NZeTA 4+

I followed the steps in this app. The first time I input the card information, it just went back to the page asking for payment. I felt strange, and input the payment information again. This time it succeeded. After that when I review the bank transactions, there were two transactions that day. One is correct, and another is us$99 to EVISA Application Badalona Es ESP. I googled that business name which is apparently a fraud one, and many people met such tragedy same as me. There must be some thing wrong with the payment of this APP because I never did anything else and never leave the app when I did the payment. I was shocked by this. Could not believe it happened in official APP. Hope it can be fixed and no more people lose their money.

Only discovered the recent change in NZ visa rules this morning when I went onto Qantas website to check in for our flight to NZ Auckland tomorrow. Was totally shocked to see the message about the new NZETA and the potential 72hr delay in it being granted, especially as it was less than 24hrs before our flight. Needless to say I downloaded the App immediately as recommended and struggled with it for ages to try and 1.read my passport details and then 2. Get a decent photo. The bit about Australian residents not having to pay the additional tourist fee was confusing and I really thought I’d made a mistake at that point but paid the $9 and received a receipt straight away. 12 hrs later I’ve received no further email and the app just says ‘pending’ without any indication as to what is going on with the application. Can’t get through to Qantas to find out if we can get on the plane tomorrow with a ‘pending’ ETA cos the wait time is ‘more than 2hrs’. All in all a horrible experience altogether. Other reviewers are saying the app won’t get you a visa inside 72 hrs so I guess I’ll go and spend more money and try again on the website and hope one of them comes good overnight.

I didn’t think it was possible to develop such a lousy app in 2020 but the NZ dept of immigration proved me wrong. The scanner doesn’t work - took me 15 mins of trying in countless different positions, it doesn’t accept Amex cards (seriously), and to top it off the scan made an error - read a ‘7’ as a ‘T’ - which apparently I now need to fix by visiting NZ immigration regular website.

All this effort was required to pay NZ$9 for a transit visa which gives me ‘the right’ to spend 1.5 hrs at Auckland airport waiting for a flight to the US. The last time I paid for the right to transit a country was in Russia in 1996 and at least they allowed me to stay there for a few days. NZ is an absolutely fantastic country but boy did they get this wrong.