Schengen visa for Spain

[Terpe]

Donutz,
You should also understand that many folks just prefer to accept an easy, quick and cheap option regardless of any technical regulation issues. Especially when Embassies demand all manner of information to prove, for example, marital status and to prove that indeed the applicant will be travelling with their spouse. All perfectly legal under the rules.
Besides which most folks also have no motivation to complain about the tough stance oftentimes exhibited by the Embassies, especially given the extraordinary length of time taken to resolve them.

Your links to the rules are of course technically correct, but sometimes it's just not practical to engage in battle when planning a nice European holiday soonest.

Try to consider both sides of the coins.
There are plenty of examples around showing how Embassies can be a pain.

[Donutz]

Donutz,
You should also understand that many folks just prefer to accept an easy, quick and cheap option regardless of any technical regulation issues.

I understand that though if the embassy would put the customer first they would for instance save the applicant money (by telling them they may chose VFS/TLS but do not have to).

Especially when Embassies demand all manner of information to prove, for example, marital status and to prove that indeed the applicant will be travelling with their spouse. All perfectly legal under the rules.

For EU/EEA they should only ask the bare minimum documentation: proof of mariage, ID of EU and non-EU national, one piece of evidence that they will travel together which could be something as simple as a written statement or statement in person at the embassies visa counter.

Asking for bookings, transportation etc by default is not in line with the EU directive or visa code: you can skip questions marked with an *. Immigration status in the UK is of no concern either (if you were a tourist you'd could also apply for a EU/EEA visa and technically even if you were illegal in the UK). And charging a fee is simply outright wrong (they must refund it when confronted about illegally charging a fee, I blame VFS incomptence, I'd avoid VFS/TLS like the plague for such reasons).

Besides which most folks also have no motivation to complain about the tough stance oftentimes exhibited by the Embassies, especially given the extraordinary length of time taken to resolve them.
Your links to the rules are of course technically correct, but sometimes it's just not practical to engage in battle when planning a nice European holiday soonest.

Try to consider both sides of the coins.
There are plenty of examples around showing how Embassies can be a pain.

I agree, breing practical and submitting documents you may have laying around anyway (transport, accomodation) is the way to go. But embassies are not putting the customer first, or even applying the rules entirely correct. Now one could excuse requesting papers regarding transport/accomodation as not entirely right but convinient for the embassy, so not much of an issue there. Of greater concern is both charging a fee when they shouldn't. And trying to hide information about being able to apply directly at the embassy, so you can face more experienced and knowledable staff for free rather then less well trained VFS/TLS staff at a fee (lol) isn't very nice either. Clearly embassies are most concerned about how convenient the visa application process is to them and that annoys me greatly.

A smooth middleground between customer first and embassy convenience would have been:
- tell the applicant to make an appointment via VFS, let them chose between the visa office (within a few days or without appointment?) or applying at the embassy (within 2 weeks at the most, the legal limit)
- Ask for the paperwork to confirm family relation (marital papers for spouses, birthcertificate for children)
- Ask for a copy of the ID of all involved (to make sure the before mentioned papers match the ID's)
- Ask for proof of traveling together (suggest a written statement from the EU spouse, and possible proof of transport and/or accomodation IF available and mention that any other evidence is also accepted)
- Charge no visa fee, get the visa process ASAP within 15 days. Do not ask for insurance or any other paperwork. With the above few pieces of paperwork the visa could in theory be processed within a few minutes to verify one is covered by the Directive and then simply would need to print a visa sticker and add it to the passport. Easy as pie.