Visa Sidekick Consultation & Scheduled Phone Call Terms and Conditions
COMMON TERMS
The following are the common terms and conditions that apply to any and all consultation or phone call types that we have available for booking.
Individual consultation or phone call types may have additional terms specific to them. These will be specified at the end of this page, or on the booking page.
Payment
Where there is a fee payable for a consultation, the total amount must be paid in full at the commencement of the consultation.
You should have your bank card details readily available at the time of your scheduled call. You may use a different card to that for which you paid the booking fee.
In order to secure your appointment, you may be required to pay a $20 non-refundable administrative booking fee. This fee is an administrative fee only, so will not be held in our Trust Account.
Once your consultation has been booked, you will receive an email confirming the details of your appointment.
At times we may hand out promotional codes that, when applied, lower the total cost of the consultation. To redeem the offer the promotional code must be entered when filling in the booking details prior to payment and booking confirmation. The discount does not apply to the non-refundable booking fee. No further discounts will apply and discount codes cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer. Offers are available only for a limited time only and can end without notice.
We use Stripe to facilitate online payments through our website and booking system. All payment fees charged by Stripe are included in the overall cost of the consultation. Stripe may vault your card details in their records for making payments at a later date. When Stripe vaults your card details, we do not have access to the full card details, but we are able to charge the fee at the commencement of the consultation. You should refer to Stripe’s policies for more information on card vaults.
Consultation
At the time of your consultation, we will call you using the number you provided in your booking. You may like to provide an alternate number we can reach you on just in case. Be sure you are comfortable and in a quiet place where you can talk and hear us easily.
If you are overseas, we will contact your using WhatsApp. Be sure to have WhatsApp downloaded and ready to use prior to your consultation.
The length of time shown, at the time of booking, for each appointment is the maximum time we allow for that appointment type. Enquiries will not generally take the full allowable time. The fee for an appointment is a fixed fee, not time based, so no partial refunds will be owed in the case of a consultation that does not require the maximum time.
Priority Service
If you require advice from us urgently (within 12 hours of contacting us or out of hours), we charge AUD500.00. Please contact us by phone (1300 858 995), our contact form, or email us at hello@visasidekick.com.au to arrange this priority consultation service. Due to the immediate nature of this appointment type your consultation fee will be charged in full at the time of booking.
Rescheduling or Cancelling Your Appointment
You may use the online scheduler to reschedule your appointment up to 6 hours prior to your appointment. However, if you do this more than twice, we may charge a further administrative fee for subsequent changes.
As our consultations are in high demand, our booking fee is not refundable in the event of cancellation.
We understand that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control, so we do take exceptional circumstances into consideration and will consider these on a case-by-case basis. Any refund will be at the absolute discretion of Visa Sidekick. If the booking fee is refunded to you, it will be refunded less the Stripe payment charges.
We reserve the right to refuse or cancel an appointment booking for reasons such as if the details we have requested in the booking details have not been filled in correctly or if the query is something we cannot help with. For example, if your query is about a visa type we do not assist with or about a visa for a country other than Australia.
If you are unsure whether your query is a type we can help with you are welcome to email us before booking to ask (hello@visasidekick.com.au). We will not be able to assess your visa options in such emails but we can advise if it something that would be suitable to discuss during a consultation. If your appointment is cancelled by us, we may issue a credit to your bank card (or other applicable payment account) in the amount of the charge less Stripe payment fees. We will attempt to contact you if your appointment is cancelled or if additional information is required to accept your appointment.
Lateness and No Shows
It is in your interests to ensure that you are on time for your appointment. If you are running late, please call or email and let us know. If you are more than 15 minutes late, you will not be able to spend the full allocated time with us and we may ask you to schedule a subsequent appointment, at your own cost.
If you don’t attend your appointment, the administrative booking fee will not be refundable or transferrable.
Additional Documents & Information
You are encouraged to provide as many details about your immigration status and circumstances as possible prior to your consultation to assist our immigration specialists in being prepared to answer all your questions and provide you with advice. You may upload any relevant documents when making the booking or emailing them to us at hello@visasidekick.com.au (be sure your email includes details that match your booking details). If you are interested in any skilled/work based visas you should provide an up to date CV prior to your consultation time.
If we receive documentation at least 24 hours prior to a scheduled consultation, we will review these in preparation for your consultation.
If you do not provide the documentation prior to a consultation, and we require it to advise you, we may direct you to book a follow up consultation at your own cost.
VEVO Check
A VEVO check is a check that can be done online using your passport details to check your current visa details, including the expiry date. This can be very helpful in a consultation. If you are not confident you know the exact details of the visa you currently hold we would suggest doing a VEVO check yourself online prior to your consultation and having the details handy or emailing them to us (hello@visasidekick.com.au). Alternatively, when booking the consultation you can upload a copy of your passport and either you can consent to us doing a VEVO check for you prior to your consultation or we can do the check during your consultation. We must receive the consent from the person whose passport is provided. If you are booking on behalf of somebody else, you must not provide consent on their behalf unless you have their authority to.
Purpose of Initial Consultation & Strategy Discussion
The purpose of our initial consultation is to assess whether you have any visa options that would suit your goals for your stay in Australia. Most often people are seeking to remain in Australia permanently, but this is not always the case. Booking in a consultation does not guarantee that you will eligible for any visa type. We will assess whether, based on your current circumstances and the migration law that applies at the time of consultation, if you have any suitable Australian visa options. The discussion and advice will be limited to the migration law at the time of the consultation.
A consultation does not create an ongoing lawyer-client relationship and does not bind us to update you if the migration law changes after your consultation.
We may discuss with you, at our discretion, visa options that may be available to you in future, but we do not provide a full assessment and advice for hypothetical scenarios that are based on multiple variables. An example of a hypothetical scenario would be if a person were wanting to apply for a work visa based on qualifications and/or work experience they had not yet commenced or obtained and with an employer they had not yet found.
During the consultation, we will assess the visa options for one person and will touch on any dependents that may be included in any available visa options. For couples (de facto or spousal), to assess both partners’ options individually (eg to see who has the best options) this may be done by selecting the add-on when booking. Any extra charges for this add-on will be visible in the booking system.
Please Note: We do not offer services in relation to Protection or Refugee visas. These will not be assessed during your consultation.
Getting the most out of your consultation
Consultations work best if we can speak directly with the prospective visa applicant or, in the case of a partner visa, their partner sponsor. If you are booking a consultation on behalf of someone else, please provide details of this in the booking details. We also strongly suggest providing the contact details for the other person or including them in the call.
We have a blog post coming soon that will include other tips for how to get the most out of your consultation. We will link it here when it becomes available.
If you are not sure whether a consultation is right for you contact us at hello@visasidekick.com.au to check. We will not be able to assess your visa options over email but we can let you know if a consultation would be able to answer your queries.