Appointment at Italian Consulate - Houston

[jenmw]

Hello,
I am having trouble getting an appointment at the Italian Consulate in Houston. I am using the online system on the consulate webpage to book an appointment. I have secured my login credentials. When I go to that page, there is a message saying that the system does not allow to book more than 24 week in advance. However, there are not appointment available anywhere on the schedule. Any tips for navigating this?

Thanks,
Jennifer

[bbivona]

It's a struggle. They generally post new appointments at 5PM central time each day. My suggestion is to login a few minutes before that each day and drill down to the calendar page and be ready to refresh it at 4:59:59. The page begins to run really slowly at that time because lots of people know the schedule and everyone is trying to use it at the same time, so it will be hard to use then. Several different times I got a green date to pop up, clicked it, clicked the available time, and then someone else got the slot while the server was processing my click, leaving me to try another day. I've been doing this almost daily since March. It looks to me like the new dates come up most frequently on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. That said, on this past Friday afternoon, day before yesterday, I found an "orange" date, on August 19, just a week from now, and managed to secure an appointment for 11 a.m. that day. Apparently there was a cancellation.

From everything I have found and heard, your only real option is to keep trying. The login page typically takes you to (right now) January 2020. If you don't see an available date on the click, be sure to work your way back to the current month in case there has been a cancellation.