Visa First claims that it was started in 2003. Visa First has offices in 16 countries on their Contact Us page and state that they organize more than 600,000 visas every year for more than 200 countries. They also state that they have a “99.7% visa approval success rate” with over 1 million clients worldwide. This is a bold statement to make, so let's take a closer look and see how true this is. We will be looking predominantly at Canadian immigration and visa services.
 

At first look, the Visa First website is pretty simple, with a clean design and is easy to use and navigate around. Under Canada Visa, it states that the offer Working Holiday Visas and more, nut when you click on more it reveals that they essentially only offer 2 visas for Canada. There is sufficient information regarding requirements and price of the visa, with a dedicated page for eligibility and they also offer group bookings. The website is secure and has detailed terms and conditions and privacy policy in the footer. When looking for accreditation, we managed to find affiliations, under the partnerships link in the footer, with the Australian government, with the name of one MARA agent and their registration number however no mention of any affiliation with the Canadian government, the ICCRC or any registered RCICs. They also claim to have offices in more than 40 countries which is in contradiction to their previous listing of 17 offices in 16 countries on their Contact Us page. There is also a dedicated testimonial page however we do not take this too seriously and neither should you. Just one complaint can be made, is that their blog is not updated more than once a month and was last updated on April 2019. Visa First seems to focus mostly on providing the following services for visas to over 45 countries, mainly:

• Tourist Visas;
• Business Visas;
• Work Visas;
• Green Cards;
• Student Visas; and
• Working Holiday Visas

 Visa First main clients come from Ireland. These clients are offered a variety of immigration services. Visa First also appears to offer a variety of alternative services as well. We did try to find authorized representatives specifically for Canadian immigration, but we could not find any mention of RCICs.

 

We did notice that on the site’s footer Visa First mentions awards they have received. Like the:

• Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Award;
• Deloitte Best Managed Company; and
• European Business Award

This seems great until we noticed the dates that these were awarded. The Ernst award was given nearly ten years ago. The Deloitte award, awarded in 2012, was the most recent. Whether the company has changed its policy or a change in management has occurred, it is hard to tell why no recent awards have been given to Visa First or why the site has not been updated to the more recent awards.

The website does not provide any links to their social media account, but we did find that they have a Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin account. The site has a very large number of reviews on their site, which is pretty standard practice for many companies. The customer reviews are positive and seem to revolve around the idea that their staff is professional and efficient. We did find some complaints online about the company on an Australian complaint board. Below are some of the issues customers had. Their Facebook page has a modest following of 51,238. It appears that the news they post on their website blog is the same as what they post on Facebook. They do not post regularly as the last post is dated to Jul 15. It seems that the review option on Visa First has not been enabled, so we cannot tell whether customers have had either a positive or negative experience with them. In comparison, their Twitter account has a very small following of only 1,148, since the account was created in 2008, which could be due to the minimal amount of tweets. When we first opened up their account, we were greeted by multiple posts about social media analytics, which had nothing to do with immigration. For such a large company, Visa First seems to have a very small professional staff, with only 28 employees on their LinkedIn account.
 

We did find some things that make Visa First seem very professional. The problems come from certain information that is posted incorrectly on multiple sites, like their awards, how many countries they supply visas to and how many branches they operate. Although they have a sizeable following on Facebook, their posting seemed to stop abruptly a few months back. We did find some reviews that did not show Visa First as highly professional, which is worrying. We are not sure how far we can trust reviews that Visa First has on its own website since they disabled the review option on their Facebook account. The fact that there was no mention of RCICs, authorized representatives or legal immigration lawyers for Canadian immigration impacts on the company’s professionalism. It also seems that most paperwork is sent to embassies rather than sending it to the relevant government institutions. We believe that their business standards may have fallen since 2013 and it is concerning that there is no affiliation with the Canadian government or immigration mentioned on the website. As always, please be careful when hiring the services of any immigration agency or passport companies that promise visas and instant solutions. Have you had any experience with this Visa First? Please leave a review below. Tell us your story!