In April 2017 me and my wife approached WWICS (World Wide Immigration Consultancy Services) office in Sharjah - UAE for our daughter's admission in a good Canadian university. Our first meeting was with Ms. Areeba Ansari, who gave a very rosy picture of her agency. She not only assured us of our daughter's admission in a Canadian university with a good scholarship, but also through her sweet talk, convinced us to go for their Canadian PR program, which she promised to be completed within 6 months from the application date. Seeing her enthusiasm and backed by her assurance, my wife became the primary applicant for their PR program. Very cleverly we were made to pay approx. Dhs. 11.5K for the two service packages in one shot, to avail their so-called on-going promotional discount at that time! Once complete payment was received by the agency, our sordid ordeal with WWICS began:
1. In the initial Counseling Report given to us by Ms. Areeba, mostly the fee structure was explained to us in detail. This was the only piece of hardcopy / soft copy report which we received from WWICS. We were not given any other reports such as Evaluation Report, CRS Valuation Report, etc... There was no proper step-by-step procedure, course of action or time-line provided to us in writing.
2. We are based in UAE since many years and our applications for both the service packages were submitted at WWICS Sharjah office. However, in our initial meeting with Ms. Areeba, we were not informed that all the correspondence, documentation, dealings / proceedings with Canadian authorities will be done from WWICS HO in India. If we were informed about this fact in advance, we would have never initiated our case with WWICS!
3. At a later stage, we did not even receive any information or email stating that our files will be handled by some other staff member and not Ms. Areeba, as she was only handling sales. We continued writing to her to which she neither had the courtesy to respond nor inform us that she is not handling our case anymore, Our both cases were then handed-over to Ms. Sily Mer in customer service department. As a result, replies to our initial queries went unanswered or were dragged into months.
4. WWICS never shared any username and password against our applications to be on-board their portal to check & follow the progress of our application by ourselves. We were not given proper information about the updated status on the progress of our case files.
5. Our daughter lost a major scholarship from one of her preferred Universities due to sheer carelessness of Ms. Silky Mer who was handling her file. Since the username & password were never shared with us and by the time she checked, the deadline to apply for the scholarship to York University had already gone!
6. The vital fact that, the age difference by 1 year for the primary applicant will reduce 1 point from the total CRS score was also not informed to us by Ms. Areeba. The initial overall score required from IELTS test was informed to us as 6.5 points, which was later changed to 7.5 points in each module. So my wife was made to write the IELTS test thrice, to achieve the desired score!
7. Only after 1.5 years of our contact with WWICS Sharjah office, we came to know that there was a Check List for Express Entry Application according to which all the documents were supposed to be submitted and also there was an Express Entry Application Form which was supposed to be filled-in and submitted at the initial stage itself! After many weeks of submitting all the documents as mentioned & required by WWICS, they came back to us for some more pending documents or corrections required.
8. The very detailed Express Entry Forms which we were given to us to be fill-up by hand could have been filled up online by us. However, hand written Express Entry Forms were submitted to WWICS staff, who filled it up online and then send it back to us for re-checking - unnecessarily wasting more time. Surprisingly, once we were also told that some forms are missing or incomplete and needed to be filled up in the native language (Hindi)!
9. WWICS office in Sharjah was just acting as a typing / documentation office and all our documents were being forwarded to their HO in India without even checking the same. In many other documents as well, false and vague information was filled up by WWICS HO staff and then sent back to us for our review and rectification.
10. In-spite of providing detailed personal history forms for my daughter & wife, wrong facts and information were filled up by their HO staff and we had to rectify and resend the forms again to them. Still both the forms came back to us for approval and signature with the wrong details.
11. Even after my repeated reminders and e-mails, I never received any reply for my question - How WWICS is helping us in finding suitable jobs in Canada? which was part of the service package offered to us. Mostly all the documentation was being done as a formality with zero work being done on the ground in reality.
12. One-sided and biased replies against our complains and concerns were given to us by their branch manager - Ms. Jyothi Kumari, as if we have done some grave mistake by approaching WWICS. She never took responsibility for the lapse of coordination and negligence of her staff.
13. Many times false information was provided to us such as - our application has already been applied online to Canada Government and at the same time when I asked them to show some proof of their claim, Ms. Jyothi said - "How can we submit your application without your signature & confirmation"!
14. Ms. Jyothi also did not like our e-mails to be marked c.c. to all the departments and HO of WWICS, as it showed total carelessness, un-professionalism and inefficiency of her team, which incurred so much damage to us in terms of opportunities, time and money.
15. There was severe Lack of coordination and communication between WWICS Sharjah staff and their HO staff in India, as well as with us. There was absolutely no transparency in their dealings, no proper and timely answers to our e-mails and it has been us only requesting all the meetings with their staff. - No initiative or proper feedback / update received from their staff in-spite of our repeated reminders and telephone calls.
Frankly speaking, ultimately we got sick and frustrated about the delays happening due to the lack of professionalism, miscommunication, wrong information & negligence received from WWICS agency and the casual manner in which both of our cases were handled. We believe WWICS has done more damage to us than good while handling both our cases. After suffering nearly two years none of the 2 service packages were delivered by WWICS. Finally our daughter went to Canadian university on her own merit, research and hard work and we applied for our Canadian PR through another internationally renowned immigration agency.
I am requesting all prospective immigrants - Please do not trust or engage with this pathetic & fraud immigration agency - WWICS, as it is a big scam company which will somehow swindle your hard earned money and deliver you nothing!!
WWICS Group customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.
