# SEF appointments and home locations



## highlands1234

Olá,

Has anyone made an appointment to get their residency permit at a SEF that was not your home location on the online appointment website the SEF provides? If I make an appointment with a home location based on where I am currently living, the best available appointment is 2 months down the road. However if I select a town that of 200Km away, I can get in next week. Just wondering if the SEF at the other location (200Km away) would not process me for the permit after showing up at my appointment once they saw where my give address was. 

I am concerned about waiting 2 months for a appointment, just to go there, find out the SEF needs some other document and I have to go back for another appointment 2 months later. What are others experiences regarding SEF appointments and locations relative to home locations?

Thanks for help and info!


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## grammymissy

Give them a call, they have English speakers, they will sort you out, no worries. My understanding, you have to go to the office for where you live. We just renewed our cards in April, I phoned to make the appts, they were great. I prefer phoning vs online, so I can confirm what to bring.


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## Kathrynj

I had to wait about three months to get my appointment! I have read some offices are scheduling appointments up to 5 months out! I was nervous because my Schengen visa was expired by the time I got to SEF. There were no problems and I was told by SEF there would be no problem as long as I had a scheduled appointment. 
I also agree that your local office is where you should go and I scheduled my appointment by phone as Cascais did not have the online option.


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## highlands1234

Thanks Grammymissy and Kathy. We made a online appointment for our home area. We tried calling the 808202653 number multiple times and keep getting some recorded message about not available (at least I believe that is what it is saying in Portuguese). We called our home location regional directorate to try to make sure we have all documents we need but they just say call the 808202653 for questions and appointment. I don't know why that number is a issue.


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## Alfreda

grammymissy said:


> Give them a call, they have English speakers, they will sort you out, no worries. My understanding, you have to go to the office for where you live. We just renewed our cards in April, I phoned to make the appts, they were great. I prefer phoning vs online, so I can confirm what to bring.


Hello, where did you manage to make an appointment and what was the waiting period for the appointment.

Thanks


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## grammymissy

Alfreda said:


> Hello, where did you manage to make an appointment and what was the waiting period for the appointment.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks




We live in the Leira office area, so our appts are scheduled there, and the waiting period then was a month. We are due to renew this April, so I will be calling to find out how long appts are taking now, to schedule, next week, and will post when I know. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Alfreda

We are going to be Staying in Nazare, also Leiria district, and I think we need to go to Santarem. Thanks for your help, most appreciated.


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## travelling-man

We have UK passports (not sure if that makes a difference) & we had to renew our Residencias about a year ago (with Leiria) & we emailed them for an appointment & asked them to confirm what documents we needed to bring. 

They replied the next day with appointment (waaay after our existing Residencia would expire), a list of what we needed to bring & a Residencia extension letter to cover the interim period. 

WE got there at 5 minutes to our appointment time & just as they called our names & 15 minutes later were walking out with our new 10 year Residencias. 

The hardest part of the process was finding somewhere to park so allow extra time for that.


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## Alfreda

Hi there....thanks for the reply. Would you mind telling me which SEF office you applied to and also be kind enough to send me their email address. I have emailed SEF Santarem 3 times and they haven't replied


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## travelling-man

If you look at sef.pt & click the English option at the top left of the page you'll get the whole site in English & then you can track down whichever office serves your area....... If they don't reply then use bing translate (better than google) & try in Portuguese. 

Also ask for a read receipt on the message & keep hard copies of all messages sent/received so if they do give you kak you can give them proof of the messages you've sent & they've failed to reply to. 

I'm pretty sure you'll have to deal with the one in your area though.


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