Schengen visa refusal

By Schengen rules according to Czech Foreign ministry or Migration Service Centers:

According to a “90/180 rule,” an alien can stay in the Schengen area for a maximum of 90 days (3 months) within a half-year, counting from the first day of entry.

This rule applies no matter whether you have one or several Schengen visas. According to it, you overstayed your visa. Next time you apply for a visa you may or may not get it. If you have a visa interview, explain to the consular officer why you stayed for more than 90 days in the Schengen area and tell him or her that you didn't know about the 90/180 rule.

If I change my passport will it solve my problem?

They have all information in their computer system, so most likely that will not help.

I have experience in this area before with both overstayer and Schengen visa rejection. My girlfriend got her visa rejected from the French embassy before due whatever reason that the embassy didn't really clarify. But she got the stamp the same as you had. And we had to cancel the whole trip which some of the transportation costs cannot be refunded. We talked to a lot of people and people got mixed experience. Some say that she had to re-apply with the embassy that rejected the visa, because embassies don't share information, if you got rejected from French embassy, German embassy might not know why but they can only see the stamp that visa has been rejected and they will likely reject the visa.

So, what we did was to just re-apply with the French embassy. When we got inside the embassy again, she had to answer a couple of questions with the lady in the embassy and the decision took a bit long. You just need to be honest and explain everything. We explained everything and told them that we booked everything with the return ticket back home, but we didn't know why the visa got rejected the last time. In the end, they approved my girlfriend's visa and we can enter French border without any problem.

Now for overstaying, my friend got her visa rejected from the UK embassy due to the type of the visa (Short-stay) cannot be extended inside the UK (but she didn't know). That led her to be an overstayer because she applied ten days before the visa expired, and the decision took more than that. So she had to leave the country but with the record. So, the rule for overstaying is if you voluntarily leave the country. You will be banned on entry for 1-3 years. During the time you cannot apply the visa, or it will be rejected for sure. In my friend's case she waited for a year and then apply for the visa again. And she had to be interviewed for a half an hour but in the end her new visa was approved. However, if you're forced to leave the country you'll be banned on entry for 10 years. During the time, you cannot apply for any visa. In your case, I guess it should be one year same as my friend. But every time you enter the border the immigration officer will ask a lot of questions even though you have the visa, and they can reject your entry and send you back home. My friend got asked some questions, but she could return without any problem.

http://www.euro-dollar-currency.com/overstaying_schengen_visa.htm

Hope this helps.

As this question was bumped on the homepage, I came across this old answer of mine and realized that it is not correct anymore. The rules are now different. As of October 18, 2013, the calculation described in the question is the right one. If at any time (and in particular upon leaving the Schengen area or applying for a new visa), you have been staying in the Schengen area more than three months in the last six months, you have overstayed your visa.

There are a few exceptions for citizens from specific countries, work-holiday visas and some exotic national visas but otherwise this is the rule. In any case, visa dates do not matter (a person is allowed to stay a certain number of days in a given period of time, and not a certain number of days per visa).

Other answers already covered important points but there is one thing that might need to be emphasized: @AmyMorgan's comment is exactly right, what matters is the day of first entry. So you might or might not have overstayed your visa, we can't tell without knowing that.

Therefore calculating back from January 4th (if that's really what they did) is not right. The catch is that your own calculation, per visa or starting with the first day of validity of your initial visa (5-3-2011) isn't right either.

If you did not spend any time in the Schengen area around the beginning of your first visa, you most likely did in fact overstay your visa. This rule can be difficult to understand but there is unfortunately not much that could be done about it in this situation.