Colombian Consulate

This is the worst experience I’ve ever encountered with a government office. You can only make appointments on their website & to renew a Colombian ID you have to wait until the last week of the current month in order for you to be able to make an appointment for the following month. If you cancel an appointment and need to reschedule you can forget about any type of customer service it’s a mircle if anyone aswers the phone and if you do get a hold of someone they say they can’t help you & that everything has to be done through the internet but their internet service is a total joke! I’m so disappointed!

What a shame to be Colombian with this consulate. Since I moved to this country (20 years ago) I have never had a positive experience and I avoid any reason to set a foot inside that office. The office people are either slow people, inconsiderate and inefficient. practically sloths. Typical good for nothing government workers. is just a shame. The Online system does not work and they will not pick up the phone. Colombian warmth does not exist in this office sorry. Thank God for Unilocal but I’m still stuck needing some documentation help. No where to turn.

Horrible, system down, never answer the calls, online services doesn’t work. What are you supposed to do? If I walk in with no Appoitments they will turn me out and i can’t get one because the system is not allowing appointments and they don’t answer the phone. HELP

Los Colombianos tenemos que aprender a seguir reglas, yo hize mi cita X internet, fui por mi pasaporte y en 1 hora sali, hoy fui por la matricula consular y también me fue super bien, el único que a veces es gruñón es el único sr. que tiene esa oficina. Les recomiendo llamar directamente a +18 887 643 326, unos minutos y le explican muy bien.

Worst Customer service ever!!! If you try to call Good Luck! they never answer the phone and it seems like they disconnect the lines because the lines are always busy. And the website sucks! you can not make appointments. I hate dealing with this people.

They need to hire more people. I felt very bad for the ladies who work there because there were long lines with tired people and not enough workers to help. This is not a way to serve customers they definitely need to hire more people.
The ladies who work there did seem to try to do the best they could do.

Inefficient and unintelligent service. They send you an email message stating that you can pickup your passport and when you go there they tell you the passport is not ready and that the message was sent from the Colombian headquarters. When you try to make an appointment online you are supposed to know that the appointment calendar works only few days of the month until all the appointments are given. Of course you try to call on the phone and you can’t ever talk to anyone or have someone respond your email message. Total disregard for people who have to travel from other states or from far away. Worst customer service in the world!

This is hands down the worst experience I’ve ever had getting a visa. If we didn’t have non refundable tickets, I would seriously NOT GO to Colombia– just to avoid this consulate’s COMPLETELY useless and incompetent staff.
They have 3 listed phone numbers, and never answer any of them.
The website is in Spanish (which is great since that is their language), but the English translation leaves much to be desired. The appointment tab itself is really hard to find, and appointments for visas few and far between.
Since they don’t answer their phones, and a visa appt is not available till 2016, you think you’ll do the next logical thing and visit them for answers. You go there and are told to wait forever till someone comes and talks to you in English. She tells you you need certain forms (you have them), your passport (check), and two separate money orders (she’s stumped when you have these too– go Google), and since you have everything required, she latches on to the fact that you have no appointment. You open up their site on your phone and show her that the next available visa appointment is after 8 months, and you need to travel before that.
She then tells you to turn back around, travel the 50 miles to your home, wait for their site to stop malfunctioning, take an appointment, and come back again as and when it chooses to do so. While she points at a Spanish sign with alleged «further instructions «, you ask her if she can help you with the general meaning– Google translation helps but not if these mysterious instructions are not on their website (they’re not).
She then says– «Honey if you’re going to Colombia you better know Spanish». REALLY!!! So basically, if I’m visiting Europe, I should become multi-​lingual? And if you’re visiting India, you’ll do a crash course in Hindi before hand? And fill out all their paperwork in their language!!! Are you dealing with a full deck lady?!!
Long story short, I walked out and never came back. I mailed other consulates in SF and NY and got immediate and helpful responses.

To add to Dania’s helpful tips:
1. The little store on the lobby is pretty helpful with everything (from money orders to the self-​stamped envelopes you’ll need to have your documents shipped if you’re not from LA). Actually, the guy who works there is more knowledgeable and helpful than most people in the consulate.
2. Even if they promise that your documents will be ready for pick up by a certain date, do not go to pick them up until you have proof that they are ready. Check here first:
3. I promise not all of Colombia will be as dismissive of your time. Dealing with these processes is the equivalent of Time Warner or ATT here in the US. A necessary evil.
4. One star is for the general friendliness of the people who go there for other transactions, the guy with the store at the lobby and even some of the representatives. The other is because the location is not too bad. Everything else needs work.

It is what it is. You’re simply here because you have to be, so really doesnt matter what the reviews say. I wanted to post about a few things that you should know before going, it would have been more helpful to me had I known
1) you must make an appointment, otherwise they DO NOT accept walk-​ins
2) If you are going to get a new cedula or a copy you must bring with you 3 photos and a money order in the amount of $ 36.70; there is a shop downstairs that takes them for you and they cost $ 15 for 4 pics. Note, that you should not wear the color white as it washes you out with the background and those photos would not be accepted by the consulate.
3) if you are going to for a passport, you do not need photos, they take them there, but you need to take a money order in the amount of $ 132.00
4) if you need both cedula + passport, note that you will need 2 separate appointments
hope this is helpful

My fiancée traveled recently to the consulate from Arizona to request a visa for upcoming vacation to Colombia. I’m an American so fortunately I was spared from having to go through this process. We read up on the requirements, scheduled our appointment and spoke to someone two times to make sure we had all our documents and fees before driving six hours to Los Angeles.
On day of appt, my fiancée was told she needed the visa fee in addition to the application fee so they had to leave the consulate track down the post office for the additional fees. When they returned they were then told she needed hotel reservations, in addition to the flight reservations which we already had. So she had to leave the consulate a second time to make and printout hotel reservations.
To add insult to injury, when they found out we were coming from Arizona they initially told us we had to come back to pick up the visa. At this point we were livid so they sent us out a third time to the post office to pick up a self address envelope and photos to be taken so that if and when visa was approved they could mail this out to us. What was supposed to take 30 min took four hours. Total incompetence and inconsideration. Individual who handled visas was named Anjelica.

Rude, arrogant and incompetent. I have now been waiting 4 hours to be helped. I am only here because they made a mistake the first time I was here. I admit that I didn’t have an appointment which is now required but I wasn’t the only one. The web site is not clear about this, they don’t get back to you when making request and it is only in Spanish so it is impossible if you need an English translation. The head of this organization won’t give out his name. He also doesn’t speak English. You would think. Person in a leadership position in the US shod be bi-​lingual. Most frustrating is they think it is inappropriate for me to be mad after waiting 4 hours and counting.

Aunque haga sita la espera es largar, traiga paciencia. Lo bueno es que mucho de los trámites son rápidos. Se tomó 8 días para procesar y recibir mi pasaporte. Parqueo es caro, pero en gregory puede parquear gratis por una hora.

Employees are willing to give you all the information, they recently changed the procedures ways, requiring an appointment which makes everything better.

I mean… what in the world are you reading a review for. If you’re here, you generally have to be here. Its not like you have your choice of Columbia Consulates in LA or something.
The people were nice enough to me.

It’s sad that we are been represented so poorly in this country, where diplomacy is the most important issue for the Colombian community and for the people who need the diplomat service, but like always this kind of jobs are only for the people who know somebody somewhere. Shame of you. The phones are made to bridge the gaps and phones are not luxury items.

Not so much rude as stupid, a trait common to many if not most bureaucrats. They don’t state on their website clearly enough the requirements for completing a transaction, in our case passport renewal for my Colombian wife. So we spent 6 hours for nothing: because she didn’t have her cedula, even though she had her still valid Colombian passport. These people are morons, so beware! (But they are actually pretty nice… I’d rather they were rude and reasonable!)

I must sadly say that if you’re looking for RUDE, crappy customer service, look no further than the Colombian consulate. Please, oh PLEASE don’t judge us all Colombians by the rude employees of this Consulate!
It makes me very sad that our «Representatives» in this country give such a bad impression. I have had to go here 4 times, 2 of them I went with a friend and was VERY embarrassed by what they witnessed about the way these employees treat people. Sad and embarrassing.