You are asking this question to a biased sample set..
Most people who do not want to use consultants are on this forum and most people who use consultants do not have to be on this forum..
Having said that, there is plenty of good to excellent information on this forum with which you can easily complete the application on your own.. I truly feel things are explained well by CIC and if you have doubts, people here will help you.. I have lived in the US for more than 12 years and have traveled to 3 other countries and as much as I can, have always done my visa/immigration paperwork myself...
But, I have a consultant this time around. Why? In one word, Convenience
1. At this stage of my life, I do not have the mental bandwidth any more to follow each letter to the dot
2. Information is just a phone call away
3. Since consultants have done this hundreds of times, there is a lower probability of them making a mistake or missing something out
I still spend a lot of time on this forum (more recently since the downward trend) as there is excellent info here that I use to supplement info from my consultant.. I am going to apply for Canada PR once in my life, I want to be as thorough as I can..
I certainly agree with this. Hiring a Consultant will not give you any advantage compared to others when it comes to the final PR decision. Also, seniors on this forum are super helpful and will probably be happy to reply most of your questions. I would like to take the opportunity to thank them.
However, the process is long and although people say it's easy, I have a different opinion. I am doing a HR job and used to deal with admin matters. As said above, this is a one in a lifetime process and I want to make sure I prepared it as well as I can.
I will share what is my very own experience, applying to permanent residence.
I created a first EE profile and was rejected. I then decided to look for a Consultant to assist my partner and I in the process. Basically for my case, I pay the Consultant for information and advice only, but so far, I am very happy with the service. Since then, I received ITA and now going to submit e-APR in the coming days.
The stressful part was to be able to chose a Consultant I could trust. I used to work in Sales before and I know too much what the job is and what some sales people do after you forward the last part of the payment. I contacted several Consultants and for my specific case, I received different suggestions and advices regarding to how to proceed. I then did my own research and found out that what one of them said, made much more sense, doing this job for a while; so I hired her.
By contract, you pay the Consultant for a certain amount of hours. She has not counted the hours and I must say we are soliciting her a lot on various questions (after all, we paid for a service). I live in Japan and she traveled here on her holidays; she booked an appointment with us to discuss how things go.
The service is not cheap. Again, perhaps this is just me who prefer to get information from various sources before submitting anything to IRCC. Also I am new to immigration processes and am "concerned" by nature, which to be honest served me well so far. I guess hiring a Consultant made sense for me; it may not for someone else, I do not know.
I do not want to make any promotion on this forum so will not mention the agent's contact here, but let me know if you want her contacts, I'd be happy to recommend her.
Good luck with your applciation!
