Planning to visit our daughter in Canada with a side trip to the USA. Have a new passport so needed new visas. ETA for Canada no problem . ESTA for the USA a nightmare. Official web site does not accept my selfie. Phone call to the States does not resolve it. Told to try the App. App will not load onto my phone.
Does anyone have any advice?
Don’t bother. They’ll want to see all your social media history as well probably.
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Wait 24 hours and try again.
It took me several tries but then they accepted the picture. Just try again?
On second thought- buy a cheap burner phone. Load the app on that and then use that phone while you are in US. Leave your phone with your daughter.
if you go the cheap phone route, make sure it is rated to work in the US. Generally, it’s been my experience that phones sold in europe and rest of the world do not work in the US because US uses a different set of frequency range for cell service.
It is entirely possible that this has changed ‘recently’. I would love to know if this is the case now. Thanks!
Swiss phones operate on GSM networks, matching T-Mobile and AT&T, but Verizon uses CDMA, so compatibility there is limited unless the phone supports GSM fallback. Check frequency bands (e.g., LTE bands 2, 4, 12, 66 for good coverage) using tools like Kimovil’s compatibility checker or the manufacturer’s specs.
I’ve used my Swiss phones in Canada over recent years. No problems.
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Thanks Bowlie!
I’d be curious about US specific experiences also.
AFAIK, CDMA is a thing of the past. By 2010-2012 it was sold as the new thing to replace GSM 2G/3G. It never happened and this network was shut down.
So, CDMA and GSM are both outdated tech. There’s been talk, if it hasn’t already been done, about shutting down the 3g networks. What you want to check is, as Bowlie said, if your phone supports the radio frequency bands used by major networks in Canada and USA. If your phone works in Canada, it will probably work in the US.
For what it’s worth, my Canadian phone had lte and 5g in Switzerland.
Thanks for the replies. My daughter suggested using Chat GPT to find out what was wrong with the photo that I uploaded. So, I submit the photo to Chat GBT. A list of potential issues is given. So I do my best. Six different photos submitted. Always the the same message fom Esta -no face recognised. So I am using AI to try to solve a problem caused by AI.
The phone issue is not clear. It is a 4G Samsung that I got on holiday when my 5G phone had to be returned under guarantee. Will try the old phone just for the ESTA app.
Technology sucks.
As for my social media posts, I suspect it is too late 
At a minimum you should disable face recognition (or fingerprint) at least for your short sojourn into the US.
Try with someone else’s phone. The ESTA isn’t stored on the phone it’s linked to your passport.
My first problem is how to get the ESTA!
Why not?
A good question.
Finally got the App to load on my old phone. With the app you can easily repeat selfies in real time to keep the AI facial recognition happy. Selfies with my computer are difficult and the online web-site was not accepting a stored selfie taken with my mobile.
With the app have got past the selfie stage and just need to get some details of where I am staying before I can finalise it. Almost there 
With the UK system, it would reject but tell me why e.g. too dark, shadows on face, etc. In the end I gave up and took 20 different photos and went through them one at a time until it accepted one.
Yes, the ESTA application online is less than helpful, it just rejected without any reason given, only a large list of possibilities. My store of six photos was not good enough. Chat GBT was a bit more helpful, but it obviously can not have the same algorithms.
Ya because people who have nothing to hide use burner phones as a mattter of course…
Wake up, you’d be putting a target on your back.