Time is money: Carousellers are charging $300 to help others queue for China visa
PHOTO: Carousell/Screengrab
PUBLISHED ONMay 09, 2023 10:08 AMByMelissa Teo By now, you'd probably have heard of the dreadful queue situation at the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre with some folks turning up to wait in line as early as 4am in the morning, only to be turned away some five hours later.
However, if you're not keen to spend your time queuing and risk getting turned away, there're opportunists willing to queue for you. For a price of course.
At the time of writing, AsiaOne saw that there were at least three listings on Carousell with people offering their services to queue for China visas.
Two of them are posted by the same person, selling his services for $300.
In both posts, which are in Chinese, he said he's willing to queue for about 10 hours, from 11pm the night before and will stay in line till 8.40am the next morning.
"If you want to, you can private message me. The price is negotiable, thank you," he wrote in Chinese.
Another person on Carousell is putting up his 'queue' time for $250.
He too offered to queue for around 10 hours but added that the buyer will have to take over the queue at 9am when the application opens.
Visa-free travel deal
On May 6, content creator Ong Yi Ting shared that she had gone down early to the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre at around 4am to join the queue.
Only 200 slots are given out a day and there were another 170 people in front of her. However, she ended up not securing a slot.
She said that she's still trying to procure her visa via a tour operator.
In a Reuters report yesterday (May 8), China said that it was hammering out details with Singapore on a bilateral visa-free travel arrangement, according to Beijing's embassy.
Singaporeans were allowed 15-day visa-free visits prior to the pandemic.
That arrangement has yet to be reinstated, which has led to lengthy queues, some overnight, at the Chinese visa application centre in Singapore.
The Chinese ambassador to Singapore Sun Haiyan wrote in a Facebook post last month: "Hope that the competent authorities of the two sides can achieve positive results as soon as possible."
ALSO READ: Do you need a visa to visit China now? Here's what one Singaporean found out during her recent trip
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