Originally Posted by
UKtravelbear
I realised that when I completed my GE application last year that I forgot to state that I had visited both France and Belgium in the previous 5 years
In my mind I hadn't visited either because in the case of france I merely passed through on the train and in Belgium I changed trains to / from Amsterdam (and I had included Netherlands because I had visited it)
So I went prepared to be asked at the interview to give the expanation and a fulsom apology but it wasn't raised
I now keep a list at the back of my diary of all the countries I've physically stepped foot in just so I can complete the list accuratly when I renew even if to most peoples definitions of 'visited' I havn't actually visited other than move from one part of an airport!
But evenif theformtimes out I thought it still saved what you entered or do you need to activly save it yourself (which is good practice anyway)
As the OP, I can say that "most of the information you entered is still there when you time out, but at least in our case NOT the "countries visited" screen, I suspect this is because that each screen is saved when you hit "complete" or whatever the word is" and go to the next screen. We hadn't completed entering the countries, so that screen hadn't been saved. Of course, that one was the hardest to complete. It could certainly be helped by replacing the one-by-one selection with a check list that you could check off and then hit enter once, but the form is what it is.
I also now wonder if there's any reason to not replace every single Schengen country with a single "Schengen Countries" box. You can move free among them and as far as I no none of them would flag questions by CBP as a questionable country. It would certainly save a lot of time.
On my first application I actually forgot Canada, and during the interview they did ask "you've not been to Canada?" while looking pointedly at their screen. I almost said "oh, I don't really think of Canada as a foreign country" but caught myself and just said "I guess I forgot that one." and the agent just let it go and approved me.
To close the loop - in the end Mrs. Milepig received her "approval with no interview required" email about 4 days after applying, so we must not have been too far off.