Originally Posted by
GUWonder
For fun, I applied for some Indian evisas late Saturday evening and very early Sunday morning local IST. Got the evisa approval/granted emails less than 18 hours after paying. The visa granted emails came back clustered at around the same time on Sunday, and that was even as the applications were submitted and paid for across several hours. Very efficient to get the visas after getting the applications submitted and the payments to work. But for some people, it may take a bit of learning how to take an acceptable digital photo, right-size photos of the applicant’s face and get the right-sized PDF scan of the passport biodata page.
No luck with the Indian government website. Couldn't get beyond about the second screen, where after pressing "save and continue" on multiple browsers, multiple times, it just takes me back to the same screen to fill in the same stuff. And this is after clearing cookies etc.
So I went to a visa expeditor service, which got me the 5-year visa in a day, for around $200 more. With all the IT expertise in India, I'm surprised the government couldn't do better, but I guess it is the government.