Short answer
The single most useful thing to understand is that when an intermediary breaks the scheduling rules, the sanction lands on the applicant. In March 2025 the US Mission in India cancelled about 2,000 appointments booked by automated means and suspended the scheduling privileges of the accounts involved. The applicants lost the date, the account and the fee. The people who took the money were not the ones sanctioned.
Four things that are always true
- No slot exists before you do
- An appointment lives inside an account tied to your DS-160 and your paid fee. There is nothing to reserve in advance and nothing to transfer
- Government fees are paid inside your own process
- The MRV fee, the $250 integrity fee and the $750 expedite all go to the US government, never to an intermediary's account
- Nobody can promise a date or a decision
- Availability is controlled by the consulate and adjudication by a consular officer. A guarantee of either is the tell
- Your login is the crown jewels
- Whoever holds it can change your appointment, change your contact details, or lock you out entirely
Who actually carries the loss
Most scam guides in this category count the money and stop there. The money is usually the smaller loss.
On 26 March 2025 the US Mission in India announced it had identified appointments booked through automated means, cancelled roughly 2,000 of them, and suspended the scheduling privileges of the associated accounts. The mission described zero tolerance for intermediaries violating scheduling policy.
Read the consequences carefully, because they are not distributed the way people assume:
- The appointment is cancelled. At a post with a queue measured in hundreds of days, that is not an inconvenience. It can be the trip.
- The account is restricted. The scheduling privileges suspended belonged to the applicants, so the ability to book again is affected too.
- The fee is gone. The MRV fee is non-refundable and non-transferable, and whatever was paid to the intermediary is not coming back either.
- The intermediary is fine. They still have their money and can open another channel the same afternoon.
This asymmetry is the whole reason to be careful about method rather than only about price. A cheap service that gets your account sanctioned has cost you far more than an expensive one that does not.
This is uncomfortable for us to publish, and we are publishing it anyway
We are a paid service in this category. An article warning you about paid services in this category is, on its face, against our interest, and a reader who finishes it and decides to do everything themselves is a reader we have talked out of paying us. We would rather that than have you pay somebody worse. The seven checks in our legitimacy guide are applied to our own service in public, including the parts where we come off badly, and you should run everything on this page against us before you run it against anyone else.
The seven live patterns in 2026
1. Advance-fee slot selling
The classic, and still the most common. Someone in a messaging group offers an earlier interview date for a fee, with screenshots of appointment confirmations as proof. Screenshots are trivially fabricated and prove nothing.
Reported cases in India follow a consistent shape: a channel with thousands of members, a fee in the region of ten thousand rupees, a payment, a confirmation that turns out to be fabricated, a demand for a second payment, and then the applicant locked out of their own scheduling account. The second demand is the design, not an escalation. It works because by then the victim has already paid once and wants to believe.
2. Selling the $750 expedite where it does not exist
New in 2026 and unusually effective, because the underlying thing is real. The State Department does run a pilot letting B-1/B-2 applicants pay $750 for an interview within ten business days. It runs only at designated missions, which as of 19 August 2026 means Mission Mexico and Mission Canada.
Anyone offering it for a post outside that list is selling something that does not exist there. And note what that means for recovery: there is no government fee to be refunded and no official receipt to dispute, because no transaction ever touched the government. Where the pilot does apply, the fee is paid inside your own scheduling account, never to an intermediary.
3. Fake demands for the $250 visa integrity fee
Also new, and well designed. The $250 visa integrity fee is genuine, it is charged at the point your visa is issued rather than when you apply, and its collection has rolled out unevenly across posts. So an applicant who receives a demand for $250 has no easy way to tell whether it is the real thing arriving at an unusual moment.
The rule is simple: the fee is collected by the US government through your own consular process. It does not arrive as a payment link in a message, it is not collected by an agent, and it is never paid to a personal account. If a demand did not come from your own consular process, it is not the integrity fee.
4. Look-alike scheduling domains
Not every country uses the same scheduling website, and the map has changed recently. India, Canada and many others use the AIS portal at ais.usvisa-info.com. The UAE and others moved to usvisascheduling.com in 2025. Applicants therefore cannot rely on recognising the right site by sight, and search results and old bookmarks are both unreliable.
That uncertainty is what impersonation sites exploit, and the payment page is where they pay off. Reach your scheduling site by following the link from your own embassy or consulate's website every time.
5. Offers to book you in another country
Once a genuine strategy, now mostly a way to lose money. Since the State Department's guidance of 6 September 2025, updated 10 October 2025, nonimmigrant visa applicants are directed to apply in their country of nationality or legal residence, and those who schedule elsewhere are told to expect significantly longer waits and a harder case, with fees neither refunded nor transferred.
An operator still selling third country appointments as a shortcut is either not following the guidance or not telling you about it. Either way the fee is yours to lose.
6. Guaranteed approval
Persistent in large expatriate markets, where a first-time applicant may have no idea how adjudication works. Nobody outside the US government influences a visa decision. A consular officer applies the standard to your evidence and that is the whole process. An offer of guaranteed approval is not an exaggeration of a real service, it is a description of something nobody can do.
Its close relative is guaranteed documents: fabricated bank statements, employment letters or itineraries. That one does not just cost money, it exposes you to a misrepresentation finding that can follow you for life.
7. Data harvesting and the follow-up
The quietest pattern and the one with the longest tail. A DS-160 contains your passport details, address history, employment, family members, travel history and more. An operator that collects your documents and your login has a complete identity package whether or not they ever book anything.
What follows is sometimes a second approach months later from a different name, sometimes pressure using what they hold. Before you hand over documents to anybody, the questions are what is collected, where it is held, how long it is kept and how you have it deleted, and the answers should be in a published policy rather than a reassuring message.
Red flags, in the order you meet them
| What you are told | Why it cannot be true |
|---|---|
| "I have a slot reserved for you" | Appointments exist only inside an account tied to your DS-160 and your paid MRV receipt. Nothing can be held in advance or transferred |
| "Pay first and I will book it" | Payment before any result, to someone with no published terms, is the entire mechanism of advance-fee fraud |
| "Send it to this personal account" | Government fees are never collected this way, and personal transfers are the hardest payments to reverse |
| "We guarantee a date" or "guaranteed approval" | Availability is controlled by the consulate and decisions by a consular officer. Neither can be promised by anyone |
| "We have contacts inside the consulate" | A claim of influence over a US government process. If it were true it would be a crime you were being invited into |
| "$750 expedite, any country" | The pilot runs only at designated missions, currently Mexico and Canada, and only for B-1/B-2 |
| "Pay the $250 integrity fee here" | That fee is collected by the government at issuance, inside your own consular process |
| "Offer expires tonight" | Urgency exists to stop you checking. Nothing legitimate in this process expires in an evening |
| Vagueness about method | Given what happened to 2,000 applicants in India, how the work is done is your risk, not theirs. A straight answer is the minimum |
Patterns compiled from the State Department's fraud warning, reported cases in India and the Gulf, and the current participating list for the expedite pilot. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
What a legitimate service looks like instead
Fraud guides are long on warnings and short on what "fine" looks like, which leaves readers unable to tell a real business from a careful scam. Six things a real one has, all of them checkable before you pay:
- A price stated in public. On the website, before any conversation. A price that only appears after you describe your urgency is a price set by your desperation.
- Payment terms you can read. Written terms, a refund policy and a privacy policy, published, not summarised in a chat.
- A named human and a real support channel. Someone accountable, and a way to reach them that is not a single anonymous messaging handle.
- A written statement of what it cannot do. Any operator honest about this process says plainly that no date and no decision can be promised. Its absence is more telling than any promise.
- A straight answer about method. You are entitled to ask how the work is done, because the consequences of the wrong answer land on your account.
- Willingness to tell you not to pay. A service that never says "your case does not need us" is selling to everyone who arrives.
Want those six run against a real service, including ours? We published that exercise in full, with the answers we come off badly on left in. Read are US visa slot booking services legit.
If you have already paid
Order matters here. Most people go for the money first, and the money is usually the least recoverable part.
- Secure the account. Change your scheduling account password immediately, and change the email address on it if that has been altered. Check that your appointment still exists and that the contact details are yours.
- Check your DS-160. Confirm the confirmation number linked to your appointment is the one you submitted, and that nothing in the application has been edited.
- Tell the official scheduling support channel. For your country, reached from your embassy or consulate's own website. If your account has been compromised they need to know, and disclosing it yourself is better than it surfacing later.
- Report the fraud. To your local police, and to the US embassy or consulate that will adjudicate your application. The State Department publishes where to send reports of visa fraud committed overseas.
- Then pursue the money. Card payments have some chance through your issuer. Bank transfers to personal accounts and payments through messaging apps are rarely recoverable, which is precisely why they are the requested methods.
- Do not pay again to "fix" it. The second demand is part of the design. Nothing gets unlocked by paying more.
The options that are not scams
It would be easy to finish a page like this implying that everything paid is fraud. That is not true and it is not useful. Here is the honest set, including the free rows, which are the right answer for a good number of readers.
Real routes to an earlier interview date
Costs exclude the US government fees everybody pays: the MRV application fee, and the $250 visa integrity fee where your post is collecting it. Third-party pricing changes, so verify with each provider directly.
| Option | Cost | What it actually does | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Free | You check the portal and reschedule when something opens. | Flexible dates, a soft deadline |
| Expedite request to the consulate | Free | A discretionary decision on documented urgency, made by the consular section. | Medical emergencies, funerals, documented urgent travel |
| Slot-availability websites | Free tier; paid alert plans, billed whether or not a date appears | Surfaces availability and alerts you. You still book it yourself. | Applicants who can act within seconds |
| All-in-one visa platforms | Service fee charged at checkout, before anything changes | Guided DS-160, document checks and appointment support in one platform. | First-time applicants wanting everything handled |
| $750 government paid expedite | $750 per applicant, paid to the US government inside your own account | An interview within 10 business days at Mission Mexico or Mission Canada, B-1/B-2 only. | A hard deadline inside weeks, at one of those posts |
| Easy Visa Booking us | From $100, paid only on success | Our team takes on the rescheduling work for your consulate and keeps working it until an earlier interview date opens. The wider your acceptable date range, the more often it moves. | Long waits, a fixed deadline, and no time to watch a portal |
The categories above are the alternatives you are already comparing, not endorsements. We have no commercial relationship with any provider in them, and pricing models change, so verify current terms directly.
What our row gives you that the ones above it do not
- You pay only if the date actually moves. From $100, charged when an earlier interview is secured. On a page about advance-fee fraud that is the argument that matters: the structural feature of every scam here is money taken before a result. Ours is the only paid row where a result you did not get costs you nothing.
- Everything you would check is published before you pay. A named founder, a price on the website, terms, privacy policy and refund policy, and a written statement that nobody can promise you a date. Run the red-flag table above against us first.
- The watching stops being your problem. Every free and alert-based route ends the same way: you, logged in, acting within seconds, at whatever hour the opening lands. Our team carries the rescheduling work instead.
- A wide date range is the biggest lever you control. If you can accept any date inside a broad window rather than one specific morning, the odds of moving your interview go up sharply. Tell us the widest range your travel plans allow and we will tell you honestly how it looks before you commit to anything.
If your travel is flexible and your deadline is soft, do it yourself and pay nobody, us included. That row is free and it works, and after reading this page you have every reason to prefer it.
The reader who should not pay anybody is the one who came here after being approached in a messaging group and is now unsure who to trust. The safe move is not to find a better seller. It is to close the app, hold the appointment you have, and read how rescheduling actually works before spending anything at all.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common US visa appointment scam?
Advance-fee slot selling. Someone in a messaging group offers an earlier interview date for a fee, shows screenshots of appointments as proof, takes payment, and either disappears or comes back asking for more. Reported cases in India describe applicants paying, receiving a fabricated confirmation, being asked for a second payment, and then being locked out of their own scheduling account.
Can anyone reserve a US visa appointment slot for me before I apply?
No. An appointment is created inside a scheduling account tied to your own DS-160 confirmation number and your own paid MRV fee receipt. Nobody can hold, reserve or pre-book a slot that then gets transferred to you, because there is nothing to transfer. Any offer of a slot before you have an account, a DS-160 and a paid fee is describing something that does not exist.
What happens if my appointment was booked using automated tools?
You can lose it. In March 2025 the US Mission in India cancelled roughly 2,000 appointments it identified as booked by automated means and suspended the scheduling privileges of the accounts involved. The sanction fell on the applicants' accounts, not on the intermediaries who took the money. That is the part worth understanding before paying anyone who is vague about method.
Should I give a visa service my scheduling portal login?
Treat it as a serious decision and never one you make in a chat window. Whoever holds your login can change your appointment, change your contact details or lock you out, and reported cases include exactly that. If a service does need account access to do its work, the questions to ask are what it collects, where it is held, how long it is kept and how you have it deleted, and the answers should be in published policies you can read before you pay.
Someone is asking me to pay the $250 visa integrity fee. Is that real?
The fee itself is real. A demand arriving by message, email or from an agent is not. The visa integrity fee is charged by the US government at the point your visa is issued, through your own consular process, and it is never collected by an intermediary or paid to a personal account. Because collection has rolled out unevenly across posts, a fake demand is unusually believable right now, which is exactly why it is being used.
Can I get an earlier appointment by paying $750?
Only at a participating mission. The State Department's expedited appointment pilot covers Mission Mexico and Mission Canada as of 19 August 2026, it is B-1/B-2 only, and the fee is paid to the US government inside your own scheduling account. Anyone selling a $750 expedite for a post that is not on the participating list is selling something that does not exist there, and there will be no fee to refund and no receipt to dispute.
I have already paid a scammer. What can I do?
Act on the account first and the money second. Change your scheduling account password and email, and check whether your appointment and contact details have been altered. Contact the official scheduling support channel for your country and tell them what happened. Report the fraud to your local police and to the US embassy or consulate that will adjudicate your application. Then raise it with your bank or payment provider, understanding that transfers to personal accounts are rarely recoverable.
The bottom line
Fraud in this category works because the underlying problem is genuine. Waits at some posts run past a year, the consequences of missing a trip are real, and an offer of a date next month is exactly what a worried applicant wants to hear.
Two facts protect you from almost all of it. Nothing can be reserved before you have an account, a DS-160 and a paid fee, so a slot offered in advance does not exist. And every government fee in this process is paid to the government inside your own consular process, never to an intermediary.
The third is the one to remember longest, because it is the one nobody tells you: when a shortcut breaks the scheduling rules, it is your appointment that is cancelled and your account that is suspended. Two thousand people in India learned that at once. How the work is done is your risk, which is why you are entitled to a straight answer about it before you pay anyone.
What nobody can promise you
Nobody outside the US government can guarantee an interview slot, a timeframe, or a visa decision. We cannot either, and we will not pretend otherwise to win your business. Anybody in this category who tells you differently has told you the most important thing about themselves. What we offer is that the work gets done properly and that you pay only if it produces a result.
Sources
- US Department of State, Fraud Warning. The department's own warning about individuals falsely claiming to offer visa services or to represent the US government, and that payment is never requested in advance by wire transfer or money order. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- Deccan Herald, Zero tolerance to fraud: US embassy cancels 2,000 visa appointments in India. The March 2025 cancellation of about 2,000 appointments booked by automated means, and the suspension of the associated accounts' scheduling privileges. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- The420.in, Applying for a US visa online? This Bengaluru scam will make you think twice. A reported case: a messaging channel with thousands of members promising earlier slots, payment taken, a fabricated receipt returned, a second payment demanded, and the applicant locked out of their own account. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Department of State, Reporting US Passport or Visa Fraud. Where to report fraud committed overseas in connection with a US visa application. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Department of State, Nonimmigrant Visa Expedited Appointment Pilot Program. The participating post list, which is the only way to tell whether a $750 expedite offer is even possible at your post. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- Gulf News, US and Schengen visa applications in UAE: how to avoid fake agents and guaranteed approval scams. The guaranteed-approval pattern as it appears in the Gulf, where large expatriate populations make it especially effective. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
Published 25 August 2026. Fraud patterns change faster than any article. Where this page names a current pattern, treat it as an example of a shape rather than an exhaustive list. This article is general information and is not legal or immigration advice.
The checks in this article apply to us too
We are a paid service in a category full of fraud, so it would be strange to publish a scam guide and exempt ourselves from it. Everything you would use to check us is published before you pay: a named founder, real support channels, terms, a privacy policy and a refund policy, a price stated up front, and a written statement that nobody can promise you a date. Run the red flags below against us. If anything does not hold up, tell us and we will fix it.
- From $100, and you pay only if we secure you an earlier date
- The wider the date range you can accept, the more often we can move it
- No guarantee of a date, stated plainly before you decide anything
Easy Visa Booking is an independent scheduling assistance service, not affiliated with the US Department of State, any US Embassy or Consulate, CGI Federal or the AIS portal. All appointments are made through the official portal.