How can anyone think that this booking system works?!

[IamAporcupine]

Trying to book an appointment at a consulate to renew my passport.

Appointments are released at 9am everyday on their website.
You try to log in at 8:55 and the site does not load/crashes.
At 9:05am all appointments are gone.
Repeat next day

WTF

For the life of me, I cannot understand why they cannot have a normal booking system?! This is not a Dr appointemtn for the day! why do I have to have a fucking race for something that could be easily booked in advance over a longer period of time.

Rant over.

What a pain. Is there a queueing system such as they have on ticket booking sites? I would try logging in earlier on a couple of different devices.

Woooow that sounds so annoying! I'd call and complain. Are you comfortable with the language? My consulate at least does not speak much English (which drove me batty in the first few years before I gained fluency). Horrible system.

@Damntheman - I called, they said they can't do anything - all online.
I emailed. The reply was:
Please bear in mind that usually all available dates are taken within 1-2 minutes and so we advise you to book an appointment promptly.

We advise you to book an appointment promptly?!

@BooksAreMyOnlyFriends - I don't know, but I will follow your suggestion

Woooow... I'd escalate and take that to the Embassy. Social media it if the Embassy doesn't step up!

@Damntheman - not sure if you are joking now

I'm genuinely not joking. If I couldn't get the consulate to sort out something as serious as a passport (I also live overseas), I would take it to the Embassy who have a duty to take care of you.

@Damntheman - what exactly do you suggest? I am getting more than frustrated with this.
I've just been through the same shit at 9pm

Call the embassy in the capital city of whichever country you're in and explain the situation. Be prepared to raise hell.

Can you pay an agent to do it?

@Damntheman - that'll be London then.

@StCharlotte - I am prepared to pay, but haven't been able to find any

Then call London :) the situation at the consulate is untenable and in theory the embassy should care that their country's citizens are not being looked after properly. I always get help from Oslo if I can't get through to my consulate up here.

The reason for a system like this is that demand is so high that if you could book in advance they would be fully booked for the next year, so not an improvement.

Go with what @BooksAreMyOnlyFriends said - borrow all the laptops and tablets you can, get them all logged in and on the website in advance of the opening time. It will be luck of the draw which devices get through at the moment that booking opens so the more devices you can assemble the better. Some sites will have a queue management system, others you will need to be refreshing the page and it will be the devices that refresh in the right 5 second window that get lucky

Is this the Italian consulate by any chance??

@peppapigismynemisis - nope, Polish