Is Canadian Visa Expert a legitimate company or a scam?

Scam or not, what do you get for paying them $467? You can apply for study permits yourself online, there's an official eligibility check page, and the cost of the visa is C$150.

Even if it's not a scam, all the company will do is fill out these same forms, they cannot guarantee that you will actually get the visa.

Lots of complaints about this private company. Charges for no work. At least one person lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and received a full refund.

http://www.bbb.org/kitchener/business-reviews/immigration-and-naturalization-consultants/canadian-visa-expert-in-richmond-hill-on-1297897/complaints

YES these guys are scammers. The following is directly copied from this link - http://www.scambook.com/company/view/98638/Canadian-Visa-Expert - there is also lots of peoples reviews on that site as well.

Under the copied quotations, I have written a safe and easy way to get you're visa, if you are interested.

• "Information about Canadian Visa Expert was first submitted to Scambook on Dec 09, 2012. Since then the page has accumulated 49 consumer complaints. On average users reported $858.38 of damages. Scambook's investigation team reached out to this company a total of 2 times, Scambook Investigators last contacted them on Feb 05, 2013."

If you would like to obtain a Visa for Canada, first complete an IEC application and then follow the steps after that. It may seem a little confusing, but just read everything and it will pay off. My girlfriend is from Sweden and completed all the steps for a working visa. After completing everything, the visa was accepted within 24 hours.

• Go to this site to start the process , it's Canadian Government run and 100 % legit. First you do the IEC application, wait for approval

  https://kompass-iec-eic.international.gc.ca/sign_in-connexion?id=102525412AS452154121

• Then you must go to the website below

  http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/work/permit.asp

• and click "Apply to work temporarily in Canada", under "Application Form", near the bottom.

Then just follow the steps and it's easy as that. :)

Should be around CAN$ 150

I'm from Nicaragua, I have a Nicaraguan passport, which means that I have to apply for many visas around the world, and let me tell you something, there is not any private company that can guarantee you will get any visa for any country, this is a governmental process, you can not simply pay some guys 500USD or 1000 USD and expect a visa to be on the way to your mailbox.

Some companies try to sell themselves as a service that will get you a visa no matter what and once you pay all they'll do is give you a list of steps to follow to apply for the visa, they can not do anything you can not do by simply going to the immigration website of any country you want to go to and apply for the visa right there following the steps you will find there.

I have a 10-year Canadian tourist visa and I applied for it on my own, I was an online process, and 1 physical interview.

It's interesting that the company only attempts to criticise scambook. Perhaps they can comment on the following links also:

• Complaints Board - 40+ complaints over 3 years.
• Canadian Visa Review - Investigation into site and "testimonials"
• incomplaints - Multiple complaints
• Facebook page - Dozens of complaints, thousands of followers

It's interesting that their address is 7030 Woodbine Ave #500, Markham which appears to be a virtual office:

RESERVE YOUR VIRTUAL ADDRESS AT 7030 WOODBINE AVE. MARKHAM, ON L3R 6G2 Just $115.00 Per Month

Rather a minimal footprint for their "legal team".

According to whois, the underlying company is PRONET Online Marketing GmbH based in Austria with management in Israel...

The company is also associated with the following domains:

• usafis.org - American Green Card DV Lottery Program Services
• usafis.email - can't reach. Presumably as above.
• natively.com - Language learning. Presumably the original domain of the company.
• ausfis.org - seems to be down. A link is available on britishexpats with 15 pages of complaints:

I thought I should share with you that a friend of mine in the UK who has recently received multiple phone calls claimed to be from AusFis. From their website, it states AUSFIS is an organization offers you the opportunity to participate in the Australian skill migration program where you may be eligible for a permanent visa to live and work in Australia (see http://www.ausfis.org/Home.aspx)

He said that the people who called him sounds like American and Indian. They called him a few times on Sunday morning which I found abit odd and said to him that he has enough points and they will get him a temp Working visa easily even though he is 42, not highly skilled and they wanted him to pay USD219 immediately to process his application.

It's definitely a scam. Check out the following review. They also expose this scam's owners:

Scaminator.com Canada Visa Expert Scam Review

"When you go through the Canadian Visa Expert website, everything seems to be in order and professional. However, when you dig deeper, you realize that there is a number of warning signs that indicate this company could actually scam you."

"As a result, this acquisition actually made MEMO Global the core of the CanadianVisaExpert scam, as it operates a huge call center with hundreds of Israeli agents that speak many different languages. The role of these agents, of course, is to convince customers to pay this scam more and more money."