Agent or do it yourself??
 

Hi All,

Has anyone done the visa application and migration progress on there own without an agent?? Is it much more hassle or quite straight forward. Or is it recommended to use an agent.
If anyone has help and advice would be appreciated.
Regards Ian

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

Hi Ian,
If your case is straight forward and you do your homework on the right websites and speak with some people on here i'd say its easily done yourself.
Having paid an agent to do ours ... (well having said that most of the work YOU do and they just check it over!) mainly for ease and not wanting the responsibility ourselves, if we had to go through it again i would do it myself.
I think an agent is just ease of mind .. they highlight things you may have missed or ought to do but the process itself is not rocket science.
If you can find someone on here thats gone the route youre going who is willing to share tips then thats certainly a help.
M J :thumbup:

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

Hiya!

Lots of people ask this question and it seems to me it depends on whether your case is straightforward or not, and whether you’re prepared to do a lot of legwork yourself. As far as I know, my case will be farly straightforward and I don’t mind doing all the form filling so it’s a way of saving myself anything up to £3000 but if you think you might need professional help (I think we all will by the end of it! Haha!) or don’t fancy taking on the application yourself then an agent is the way to go. There are several on here which come highly recommended, if you nose about on the Immigration board they crop up regularly.

All the best,

Thérèse :)

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

Cheers,
Will certainly look into it but to be honest I think we will prob go down the route of an agent (just like you said ease of mind). Its the mrs thats just trying to save a few £££ (bless her). Im in the mind of its such a big step and theres so much to think about on all fronts i would prefer the most of the hassle on someone else's lap.
Cheers for your reply I will still put it to her as no doubt the decision will be hers!!

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

It's a personal decision really. We decided not to use an agent (don't have visa yet, so time will tell if that was a good call!) as ours is straight forward. You still have to most of the homewrok yourself re finding certs, getting refs etc etc so we felt it was not worth it.
Saying that there are plenty of people who do use them and have their services invaluable.

Good luck

Sam

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

Ha Ha Oh bless at least she has you well trained !!
You're right , we just thought it was such an important move that we had to get it right so we decided we'd rather just pay the money and get it right first time. It paid off , so we got something right !!!!
Good luck with whatever your good lady decides !!! ;)
M J

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

beware of unregistered agent.

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

We had a straightforward case so didn't use an agent. I did lots of research and reading up on here and on the immi.gov.au website and asked the odd question on here if there was anything I was unsure of. (Lots of very knowledgable and helpful people on here for which I was very grateful). We started the process in January and our visas were granted in October so it all worked out fine. I did spend 10 months worrying that I might have missed something vital though, so an agent might have given me more piece of mind

Good luck with your application whichever route you choose

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

This was discussed in length quite a bit only last week:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=502387 (Including a poll)

The response I gave there was:

I have voted: No - do it yourself. But - That was the decision I made after initial research.

I've done myself based on:

• It's a simple application, only involving 2 people.
• I don't mind doing the paper work and I am not put off by it.
• I trust myself to do a decent job.
• We don't have bags of savings or equity, so the additional $1.5k+ will be put to better use elsewhere.
• Our's is a sponsored visa, so (so I believe), if we get knocked-back, we can appeal.
• This website, if your prepared to plough though it all is great.
• People with agents still seem to end up on here asking questions anyway.
• I wanted to be in control and know exactly what was happening, and saw the the use of an agent as an unnecessary 3rd party, who I didn't think could do anything quicker than I could, if anything, they could drag their heals and slow the process down.

Use an agent if:

• You have a really complicated case.
• Look at the paper work and just go blank or don't know where to start.
• Are not organised.
• Are not put off by the extra cost.
• Want 'peace of mind' - agents guarantee the accuracy of applications (so I believe).

Of course another option is to use an agent to do an initial assessment for you and help set you off in the right direction...
The hardest thing is breaking the ice. Do that, and get stuck in, and it's not as hard as it all seems...
(of course, we are still waiting for a visa to be granted, and may not have done as good a job as we think!)
I hope you make the decision that best suits you and have a successful application.

(PS - There's a SEARCH button at the top! ;))

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

We did ours all ourself and ours was by no means easy 4 kids, non migrating child, removal of PR from mrs kids ex etc etc......But we did the research and anticipated all the questions that might be asked.

Check out some of our posts........if you dnt feel like trawling through it all just drop me a PM if you want any help or advice.

Good luck and just ask ask and ask away on here this place is a great wealth of knowledge.

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

Thankyou very much for your advice and such a good post ( made it so easy for us to make up our mind) i've just finished reading through all of the posts that were on the thread that you sent me. Have decided that we will use an agent even though our case is straight forward really just for ease of mind.
Once again thankyou,
Ian

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

HI ,
We did our own, simple enough, all the info you need is on the Government wesite and you can find all the criteria online too.
When we went to an expo all the agents made us feel as if we wouldn't be able to do it alone, but we did the skills assessment and visa alone and passed ....saved about £2000!:rofl:

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

We rang several agents when we first thought about migrating but nobody was interested because my hubby had to do the RPL. We decided to do the RPL ourselves and if it passed, we'd go on to the next step. Well it passed with flying colours, even got the extra points for MODL. The next step was to get the extra points we needed for the 175 visa, hubby sat the IELTS and passed. In the meantime, and to be on the safe side, I applied on-line to Perth and SA for regional sponsorship (no fee) and got approval for both, again without any help. That's how we ended up applying using the on-line visa facility without a migration agent - all this because the agents we rang initially didn't want to know. The on-line visa was quite straightforward and for things i didn't know, i just asked people on here. To be honest, if we'd had a better response when we first approached the migration agents we probably would've gone through them, but having done everything else ourselves, it just seemed daft for us not to do the visa application. As other people have said, only do it yourself if you're confident, organised and have the time to do it.

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

Hello!:)
I am a housewife/mother of 3 young children & have not had any mindblowing education for a number of years & I researched & completed our General skilled Migration application on my own!
My husband considered paying an Agent so I said I'll do it & you can pay me instead!!
I completed the application back in June 07 & we went for our medicals in Dec07 & are now waiting for our visa.
I spent a number of hours on the internet printing out forms & filling them in but it has all paid off. I didn't know about this site till today & i'm sure if I had I would have been able to get answers to any questions I may have had from these lovely people here.
If I can do it you can do it :thumbsup:

Good luck with whatever you decide:)

Re: Agent or do it yourself??
 

We did it on our own.

WHich worked out fine... however, because of the long waits involved, and the 1 chance type of system, and no feedback as to your performance, its not something i would recommend unless you as , dilligent, head strong, pig faced ,stong willed ,balls of steel determined and reptilliously skinned as my dear wife :)