Mistakes on an electronic visa application cluster at four moments: choosing where to apply, filling in the form, preparing the files, and timing the submission. First-time applicants make predictable ones at each, which is the useful part, because a predictable mistake is a preventable one. What follows is what goes wrong at each moment, in the order you will meet it.
Choosing where to apply
Searching the visa name and clicking the first thing you see
The costliest mistake happens before a single field is filled in. Search for "Vietnam e-visa" and the results page puts paid advertisements above the government portal. Some are ordinary agencies. Others are lookalikes that copy the crest and wording of an official site, then charge a heavy markup to file the form you could have filed yourself.
A first-time applicant has no reference point for what the real portal looks like, so price ends up doing the work. Every scheme publishes its consular fee, and anything above that figure is a service charge: an ordinary arrangement when it is shown beside the government fee, and worth walking away from when it is folded into one total with no breakdown. Our guide to verifying that an electronic visa website is authentic lists the checks, and they take about a minute.
Assuming a friend's requirements apply to your passport
The second mistake is treating a destination as though it had one set of rules. Requirements attach to a passport and a route, not to a destination. Two people on the same flight can face different documents and different fees because they hold different nationalities. Advice from a colleague who went last year is a starting point and nothing more, since fee schedules and document lists change without announcement.
Routes matter as much as passports. A connection through a third country can carry its own permission requirement even when you never leave the airport, and it is the condition first-timers overlook most often. Our requirements checker resolves both, transit stops included.
Filling in the form
Government forms are unforgiving in a specific way. They check that an answer is well formed, then leave whether it is correct to a later comparison against your passport, by which point you have paid.
- Typing your name from memory. Read it off the bio page, field by field. Passports print surnames and given names in defined positions, and portals expect the same split. A middle name printed on the passport belongs in the form; one that appears only on your ticket does not.
- Letting the browser fill it in. Autofill is built for shipping addresses and treats a visa form the same way, dropping a saved nickname into the given-names field or your home address into a field asking where you will stay. It is quiet, plausible and wrong. Switch it off for the tab.
- Guessing at a question you do not understand. Occupation categories, previous-refusal questions and funding declarations have narrow meanings. A wrong guess reads as a false statement, which is far harder to explain than a term you took a minute to look up.
- Getting the entry date logic wrong. Most forms ask for the intended date of arrival, and many schemes start counting validity from that date rather than from the day of approval. Enter your real arrival date and confirm the window still covers your return.
Preparing the files
Photographs and scans are assessed by software before anyone looks at them, which is why so many first applications stall at the upload step.
- Using yesterday's photo from the camera roll. A holiday picture will not pass. Automated checks measure head height, background uniformity, shadow and pixel dimensions, and a phone snapshot fails several at once. Our guide to passing automated photo checks first time gives the measurements.
- Uploading screenshots instead of scans. A screenshot of a bank statement loses resolution, crops off the header the checker looks for, and often arrives in a format the portal refuses. Export the original as a PDF, or scan the paper document. The most common upload errors covers accepted formats and size limits.
Timing
Two timing mistakes account for most of the panicked emails.
The first is applying the night before departure. Published processing times are estimates made in normal conditions, and they stretch over the northern summer and the year-end holidays. They also assume nothing comes back to you: with no buffer, a request for a clearer document arrives when the departure is booked and there is no time to answer it. When to apply for an electronic visa sets out the windows, including the earliest date each scheme will accept an application.
The second is booking non-refundable flights and accommodation before the approval exists. This is the first-timer classic, and it inverts the order of risk: an approval is a decision somebody else makes about you, on their timetable, so until it lands you are holding a trip that depends on an outcome you do not control. If the dates cannot wait, book refundable fares, then confirm once the approval is in your inbox. Doing it the other way round is how travelers end up asking whether an application can be rushed, and the answer is usually that it cannot.
Habits that separate first-timers from repeat applicants
- Read the whole form before answering any of it. A few minutes seeing what will be asked prevents answering question four in a way that contradicts question eleven.
- File one application per traveler. Families and couples need a separate application each, on each person's own passport. A shared booking reference does not combine them, and infants count as travelers.
- Keep every reference number. Screenshot the confirmation before closing the tab. Portals rarely show it a second time, and it is what you need to check status or answer a query.
- Expect the approval by email. Nothing arrives by post and nothing is stuck into the passport. Use an address you can reach while traveling, and check the spam folder before assuming silence.
Before you press submit
Every mistake above is free to fix while the form is still open and expensive afterwards, when correcting it usually means a second application and a second consular fee. Ten minutes with the pre-submission checklist protects a trip you have already paid for.