dates are imminent and I need my travel documents sent back to me immediately.

Dear Applicant,

We request you to share your queries and contact details at [email protected] to better assist you.

Please mention the link of this post in your email.

Regards,
CKGS USA Team.