Help. Bizarre IHS overcharge for dependants (spouse and children)

[Cristianmon]

Dear forum members and moderators.

I'm new to the forum. This is my problem:

Today I have submitted my GTV Stage 2, to enter the UK for 3 years, paying for my IHS surcharge and the visa fee. In parallel I have filled the applications for my spouse and our dependant children, but I finished mine first. I have now come back to my dependants applications to pay for their surcharge and I have the following problems:

1) In the case of my spouse, I go through her IHS website. I confirmed with the green button and then I'm taken to her payment page, where it asks for a payment of 9015 USD for her IHS, approximately 6,550 GBP. According to official GTV rules, for a 3 year visa she should pay 1872 GBP (that's what I payed). I cannot understand why is she being charged with this amount and no explanation or detail of what is payed is included. I thought it might be that she is charged with my 2 children's IHS but the sum of their IHS (spouse and 2 children) amounts to 4,692 GBP. I cannot change any information about her because I have already confirmed that the information was OK (after many revisions). Is anyone facing something similar? What could be the reason for this and how could I fix this?

2) When I go to any of my children's application's IHS website I found a different problem: The form asks me to provide my visa expiry date (as I am the person they're joining or remaining with) but I do not have the Visa yet. Does this means that I can only finish my children's visa application once I receive my own Visa? This is not stated in the rules and has not being the case in the 2 times I have applied for visas to the UK before.

Please help me if you have information or any orientation about this .

Thanks.

[Michbuk]

So we were in your shoes just few days ago. Eventually, I saw a similar post on here and someone suggested calculating the number of years from the date of application, so in our case, we applied on 26/6/2021, we then entered 26/6/2026 as main applicant’s visa expiry date (though he has no visa yet, we are applying together). That was the only way the dependent spouse’s fees could be what it should really be. It was ridiculously higher than normal otherwise.

About dependent kids, that was even more annoying. Again, someone on here said a visa consultant advised trying different applications and entering random dates in the visa expiry date field until you get the amount you should pay. Apparently, the visa expiry date isn’t used for anything as long as you pay how much you know you should. But unfortunately, it still wasn’t so straightforward. We had to choose 1/1/2028, yes 2028 before the IHS calculator gave us an amount close to what they should pay. IHS for 5 years should be 3784.51euros but we ended up paying 3990euros (the closest we could find) and hope to get a refund. It’s also advised to pay a little more than less as your visa could be refused if you pay less.

The whole thing is annoying on many levels: first, it means you will start several new applications from the beginning till the IHS part and enter different visa expiry dates until the right amount is calculated, before proceeding to submit your application. It’s a shame that there’s no separate form for first time applicants with no visa yet. Anyway again, for dependant spouse, in your case, just enter the date of application, 3 years from now, if applying today for example, use 2/7/2024. It’s the dependant child’s that requires several trial and error. I hope the long reply helps

[Michbuk]

I should also add that we included a cover letter in the application to explain these strange issues we encountered during the application, having to use hypothetical visa expiry dates to help the IHS calculator, so to speak and that we hope to be refunded the excess amount paid.

[Cristianmon]

This is very detailed and helpful, many many thanks! I just did as per your suggestion. I also called UKVI and they said that this alternative was OK.

Now I'm facing another problem. For some reason the payment of the visa (after I finish paying the IHS) is not processes. I've tried 6 or 7 seven times, with different credit cards, deleting history and cache, different browsers, different computers, called my credit card provided, etc. and the same message comes up: "The payment was refused by your card provider". Could there be an issue with wordpay platform today?

[deeps79]

The NHS fees for Kids is less than that of adult thats why it was showing less total than your spouse. Hope you checked that.