Worst service ever - ********* and ********** business practices!

Sorry for the long review, but the facts need to be known.

If I could have given Malcolm no stars, I would have. My company has used him twice in the past (both times with no issues), so they didn't think twice about contacting him now when 2 colleagues and myself needed to apply for visa's to go to our UK office. From the first call, Malcolm was only too happy to tell us that he was still in business and could assist us like previously. He sent us the forms to fill in and told us that once completed, he would send an invoice for payment so he could do the applications and book the biometrics. This was 2nd/3rd week of January. Forms were filled in and sent to Malcolm to check, which took a while for him to confirm, as he informed us he is now running the show solely on his own. Fair enough, we were patient. Come end of January and Malcolm issues us with an invoice for the visas and his service fee, and tells us as soon as we can make payment, he will have us booked for our biometrics on Friday February 4th between 1 and 2pm, if we are fine for that time.

We make payment and confirm with him on the 1st of Feb, and he replies that will confirm the appointment times by the afternoon of the 2nd of Feb. Deadline comes and goes - no confirmation. The 3rd comes and goes - no confirmation or contact. The promised day of the appointment comes and Malcolm messages (not calls - MESSAGES) saying that he was on the road the previous day and will have to book us for appointments on Monday (7 Feb). Monday morning comes, and no confirmation or times or any contact from Malcolm. Eventually after trying to phone him multiple times, he again MESSAGES to say the appointments have been booked for Wednesday 9 Feb at 10am.

Wednesday morning comes, and before 9am we get a message (what more do we expect by now) from Malcolm stating that the biometrics centre called him and said they are offline which happens sometimes after loadshedding (which ended on Tuesday morning by the way), but he will be on site from 9:30 and will notify us as soon as they are back online as it is normally only off for about an hour. Come 11am, out of desperation I phone him from a number he has never seen before - and lo and behold he answers! He continues to spout the same story of "They are still offline, but I am not leaving until they are back on". Due to the constant run around, we took the initiative to phone the biometrics company as there are only 2 in KZN that deal with UK visa's, to confirm if they were in in fact offline. Upon phoning them and speaking to the office manager, not only were we told that they were not offline (and had never been offline), but we were also informed that none of our names showed up as applicants on the UK visa applications portal and that no appointments for any of us had been booked. This led to us trying to phone him again, which was met with many renditions of "the mailbox is full" or "call failed" (due to him cutting the call before it rings fully). Messages were sent asking for our GWF application references (knowing he hadn't done them), all of which were ignored.

In the end, out of sheer desperation, we did the applications ourselves online and within 2 hours - all 3 applications were completed, submitted, paid for and appointments booked. If we had know before hand how easy it actually was, and how *********, ************ and immoral Malcolm was, we would never have used him this time! I can definitely not recommend him, and we are actually waiting to see if he fulfills our request and refunds us our monies (as he did not provide ANY of the service he was paid to do), otherwise ***** charges will be laid.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING THS COMPANY