Are Registered Migration Agents Worth It?

[bensdad]

thanks for removing my opinions really appreciated!!!! 2 replies both removed by moderators

[SOMV]

Gill and all of you may all want to punch me after I have said this but I thought I'd best stick may neck out and say it anyway:

 

DIAC emails to agents DO occasionally go missing and, worse of all, a case officer NEVER, at least in my experience, notifies an agent if an email to an agent has bounced back.

 

Strangely enough, there was a period of this happening last year, when new visas were introduced and then DIAC received an unprecedented number of last minute lodgments and had, as we then heard, literally a room full of applications that were awaiting processing. I think there were 2 or 3 grants in our office that we honestly did not receive and that we only found out about once we had chased the relevant case officer.

 

We had our IT staff searching around our system to see why the grants had not been delivered to our email boxes (in case an email had been deleted accidentally or had gone into a spam folder) and the IT staff were not able to find the emails.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending the agent described above - he or she should have been chasing the application up if there was a significant period of silence. Had he or she emailed the case officer to see what the hold up is, he/she would have found out that in fact the visa had already been granted.

 

But I did want to say that it has been known to happen and that a case officer will definitely not let an agent know about bounced emails. Again though, I would not blame case officers here, the DIAC IT system may not allow them to receive bounced email notifications.

 

But the solution is simple: if you haven't heard anything for a while (and this does not mean a day or two), don't be afraid to send a short and sweet email to DIAC to find out if there is anything they may be waiting for.

 

Cheers

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Veronika

 

Having been given by their Agent to understand on Wednesday that their visa had been granted at the beginning of May, the couple discovered yesterday morning - direct from the ASPC - that their visa was actually refused.

 

The Agent has been trying to adopt the ostrich position today, but he has now been confronted with the hard evidence, supplied by the CO at the ASPC.

 

He is now running around panicking, bleating that Australia House allegedly told him on Wednesday that the visa had been granted.

 

According to him,(before he saw the evidence) he e-mailed the ASPC straightaway on hearing this, requesting a copy of the Grant letter. He has claimed - in an e-mail - that the ASPC sent him a recipt for his e-mail and that he is now awaiting a copy of the Grant letter.

 

Which is not true because the CO has confirmed that this joker did try to contact the CO, but by then the CO was in possession of Form 956 and therefore told him that the ASPC could not discuss the matter any further with him.

 

We are waiting to see what his next move will be.

 

Best wishes

 

Gill

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi All

 

This saga continues.

 

The unfortunate applicants made another visa application very promptly and the visa has now been granted. It has cost them another £1,000 on top of the original DIAC fee and the fees they wasted on the Registered Migration Agent and the unregistered assistant elsewhere in the UK to whom he delegated their work. However the new visa is obviously a huge leap forward.

 

Neither the RMA or his unregistered assistant have even apologised for their actions. No apology, no offer of a refund, not even any enquiry to find out whether their erstwhile clients are OK.

 

The MARA has no organised system & machinery for rescuing the victims of some of its members.

 

The solution is litigation against the RMA, frankly, in the Small Claims Court. That coupled with complaints to the relevant Trading Standards Officers and possibly the Advertising Standards Authority as well since all this has happened in the UK.

 

Complaining to the MARA might or might not get the culprit's knuckles rapped and it might even result in them fining him, but they cannot order him to pay recompense to his clients and I have never heard of that happening except in cases where the RMA has had the decency to make good out of his own volition alone.

 

Yet that is what these people are required to have Professional Indemnity insurance for. The PI policy is not supposed to be an ornament.

 

I invite the boss of the MARA to join Poms in Oz, respond to this thread and present a convincing case - if there is one - to explain why anybody should entrust their visa application to a Registered Migration Agent with a practising address in the United Kingdom.

 

Best wishes

 

Gill

[Guest Pinhead]

Gill

Any chance that the threat of legal action & reporting to MARA will force them to offer compensation?

[Lanky Lad]

Hi All

 

Please forgive my rant, but....

 

 

 

Grrrrrrr.

 

Gill

 

 

 

As a computer freek and web designer......... ( and a dam nice person to boot)

 

A word in weak defence of the agent....... very, very, very weak defence.

 

And I say this cos it happened to us this very weak.

Our agent in Sydney sent email advising CO seeking AOS.

It bounsed back to agent as Gill describes, he re-sent it and ONLY because I check Spam emails also.....found it in with those informative adds for little blue pills and nice expensive watches..amongst other things not to be mentioned before 10pm.

 

My computer email checker looks for multiple links in the message and bins um...

So, it may just be possible that it went in the SPAM bozx an dthe agent et al , do not, did not check and just delete.

 

To defeat my own explanation, an organisation worth its salt would know about Spam and posible mis-placement by the system and check it. ...Like wot I do.

 

L.L.

 

 

PS, As a confirmed fan of GP.... can we all write to No 10 and suggest her work deserves an OBE cos she is On the Ball Everytime

[Guest Jamie Smith]

Hi all

 

The remedies open to MARA after a complaint is upheld include directives to the agent to undertake training courses in file management, ethics etc, or participation in the agent mentoring programme, and then stepping up to temporary or permanent suspension of registration as an agent.

 

The investigation process might take a full year or so due to the elaborate lengths MARA go to to ensure there is a fair hearing, often involving a fair time allowed to give an explanation about documents provided or allegations made, the client's replies to the agent's reply, the agent's reply to the client's reply to the agent's reply, etc, and all of this is by writing to create a proper legal record in case the resulting decision is challenged in a court somewhere. There's one of these going on now with MARA trying to end an agent's registration and the agent suing MARA to try and head that off.

 

But it does sound like a complaint should be made to the MARA. In the investigation MARA would then be looking at the agents behaviour including what steps were taken by the agent to offer redress to the client.

 

The more troubling part for me is the misrepresentation about communication with DIAC and whether or not a visa had been granted or the agent ever spoke with DIAC and was told what they now say. Up until that point it would appear to be only an example of very poor administration of the case by the agent, but now it appears to involve deliberate misrepresentation and the industry does not need dishonest people.

 

In those circumstances MARA are likely to sanction the agent with deregistration for a good period of time and enforced participation in various training courses before the agent could reeneter the profession - after having had to resit the exam i if they let their actual registration lapse. Remembering that the full cost of being registered each year amounts to about $8,000 with no income, most suspended agents move to to other things.