Bbcei

Existing appointment has no effect on what spots you can see / book.

If you want spots at Niagara Falls, just click on the link for Niagara Falls.

Clicking on Apply with "Soonest available appt." will only show locations that have the "soonest" spots.

Bbcei

Is this where the confusion came from WRT "soonest available appt"?

Do you mind editing this message 1KChinito? This instruction is not correct. Apparently selecting "soonest available appt" will filter out all locations that don't have "soonest" appointments (however that's defined by CBP), even those with appointments available later.

E.g. right now Blaine has wide availability in the end of December 2022, but selecting "soonest available appt" will not show Blaine. Only a few locations with July appointments show up.

1KChinito

Done. Thank you.

Craig Welchs

Thank you so much for the bot. I've been following the detroit bot so see if there was any actual appointments available! I couldn't believe it when i got the first tweet!
if I may request a Port Huron bot. It it much busier than you think. I haven't found nor seen an appointment there whatsoever in my random checking online last few months. Most Southern Ontarians outside of Toronto are checking this location as it is much easier to drive to.

If I was more text savvy I would try some scripting myself but, that's not my reality hah.

jbear

Hello, would you be able to launch a bot to cover Ottawa airport too please?

Bbcei

Launching a bot for YOW or other Canadian locations is rather pointless because NEXUS appointments are still not available in Canada.

But the twitter accounts for Canadian locations (nexusbot_yyz, nexusbot_yvr, nexusbot_yul, nexusbot_yow etc) are up, so feel free to follow them. If/when NEXUS appointments resume in Canada, I will activate bots for those accounts.

sullim4

As crazy as it sounds, I think the bot has made getting an appointment a lot more difficult.

I was able to finally get an appointment in Blaine yesterday, but only because I was hitting the Blaine link randomly during the day. I found an available appointment for October before the bot could even publish it. With 571 people following this account and getting notifications, you have to be logged into your TTP account and ready to pounce if a tweet goes up. Pre-bot, you had to be clicking manually yourself (or writing some simple JS yourself and check for a non-empty JSON response) and not as many people were willing to do this.

seawolf

The person who got to a slot before another (due to the bot notification) would beg to differ on that opinion.

Bbcei

It's not crazy, just not accurate if meant as a general statement.

By definition, the bot does not affect the average likelihood of getting an appointment, which is 1 / X, where X is the number of people who want spots at Blaine.

The bot does it make it harder to get a spot for (a) anyone who can write a scraper and (b) anyone with enough time to check CBP for spots frequently.

But the bot also levels the playing field by making it easier to get spots for everyone else.

Of course, given the high demand for spots at Blaine, it's not that much easier. Spots announced by the bot are regularly snatched up in ~20 seconds or so.

The real value of the bot is alerting people when CBP batch releases a ton of spots at once. Since the Blaine bot started, there have been ~5 batch releases, which lasted from a few hours to a few days before running out.

The bot only checks for spots once per minute. (Because Twitter has a limit of 1.67 tweet / minute, and cron has a limit of one execution / minute.) So it does miss spots that come up and are grabbed between checks. I have thought about rewriting the bot so that it checks for spots more frequently without hitting the Twitter API limit...

sullim4

I'd add a (c) - anyone that knew next-day appointments typically open up a couple times each afternoon as a result of last minute cancellations. Historically, for myself or family members I've always been able to snag one of these with relative ease by checking the site a handful of times during the afternoon - I wouldn't have to be super on top of it, I could just check the booking engine a few times between 11am and 1pm.

Now, to your point, they're often swept up in less than 30 seconds, and your success is at least somewhat dependent on how good your internet connection is. Mine is OK, not great, and even though I was watching both my own script in Postman as well as the Twitter feed... I'd always get an internal server error when trying to book an appointment that ended up on Twitter (which I think implies that the appointment was already taken).

Jessica1234

Hi, I can't get the bot to send me notifications on Twitter. I have two phones and neither are sending me these notifications, while other notifications are being sent. Is there an iPhone setting that prevents bot notifications that I need to turn off? Thanks!!

m2k

Hi, does this include both Detroit locations:

DETROIT (Detroit FAST & NEXUS Event)
Detroit (Detroit Enrollment Center)

Thanks

m2k

Hi, does YYZ bot includes all YYZ locations? I saw one location in YYZ offering interviews,

• Lansdowne (Lansdowne, ON )

Thanks,

Bbcei

No. Just the enrollment center.
YYZ = the airport enrollment center.

bcard519

Is there a bot for Lansdowne? is there a US enrollment center on the other side?
Being in YOW, this is the closest Enrollment Center till the Canadian Centers open up