hi


139 skilled area designated sponsored....couldn't beleive how quick!!!!!Now if only the house was sold!!!!

LOL

Cheers

scott

I am looking for a UK based one. I know OE Visas have offices here. Emailed them 2 days ago about my options but havent heard anything yet.
Do they charge an initial consultation fee or is the 1st one free.

I am thinking of going with either Ian Harrop or OE Visas, what does everyone think of these two or would they recommend another?

We went with Ian Harrop, Burford. Got our visas after only 8 months (hubby is a goldsmith). He also managed to get my sister and family a visa too.

Brill service and very professional. Worth the money for us - emigrating in Nov this year- whey hey...........

Cheers

Jules

OE charge around £45.00 but its free if you go ahead!!!!LOL

They are dead cool and gave us tons of info on phone and we briefly outlined our case......Phone them at Edinburgh..Really helpful..i do know they have the odd e mail prob!!

Good luck

Scott

Hi again,
did you send your medicals and police check with the application, we are going stni and have sent everything together hoping that we will get a result a bit quicker,
cheers hch.

Amongst all the euphoria about agents, and probably not for those who have a complicated application, there are many of us who have had very negative experiences with some agents!

For a straightforward application with no real problems, using an agent can hold things up and can also cost a lot of money.

Homework, especially on this forum, can save a lot of heartburn!

As Rog knows I agree totally with him.Personal feeling is that at the end of the day you , the applicant, has to gather all the paper work together,get references ,get the certified copies etc etc and forword all of this to the agent who looks over it and pops it in the post to Dimia.No agent can get you a visa faster -if they could then everyone would use that select few agents.

I can see the point of using an agent in the case of
a)certain skills that may need more work to get the assesment i.e TRA ,ACS etc
and b)cases where you *know* there may be complications.
There is enough information on this site to cover every single type of application if you research fora few hours/days.And if you cant find the info then ask.Also the first thing you should do is read the basic FAQ at the top of this forum by PTLABS.

echo'ing Rogs point many of us have had very negative experiences with agents.

Is that not fairly standard timeline for that kind of application. As someone else said, agents cannot speed up your application. If your application is particularly messy or complicated, they may be able to give advice.

But for most standard applications, they are not necessary. They are an extra layer between you and the DIMIA, and delay applications.

Way back at the start of our application process (April/May 2003) we were investigating agents, because we assumed that was the way to go. But after numerous calls to agents who could not explain what value they could add to our application, we came to the conclusion that we'd save the few thousand and do it ourselves. One agent got particularly upset when I kept asking exactly what it was he could do for us, he exclaimed 'I've never had to justify the service I provide before!'. That was the clincher, he couldn't justify his service or cost for our case.

As has been said, the real donkey work in the application is getting all your references, assessments and details together. The agent can't do this for you. If you are going to go to all that effort, why not go the last mile and do the research, form checking yourself. Its not as time consuming as getting references, skills assessments etc.

A bit of research, using sites like this and the immi.gov.au site, and being methodical can save a few thousand,

Cheers,
JTL

Depends how you look at it.

For us, it was absolutely critical to get everything right first time. If anything had been wrong or missing or needing re-submitting, we would never have passed all the milestones in time. Therefore we used an agent as an intermediary, not only to find out more quickly exactly what we needed to gather together, but more importantly to submit documents etc to as a trial run in order to cut down the feedback time when we got things not quite right. Obviously this was far quicker than submitting stuff to DIMIA/ACS/whoever in Oz, so in that sense the agent did speed things up.

Essentially we were paying someone else (more experienced) to hold our hands and proof-read every step of the way, as a mental insurance policy. In our time-critical position we felt this was important; not everyone is in that position.

Hi Gethy,

I'm a CIPFA accountant and didn't use an agent - did it all myself!

Why do you think you'll have problems due to CIPFA?

I had no problem due to the CIPFA qualification, though I did have a family crisis while the application was going through and had a lot of moral support both from the immigration forum and a couple of agents - JAJ and Alan Collett in particular were really helpful. In the end I worked out what I needed to do and the visa aplication went through with no problem. (Skilled Designated Area Sponsored class 139.)

I think if you are under time pressure, your situation is complicated or you're applying under a less common visa category you really need an agent to ensure you've covered everything, but if you're methodical and do your homework it should be possible to do your own application if it's straighforward.

It also depends on how confident you feel that you understand what you need to do- there's always people on forums who will advise but you need to check what we say as we are not experts, just experienced!

You can PM me if you want to discuss outside the forum.

Good luck,

Elaine M

Ok. How about this statement:

"Agents cannot speed up your application, but they can prevent delays.

But they can also create delays."

Hows that?

Luckily we were able to do the whole application process from getting ACS assessment through to visas without ever getting anything sent back, or queried. I understand that we were probably lucky, and some peoples applications are more complicated, but our situation wasn't exactly straightforward either, but the info is all there on the immi website (we didn't even know about the British expats website during the process, this would have been a godsend).

If you've got spare money, and you know a good agent, and you want peace of mind, then by all means use an agent. Just don't think they are going to take any of the donkey work out of it. YOU still have to get all the docs and fill in all the forms. The agent will just charge you a couple of thousand to make sure you have done it right,

Cheers,
JTL

Thanks everyone for posting response's, the comments have given us a small insight into peoples dealings with agents and it will help us to decide either way.

Elaine I have PM'd you.

Cheers All

I'll go with all that!

pockygoes

couldn't agree with you more, we used Ian Harrop no problems what so ever, would recommend him to anyone who wants to get a visa.

Good luck

HK

Agreed. I'm happy to have saved a couple of thousand pounds not using an agent, which I can put towards a house in Oz, and your happy your agent was value for money.

We're both happy

Cheers,
JTL

Just means I'll have the bigger house in Oz