"I am writing this review with the hope that it may be helpful for anyone else considering enlisting the services of AY&J specifically for a Standard Visitor Visa to the UK.
I am British and my partner is not. We both live in his home country, and we enlisted the services of AY&J Solicitors to help us reapply for a Visitor Visa for my partner to visit the UK after one failed application. The original application was denied not for a specific reason but because we did not provide enough evidence and information, and we therefore went to AY&J with the hopes of having guidance in navigating the opaque visa application process. Communication with AY&J was very smooth, everyone was responsive to our emails and the process was clear. However, we were ultimately unsuccessful in obtaining the visa. Although I do not hold AY&J accountable for the visa outcome, on reflection I wish that they had advised us differently and this is the reason for my review.
Our visa application made with the support of AY&J was denied due to the fact we did not provide sufficient information in the category related to financial records. We were aware that this may be an issue before making our application, but we were advised to go ahead and make the visa application under the impression that we had provided enough other supporting evidence to mitigate this. The visa was ultimately rejected due to lack of sufficient financial information. Although my partner’s financial situation is sound, systems in his home country (a cash based economy) mean that he didn’t have all the paper evidence of his finances at the time of making the application, and the UK visa application typically requires 6 months of financial records. If we had been advised to delay making our application for 6 months, we would have been able to ensure he had paper trails and provide 6 months of paperwork of his financial records and I believe we may have had our visa accepted (although I can’t say this with certainty).
We went ahead and submitted our application, which was denied as we didn’t have 6 months of paper trails of my partner’s savings and income. As a firm specialized in visa applications, I would have expected AY&J to advise us to withhold our application until we had 6 months of financial documents. We were instead under the impression that everything else we provided was sufficient to mitigate this. If we had been advised to delay or postpone our visa application, AY&J would not have collected their fee from us, which is something I am left wondering about. Overall, it was an expensive process, we were denied the visa but also each denial makes obtaining a future visa harder. I am left wishing we had been advised not to submit at the time we did so that we could have made a stronger application, and I question whether we were encouraged to supply without all the necessary paperwork as this ensured AY&J their fee.
Therefore my overall review and advice is that although AY&J were supportive and communicative, I feel disappointed that we were advised to go ahead and submit a visa application without sufficient documentation, which we could have easily gathered if we were advised to wait 6 months in order to obtain this. For others considering using AY&J to apply to a Visitor Visa for the UK, I hope this review is helpful."