[brookied]

Hi All,
Well after what seems like an age myself and mrs brookied have decided that we shall move to NZ in mid 2008.

I did have a job offer with Brother but that has fallen through over time scales but we have decided to go in any case and try to find another job.

Questions are coming.
I have found a compnay called Golden Sands Migration (www.goldensandsmigration.co.nz or www.livenz.co.nz )
They will pretty much look after all paper work to get us into NZ. The cost of this runs to about 3,500Stg which is no small chunk of change. So has anybody delt with these guys or anybody like them that take care of all the details for you.

Thanks
Darren

[SarahEDH]

Hello Brookied, and welcome to the forum.

I'm not able to address your questions re: agencies, as I did my own paperwork (same for most everybody who posts here). The NZ Immigration forms are long and may seem daunting to complete on your own, but there are lots of helpful folks here who can either answer your questions or help you do a forum search to find previous threads. (See the blue bar menu up near the top to pull down the search field and then enter the names of the companies you're asking about. Try a general search on "agencies" as well).

Please consider doing the paperwork yourself before paying agency fees. Unless your situation is very complex, there's little value-add in engaging them -- they will just fill out forms with your personal information that you have to collect (they won't gather the data for you), so . . . you might as well fill in the forms yourself and save the $$.

Hope this helps. Best wishes with your first steps in the process --

Sarah

[caz]

I agree with Sarah, the forms are long but once your EOI is completed that is the bulk of the forms, we applied in Jan and got our blue stickers in June with not real problems. I'd sooner spend the money on myself rather than an agency:cool: Good luck hope all goes well.

[Jennieandmike]

Hi , I have read in other threads that most people here do the work them selves, but we used Golden sands and have found them to be fantastic. Yes it is alot of money, but i think we used them for peace of mind and to reduce the stress of the whole process (which they have). Glen and his wife Shells have been fantastic at generally being at our beck and call!! They managed to find my partner a job, sort out a work visa I know this is possible to do with out an agent but i treally has been stress free. 100% recommend

[wiki]

Thinking of what £3,500 would buy you in NZ .... it's an easy option for me and that's "do it yourself".

You still have to come up with all the info for the forms yourself - an agent just tells you where to dot each i and cross each t and 99% of that info you can find on this forum through the search facility, or you can ask a fresh question yourself -- £3,500 is a huge amount of money for something pretty straightforward once you get your head down.

If you did need an agency help to secure a job, then maybe a fee would be appropriate, but the office of fair trading in NZ has come down quite hard on job-promise agencies that didn't deliver, so just be wary of what you sign up to.

Good luck with the whole process, no matter how you do it

[brookied]

Hi All thanks for the replies, As it happens i am 50% through the application in any case. completing that now and moving next year would be OK?

[zardell]

Hi All thanks for the replies, As it happens i am 50% through the application in any case. completing that now and moving next year would be OK?



Quick answer - yes !!

Don't know what category you are applying through, our PR was granted through the Skilled Migrant Category, but anything that confuses or concerns you - just ask.

Julie

xx

[brookied]

pretty much both of us fall under skilled migrants, I have a vast IT background and work as a Call Center manager and Call center rescue. Jodi(wife) is a care assistant in a special needs home. At least thats my understanding.

[Silverwing86]

Another option you might consider if you really want to work with an agency is opting for a NZ based one. We did this, also for peace of mind more than anything else, and were extremely satisfied with their help and support.

We had a chance to meet with them when we were in NZ on our recce trip in 2005 and that helped a lot. In hindsight we're very glad we did go with them since we ended up having some medical issues that made our application rather problematic.

They were extremely supportive, very helpful/useful in the contacts with INZ, and we found it very comforting to be able to contact them anytime along the way, whether it was just for a chat (when we were feeling low/losing confidence in our application), or for specific questions. They were always available to us and always took plenty of time in their communications with us (many loooooong phone conversations), no rushing or 'fobbing off' of any kind.

One of the great things IMO is that they work with a fixed tariff and on a 'no cure - no pay' basis. You pay half up front, and the final payment only if and when PR is secured. Total cost for our application was NZ$ 2800. They also offer Job Search options separately, on the same basis.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention them here and I wouldn't want to break any rules, but if you'd like to know more, PM me and I'll send you their contact info.

But, as stated before, if your application is pretty straightforward it's very doable to just go ahead with it yourself with all the wonderful help and support you can gain from this great forum !

Silver

[anna_c]

Unless you have a particularly complicated case, I'd think of using an agent as like hiring a secretary. What they're doing in most cases is administrative - form filling, sorting information etc. In other words, time consuming, but not particularly difficult.

If you're time is worth enough to you, and you have the money, then you may want to do that. For a lot of people (myself included) it isn't. But I'd advise you to look at it as a time saver, not something that's going to make a great difference to the final outcome.

And then there's making sure the agent you use is a good one, there have been cases of incompetence through to outright fraud, but I can't really help you there.