U.S. Embassy

I am an American citizen, living and working in Moscow. I have only used the consular services here twice, but I am less than impressed. My first experience was trying to mail my absentee ballot in the 2016 Presidential Election. Security stopped me and said I needed an appointment. I told them that I was here to mail my ballot, so I was permitted inside but had to check my mobile phone. Waited in line for 20 minutes just to hand someone an envelope, which they promptly dropped into a locked box for ballots. Why the wait? My second experience was to get a document notarized. Again, no electronics allowed ... entered the new building off of Bolshoi Devyatinskiy. Nice new building with lots of windows for service, but most closed. Empty desks everywhere. Poor signage, couldn’t find an open cashier window, and had to ask security for help. I had an appointment but still had to wait 20 minutes. They charge $50 PER DOCUMENT to notarize, which is misleading (the website makes it sound like it was $50 per appointment and you could have multiple documents notarized). Sad that such a big facility is largely empty, but such is the state of US-Russia relations. The big challenge is yet to come when I try to get a US visa for my Russian fiance.

My father lost his green card to catch our flight back to the United States. Except for some nice guards, there is no one available to see you. The guard handed me a card with a number, which I called. They in turn gave me an email for the State Department, and told me to write an email and that they would get back in touch with me, more quickly if they thought it was important. Very bureaucratic! Very unhelpful!

I am from Ghana I am not biased to be honest the system needs improvements, it’s not like Russians have the best but all I am saying do better.

They are 100 years behind of quality service and quality of people from America and at least 50 years behind from whole Europe and 70% of world. Very poor quality of humans not even talking about service.

All negative reviews are Russian haters. Service is great, and take care of citizens of US before anything else