I honestly thought that exactly what did happen would happen and sure enough it did. I'm not trying to say anything negative about Vietnam as far as technology is concerned but I think there is a very real reason why a lot of their stuff isn't automated. The programmers or testers or maybe even the backbone of the technology itself just isn't built well enough to actually do what it is expected to do.
This was evidenced during Covid times when they installed these QR code scan things at all businesses for tracking where people went. In theory at least this was meant to do contract tracing of everyone and the idea was that you wouldn't be allowed into any business unless you scanned the code before entering. This became and absolute mess almost right away because the central server would frequently stop responding and thousands if not millions of people were simply standing in line, probably in the sun, trying to get into something like a supermarket. Eventually, businesses just stopped using the system even though they were required by law to do so. I found it funny because a lot of places would force you to pretend to scan the code and then they would let you in because they knew that the system wasn't going to work, but they needed to appear as though they were enforcing the rules in case any sort of plainclothes officer was currently watching them.
The end result of this completely online process is meant to be a printout that looks like the above. This grants you a 48 hour window of opportunity to enter the country on a specified date at which point you will be awarded 90 days visa provided you don't do something stupid like misspell your own name. Before you think that is just a silly made up situation please know that I personally know two people that have somehow managed to enter their own name incorrectly into the form.
About 40 days ago Vietnam's Parliament or Congress - whatever it is called, their legislators - overwhelmingly voted to bring back the 90-day tourist visa that applies to most nationalities. They were also meant to roll out additional countries that are eligible for 15 or 30 day visa exemptions (meaning you just rock up and get a stamp without filing any additional paperwork) and the masses like me were very excited about this.
As expected, people were all geared up to use the brand new portal for their visas in the much anticipated new-and-improved E-visa website.
There's just one problem though. It doesn't work.
While there are a lot of things that people are already complaining about there are issues such as names being rejected because they are too short. Someone in there must have decided that a name has to be a certain number of characters long before it will be accepted, so if your legal name is TOM or ANN, I guess you can't come to Vietnam!
There are also issues such as selecting certain options in the drop down menu resulting in a critical error that cannot be resolved and when you click the back button it completely resets the form. This is annoying when it happens on any website but one would think that an official government website would be tested a bit more thoroughly.
The biggest problem that they are having at the moment is not problems with these rather trivial aspects of the forms that can be fixed probably almost immediately once they are identified, the biggest problem is that the payment portal, which your visa will not be processed until you have made payment, isn't working at all. This involves significantly more complicated programming and I would imagine it also involves integrating with major credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard, who aren't just going to allow government officials in any country to get in there and fiddle with their portals.
My advice to anyone out there that is frantically seeking to get their 90-day visa before an upcoming arrival in Vietnam or even more so to people that are currently here in Vietnam seeking to do a visa run in the near future is to just use an agent. I have warned against agents in the past but know this: The real fee for processing an E-visa for a single entry visa is $10, for express service - which is normally same or next day - is an additional $25. If an agent is telling you that it is more than that, and especially if they are suggesting it is significantly more than that, they are lying to you.
I've heard some crazy hypothetical stories created by greedy agents and in my time that I have been here these agents frequently change the name of their business or even the city they are located in. The individual in charge of the agency remains the same and their position is determined exclusively by knowing someone who works in Immigration. Therefore they can be located anywhere in the country and still have the same level of influence.
The agent that I have used for 5 years in Da Nang has never changed the name of his business because it is his legal name. He has changed addresses but this was merely because he had a baby and wanted his office to be at his home, not because he was trying to hide from anyone.
If you are experiencing issues with the payment portal just know that you are not doing anything wrong. The system just isn't working at the moment. Hopefully they will get these things sorted out quickly because so far, the launch is not going so well. I didn't really expect that it would though.