Originally Posted by
anandrg
I will try to get through on the phone again on Monday and see if they will give me an in-person appointment. It's kind of annoying that they wouldn't allow me to attempt to schedule an in-person appointment until I was 5 business days out from travel. That was last Friday - and I just could not get through to anyone on the phone successfully to schedule an appointment.
I would definitely recommend reaching out to one of your congresspersons as well (I don’t think you need to contact more than one — I think they all use the same channel to communicate with State). When we did so last year, we got a response that mentioned “congressional appointments” at our agency, which suggests some locations may have a separate pool for those requests. They may also have some ability to bump your existing application for someone to look at sooner. If nothing else, their staff will probably be more responsive than the call center.