Why do you want to see UK refusal notices?

Question

Can I upload refusal letter on this site? Visit visa refused because employers letter didn't mentioned salary.

Answer 1

I am in the people who started marking questions as 'unclear' until the person uploaded a scan of their refusal notice. So I can give one answer...

First reason: when a person gets a refusal notice their mind goes numb for a moment as they read it. It's a combination of shock, disbelief, and disappointment. And many times their mind will drill down a word or phrase and that little bit sticks with them as the grounds for their refusal. Or they may translate the refusal grounds into something they can accept, and as a result you can see OP's saying things like...

• My wife was refused for no reason at all;
• I got refused because I don't own a car;
• I was refused because I am a Muslim;

Are they lying? Not really, but they are heavily influenced by what their mind drilled down on and they might lose focus on the bigger picture. So when they get on the net to ask questions about how to fix it, they enter a paradox because none of the answers they get address the root issues. That's fine as far as it goes, we can make up answers from ambiguous questions just as easily as any other site; the difference is that we can address what the refusal notice says and produce something of value and people browsing the net will recognize the higher quality.

Second reason: if you have been on the net for a while you will be aware that the prevailing attitude on the net is that visa decisions are made in this murky, unpredictable, capricious, whimsical environment where 'mood-of-the-day' governs what happens. So if the 'mood-of-the-day' is bad, everybody gets refused, but if the 'mood-of-the-day' is good, everybody gets approved. But there's about 50 refusal notices in our archives by now and which of those appear to be capricious, whimsical, or 'mood-of-the-day'? Not very many, and in fact about 90% of them were predictable at the application stage. Taking the position that visa decisions are the result of disciplined thinking AND having the archives to prove it elevates TSE's quality.

Third reason: if you have been on this site, TSE, for about a year and have followed the 'visa' tag, you will probably start to get the same theory I have: there are not that many reasons! I count about 14 in total. People make the same mistakes and ECO's use the same formulae over and over again, they get them from a catalogue and they use speed codes to indicate to the assistants which text to pluck. What that means to TSE is that sooner or later there will be duplicates most of the time. When you start to recognize a particular formula, your mind will go 'Hey! that's funds parking' or 'Hey! that's a life-style issue'. Funds parking in Pakistan is the same as funds parking in Egypt and to answer the Pakistani will simply be copying the Egyptian's answer and changing the proper nouns. So I am in the people minded to mark them as duplicates.

In fact, since UKVI introduced their 'hub and spoke' system, you don't even need the person's nationality for a visa-refusal question.

In a different era I used to do quantitative research into the Google search terms people used when they were researching a refusal. The basic pattern is 'uk visa rejection' or 'uk visa refusal'. This site, TSE, is in the top 10 Google results for both of those searches. TSE is the top result for 'uk visa refusal bank statements'; the point being that people will find their way here if they want to.

We don't leave visa questions unanswered for very long, so the credit card/petrol station 'visibility' discussion doesn't have the same relevance.

What this amalgamates to is that it's fine to mark questions as 'unclear' until they scan their notice (as long as you tell them in a comment). And if you spot the same formulae as an existing question it's fine to mark it as a duplicate.

Answer 2

I am basically repeating what @GayotFow is saying in their excellent answer, but maybe in a less polite manner:

You likely don't describe the actual problem when you don't upload the actual refusal letter. It is not your fault, but you are not trained what to look for and that is why we want to see the letter.
To give good advice we need the whole picture and a neutral description of it, and that is not the same as the picture you see.

Some examples to make my point:

• Example 1:

  1 the statements show £7823 they said in the application state that u intend to spend £6302 during ur visat thats represents almost all of ur liquid funds and 15 times ur monthly disposable income 2 i note that ur tenancy agreement expires in nov2016 and that u have amended by hand the dats of ur visit in ur application to from one month to just 8days. That why the refuse so can i try again if i try what i have to do i have booked my hotel already give me advice can i try again or there is limited time to wait

  That is just poorly written and while a professional can spot a lot of the problems of the application already in this statement, there is likely even more off that we need to know to give a correct and good answer. This question has been put on-hold as "unclear".

• Example 2:

  The OP here initially said his girlfriend had received a warning from a police officer one time.

  So my girlfriend was refused a UK visa as she didn't mention that she was arrested in 2010 for shoplifting but only received a warning. At the time she was told she would have no record and it was a slap on the wrist. Please note that she was NOT convicted of any offence. During her interview, the subject came up and she admitted that it happened but did not think she was in any trouble for it, true, but they still denied the visa.

  However after uploading the refusal notice it came out that it was not an informal warning but a formal "caution". We never could have guessed without the refusal notice and would be giving wrong or at least strange advice until today without that refusal letter.

• Example 3:

  Another visa refusal where initially we did not really get why. After the refusal letter was uploaded it became clear that the person in question had applied and been refused a resident visa before which caused her trouble.

  Citing here from a comment after the edit:

  Oh my, you didn't mention she had a failed in-country application.

By intention or not, people here tend to forget crucial "details". That is why we ask for your refusal letter.

Answer 3

We need the refusal letter because it contains the actual reason for refusal. Without knowing that reason, we can't possibly advise on why the visa was refused or what to do about it.

It's not enough for the applicant to summarize the refusal letter because the whole reason they're asking the question is that they don't fully understand the refusal. Somebody who doesn't fully understand a document cannot possibly provide an accurate summary of it, because they don't know which parts of the document are important and they don't know the full meaning of the text they're trying to summarize. Often, people say "I was refused a visa because of X" and it turns out that, actually, they were refused the visa for a completely different reason, or for multiple reasons including X and others.