IT incident cancels Swiss visa appointments in UK

TLScontact also suffered an issue with French visa applications in April

An ongoing IT issue at TLScontact, Switzerland's service provider for visa and consular services, has led to the cancellation of all Swiss tourist and transit visa appointments in the UK, causing disruption among applicants.

The incident impacted TLScontact's centres in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, forcing many individuals to rearrange their travel plans.

British residents who hold citizenship in countries that require a visa to travel to Europe must apply through TLScontact when planning to visit Switzerland, France, Belgium or Germany.

These four countries are part of the Schengen area, and possessing a valid tourist or business visa for any one of them automatically grants the applicant travel access to all 27 Schengen countries.

TLScontact has a network of 150 visa application centres spread across 90 countries. The company offers visa processing and IT services to multiple governments.

Along with its competitors VFS Global and BLS International, TLScontact processes millions of visa applications and is responsible for storing sensitive information, including biometrics and legal documents.

The recent IT incident has forced many applicants to cancel their visa appointments.

The TLScontact website currently shows a message reading, "Due to an IT incident all appointment slots are currently suspended."

A spokesperson said the incident was not caused by a ransomware attack.

They told BleepingComputer that the company is "currently experiencing technical difficulties with the transfer of customers' biometric data to the Swiss government servers."

"This issue was identified yesterday by our technical teams and they are working to resolve the problem as soon as possible. It only impacts our visa operations for Switzerland and no customer or employee data has been compromised."

"While our teams work to resolve the issue, we have cancelled all Swiss visa appointments at our centres this week. All those customers affected have been notified and their appointments have been rescheduled for next week."

The Swiss Embassy in London has also confirmed the presence of technical problems, explaining that "due to technical reasons, this week's visa appointments at TLScontact had to be cancelled and rescheduled."

"We are working together with TLScontact to fix the problems as soon as possible. TLScontact will contact all applicants for the next earliest appointment possible," it added.

The incident comes after The Local reported in April that people in the UK were also having issues with the TLScontact website when trying to get visas for France.

One respondent, Tanima Roy, said the primary issue was with the log-in process, as each attempt redirected the user back to the home page instead of proceeding with the intended action.

"It goes round in circles, in that you log in, try to move to the next stage, and find yourself back at square one," said Sarah Dancy in Oxford, who tried to use the site.

"Very frustrating indeed, and no apparent way out of this vicious circle. Then one day, it just worked (albeit very slowly), by which time I'd torn out most of my hair!! It's very stressful."

Users also reported delays, with the website taking several days to recognise the information submitted on the French France-Visas page by TLScontact.