katana

Do we need to use an agent?How many of you have done the process on your own & gained a visa?Or is it worth the money to get an agent?I have plenty of time to do all the paperwork & being Brits living in France our only option would be online agents.Any advice greatly received & noted good or bad!

mary1967

Depends if it's straight forward or not. We didn't use an agent, but ours was straight forward and the online facility made it easy, although it is extremely time consuming (not got the visa yet though!!).

benlast

I reckon the answer to this perennial question depends on whether you're time poor or cash poor. Of course, you could be both...

If you're short on time, then an agent will solve all those niggly little questions... how many member of whose families need details entering on the form? How do you put down an ETA as a response to the "have you been to Australia" question? Can you submit before you actually get your IELTS results and if so, how? An agent can sort all that for you by editing your online application or responding to your questions with accurate information. If you choose to pay.

If you're short on money, then this and other forums have huge amounts of information on how people have completed the forms. Of course, you have to search for it, and it's not always accurate and it may be out of date. But it'll save you the agent fee, which is not a trivial amount of money.

Katana: if you're using an online agent, get quotes from those in Oz. I found them to be significantly cheaper than those based in the UK.

This is all, of course, my subjective and personal opinion
Cheers
Ben

mary1967

Can't comment about the cost of agents in Oz compared to Uk, but i agree with everything else!

aglassofwinehelps

And me. I thought that the more popular agents were generally office based both in the UK and Oz. Thinking back to quotes we had they were mostly comparable and one was most definitely UK based only but had been recommended.

If you have the time, patience and you have a straight forward case then as Ben said, it is do-able. We were time poor and although our app was very straightforward, OH in the job 20 years with one employer, no children out of the relationship etc, we were happy to use an agent. They have until now done their job, no visa yet but fingers crossed. If I could choose again I wouldn't choose them but that's because my appointed agent suddenly branched away from the main company and I was left with a company I wouldn't have necessarily chosen so choose carefully if you decide to go down the agent route.

tawkins1

I did our application on my tod! (husband as useful as a chocolate tea pot!)
Did all the research & filled in endless amount of paperwork but it was all worth it as we were granted our visa in Feb!
Ours was a straight forward application so felt we didn't need an agent. I was very proud of myself when we got it

tony Beaven

Hi Katana

Our application was not straight forward so we used an agent who was superb and is australian based living just outside Brisbane

Helen helped us at every stage and is a technical genius, her email address is [email protected]

we now live in Deagon on the northside of Brissy and have been in Austrlia Since June 07 alli cansay is it's great

kindest regards Tony Beaven:

shabee

I did all our application myself. It was quite straight forward. Time will tell if all is fine as we are still waiting for the visa grant.
I did it with a lot of help from the peeps on here and I am very gratefull to them.
Good luck

Shabee
x

trevamather

I agree totally...I did our paper based application myself, took weeks of work but being on here proved invaluable for help. Just ask and people will help.

kevncarlz

personally i would say yes (carly would say no but she's impatient and hormonal lol) because ours is'nt straightforward, due to the defacto relationship and the fact that we are expecting another baby soon. upto now i feel the advise we've been given is very good and any queries we've had have been answered very quickly. we are using http://www.visabureau.com
if your worried about the financial side of it they use a three stage payment plan so you dont have to find all the money straight away
because they are on the registered migration agents list they are not allowed to take on a case if they dont think you have a chance of being granted a visa, so before you choose an agent always worth checking this first .
http://www.themara.com.au
hope this helps
kev

Eammon

Hi

We're also using Visa Bureau and although we are still very early in the process (just about to submit our paper skills assessment), they have been great so far. Really helpful and our caseworker answers all of our questions really quickly - she has been brill at advising us on what we need to put in our assessment.

I think whether you use an agent or not is a personal choice. Many people are fine with putting all of the paperwork together, but I personally want (need!) the reassurance that I am including everything that I need to.

Good luck with it all

Denise

kevncarlz

who's your case worker? mines karen stitson.

Eammon

Our case worker is Jackie Burton - How far are you into the process and what Visa are you applying for?

kevncarlz

we are applying for skilled independant -subclass 175.
visa application was lodged at the start of this month
just got to play the waiting game now
how are you coming on with yours?

John Barmby

Our visa was pretty straight forward skilled 136 visa and we did it without the help of an agent. If you read all the info it's not too bad (just loads of paperwork). Most of the questions are answered somewhere on this site as there are many many knowledgeable people here and can answer most questions through personal experience.

Good luck !