Checking a migration consultant before you pay

A family in Thrissur told us last month that they had paid a registration fee to a consultancy that closed its office before the first document was filed. It is not a rare story. This is the list we give to anyone who asks how to check a consultant, including us.

Check the company, not the website

Every Indian private limited company has a Corporate Identification Number, and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs lists all of them, with the date of incorporation, the registered office and the directors. Ask for the CIN. Look it up. A company that has existed for three months is not disqualified, but it should say so rather than claim fifteen years.

Ours is on our About page and in the footer.

Check the regulator, and understand who regulates what

Canada is the strict one. Paid advice on Canadian immigration may only be given by a consultant registered with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, or a Canadian lawyer, wherever in the world they sit. The College's public register is searchable by name.

Australia's regulator, MARA, and the UK's, the OISC, regulate agents inside those countries. Neither registers consultancies based in India, so a Kerala firm cannot hold either registration, and one that displays either badge is displaying something it does not have.

The honest answers from a Kerala consultancy are a CICC number, "in progress", or "none". Ours is in progress; the number will be published when it is granted.

Get the fee in writing before the assessment, not after

A written quote should name the visa, list what is included and what is not, set out the payment schedule by stage, and state the refund terms. Government fees should be listed separately, because they are paid to governments and cannot be discounted or bundled.

If the fee is only available after you have paid something, you have already paid for the quote.

Ask who will do the work

A name, a role, a way to reach them. Migration files take a year or more, and the person who sold it to you is often not the person who prepares it. Ask to meet the second person.

Listen for the promises that end the conversation

• "Guaranteed visa." No consultant decides a visa. A government does.
• "Guaranteed job offer." Employers hire; consultants do not. An offer that arrives with a fee attached to it is the most common fraud in this industry.
• "You qualify" before anyone has seen your documents or test results.
• "Ninety-something percent success rate" with no numerator, no denominator and no period. Ask for all three. If they cannot be produced, the number was invented.
• "Pay today, the intake closes tomorrow." Government programmes publish their dates. Urgency you cannot verify is urgency that serves the seller.

What a good first meeting looks like

You describe your education, work, English and family. The consultant runs the real points test, tells you which routes are open and which are closed, and tells you the closed ones plainly. You leave with a number, the gap to the pass mark, and the one or two things that would change it. Nothing is owed.

That is what our free assessment does, in four minutes, without a name or a phone number until the end. If it says you do not qualify, it says so. We would rather lose the fee than take it for a file that cannot succeed.

Keep the paper

Whatever you decide, keep every quote, receipt and message. If a dispute ever reaches a consumer forum or a regulator, the written record is the case, and the consultancy that was reluctant to put things in writing was reluctant for a reason.