OK, for what it’s worth, here’s my experience… We set up an account on August 27 and filed three requests — one for each member of our party. We figured that with an arrival date of Oct. 5, that would be plenty of lead time. Crickets…
I got on this forum thread and began reading all the hacks and tips — submit at a specific time of day, send emails to the info line, attempt to call the office and leave a polite message — and I tried them all. Crickets…
By the time we left the US on Oct. 4, we had resigned ourselves to trying to find a pharmacy to get tested in Paris. Especially since on departure day I received a response to the first of the three emails I had sent to the info link that basically said “Sorry. We we are getting a lot of applications now. We may or may not get to your applications in the next few weeks.”
So, on a whim, I logged into the website during our flight from the US and submitted, once again, our three applications at about 10 AM Paris time. I was blown away when the first of the three applications was accepted, and approved before I finished completing the third one. But as for the other two…crickets.
Got up our first morning in Paris and resubmitted the two remaining applications around 10 a.m. local time. Same thing happened — the first application was approved right away, the second one…crickets.
I waited until around 3 p.m. local time, resubmitted the third and final application. And this one was accepted and approved within minutes.
Based my experience, my assumptions about this process are:
1. There is no “workflow” tool that ensures that files are reviewed in the order in which they are received.
2. Submissions of multiple applications under the same login/account cause the system to accept the first one and reject all other the applications in that account.
3. If someone in the office sees a new application come in, they will open up that application and start the approval process…ignoring any that are sitting in the virtual pile for approval.
4. There MAY be some considerations given to those already in the country. Or not.
5. There is no live human being actually responding to email requests for assistance due to the sheer volume of inquires. Instead, someone has created a generic auto response to any and all incoming emails.
The good news is that, before we all had our Passes, our CDC cards allowed us to eat inside the cafes we went to, and we were able to access small shops without our Passes. But we would not have been able to visit the Louvre, etc. So I am really glad that we are all now approved and able to experience everything that brought us to Paris…and before we had to fly home