You think this is bad? Try getting visa for Europe within the UK as a citizen of a 3rd world country. The official process is through a service such as VFS, which is the most painful experience I've had with any sort of service. There are very few appointments, all of which are blocked out by 3rd party bots, which means you need to pay a 3rd party twice as much to get any appointment. The VFS website is riddled with bot deterrents that actuall just deter humans, such as entering your password through a non-qwerty, randomised, on screen keyboard. If you call their helpline, you get charged for it. Everything is an upsell. You fill in a pdf form, print it out, give it to them and then they look at the printed document and type it back into their computer. There are literaly queues of people standing on the street outside their offices because they offer no seating, like the queues outside a club. Oh and you have to submit biometrics every single time, and therefore go in person for these apponitments that are impossible to get. I once had to submit my biometrics thrice in the same year for italian visa

Going through VFS seems like going through one of those expensive third parties instead of direct. And each EU country has a different visa service AFAIK, so the procedure will in fact vary depending on where you are going. (not saying the experience is not horrible).