Dear all, please take the time to read this important story carefully. I don’t want others to go through the hell that I’ve just been through.

I want you to warn you against the visa services of a company whose agent’s name is Simon, and his assistant Shirley. Although I do not have their real Chinese name, you can find pictures of them below, as well as their emails and phone numbers.

Simon Phone: 15110108643,
email: summernothot@hotmail.com

Shirley (Simon`s assistant) 135 5209 4308,
email: shirleylimited@hotmail.com

Here is a picture of Simon:
http://www.pictures-upload.com/up/o2cwu0ux200941214392qf3z0id1.JPG

Here is a picture of Shirley:
http://www.pictures-upload.com/up/6ftjqi5m2009412144034xhwxn22y.JPG

Here are pictures of him at the immigration with an agent, doing what I believe could be illegal business:
http://www.pictures-upload.com/up/oarfxk452009412143519k1yzhpgx.jpg

Simon did such a terrible job that I had to return to my home country and it is now difficult for me to even go back to China. It is therefore extremely important that people at least know my story before doing business with him or his assistant.

Losing trust…

It all started at the end of last August, right after the Olympics. My visa was expiring at that time and I needed an agent to help me get a 1-year visa. A friend had given me Simon’s number so I called him. Like many foreigners, I needed to leave China to return to my home country to have my visa done. Simon had told me: « No problem, it takes about 2 weeks to do it! Go to Canada, and after two weeks you will receive the papers and everything will be okay ». At that time, I had no idea how rarely Simon actually keeps his word. Since then, I heard Simon say countless times: « No problem, it will be ready by __ date » or « No problem, I will call you tomorrow », without any follow-up. This is one of the most frustrating things about dealing with Simon. Instead of being honest and telling you that there is a problem, or that there will be a delay, he either keeps silent and does not return your phone calls and sms, or says to you that everything will be ready by a certain date without having a clue wheter this can actually be done. As a result, and as I explained to his assistant Shirley many times, I simply lost total trust in Simon visa services. By the way, I should mention that his assistant, Shirley, was much better than Simon as an agent. At least, she picked up the phone when I called and she returned my emails and sms. So yes, Simon is THAT bad at customer service. He is not a bad person. He is just very bad at handling customers. But let’s continue, as this is only the beginning.

Waiting… and broken promises

So there I was in Canada, waiting for him to do what he had to do. He had told me that everything would be ready in 14 days. I was supposed to be back in China by the end of September because I had important work to do. As the deadline approached, I started sending him emails and tried calling him. Simon did what he does best: he remained silent. When I finally reached him, he then told me that everything was okay, that « the papers were on the way ». I would receive everything soon. I felt somewhat reassured. But when I tried to ask Simon which courier company he was using to send me the papers, he did not reply. I tried calling… and calling… Nothing. Only 4 days before my flight was due back to China, I finally reached him and he told me: « I couldn’t get you the papers.. There’s been some problems… You have to go to the Chinese embassy now to get a visa yourself! I will help you get a 1-year visa no problem when you are back in China ». « WHAT?, I responded. You told me that the papers were on the way, and now you tell me that you never got the papers and that moreover I have to go to Ottawa to get a Visa right now ». Damn… So, the next day, my father and I went all the way to Ottawa to get the visa, spent 9 hours on the road, spent money on gas and food and lost a full day, all because Simon did not keep his promise. What bugged me the most at that time though, was that he had lied to me, about the papers being on the way.

Things get worse

And so, in Ottawa, I picked up my visa. I took the maximum, 2 entries tourist visa for 90 days. This was problematic because, after heading back to China, I had trips scheduled to the U.S. and to France. I desperately needed multiple entries, but I could not get a multiple-entry visa in Canada. So Simon told me : « No problem, when you are back from the USA, before you go to France, I will get you a 1 month visa in two days (using the emergency service) , so that you can go to France and come back to China. After that, I will get you a Z-visa no problem. » I believed him and, once again, was greatly disappointed. When I got back to China from my trip to the US, he took my passport but, the next day, he told me he needed more time to obtain the additional visa. I was shocked because he knew my plane to France was on the next day. Simon committed to getting the visa to me by the following day and I spent 700$US to delay my flight by one day, which barely left me time to make my meetings. And as you can probably guess, the next day, he called me to say: « I can’t do it. I need more time, is next week okay? ». I could NOT believe my ears. I had told him repeatedly that I HAD TO be in France for the weekend and he was asking me if next week was okay… So you can guess that my anger was at its peak at that moment. Not only did he break his promise once again, but I lost 700$US because of him. He didn`t give me clear explanations, of course.
Later on, I learned from his assistant, that it was due to a change in computer system at the immigration bureau, which stopped them from doing emergency visa for a short while. I never knew if this was true. In any case, his contacts at the immigration bureau did not seem good enough to inform Simon that this was not possible. So because Simon didn`t know he could not do it, I paid for his mistake. Sadly, he did not want to take responsibility for it.

Giving wrong, uninformed advice

Simon then told me: « You can do your visa in France, no problem! » Of course, by then I doubted everything he said. He even told me: « I asked 5 of my contacts and it’s okay, you can do it in France! ». Just to be safe, I decided to go on the website of the Chinese Embassy in France and there were 4 agencies that dealt with visas. I called all 4 of them and they all told me it was impossible for me to do my visa in France. Only the countries part of the Shenghen agreement could do that. Had I listened to Simon’s advice, I would have been in an even worse predicament and would have had to go through HongKong, pay for more plane tickets, hotels, etc., just because of his bad advice.

So there I was, discouraged that I had not only lost 700$US, but that I had lost my whole trip to France because of Simon. Luckily, a colleague suggested that I could go to France, and while I was there, send my passport to Canada to have a L visa done for 1 month, and have them send it back to me in France quickly. This was going to be a bit expensive to send using FEDEX and all, but it was worth it. At least I would not waste my whole trip. So I went to France and did that, and it worked although it was pretty tight in time. I received my passport with FEDEX 1 hour before I was to leave for the airport to go back to China. Very stressful!!

From bad to worse

I came back to China safely and Simon told me that it would take him less then one month to finally get my 1 year Z visa. But… He kept delaying to pick up my visa and registration paper. It took him at least 2 weeks, if not 3, to simply come and pick up my visa. A few days later, he had his assistant call me urgently because he needed me to go obtain another registration. Yes, Simon had lost my precious housing registration. More time goes by and Simon informs me that there was a « problem ». He cannot offer me a Z visa anymore because the «companies they were using hadn`t paid their taxes ». «Hadn`t paid their taxes? », I asked myself. Was Simon using fake companies? I had asked Shirley earlier in the process if their company was legal, and she had told me “Yes”. Hummm… So anyway, now, he apparently could only get me a 1-year F visa. At that point I did not care, I just wanted a visa!

After a few days had gone by, I texted Simon to know when I would receive my visa. I was worried, because my L Visa would soon expire. Then surprisingly, I received a response right away. Simon had Shirley call me immediately: « We need to go to the police station urgently!», she said. Yes, my dear friends, Simon had carelessly forgotten to submit my visa in due time and it had expired. I was in China with a visa which had been expired for about 7 days, thanks to Simon’s carelessness. We had to go to the general headquarters police Station near Ritan park where they had me sign up a paper apologizing for « my » mistake. They said I would have to pay a 5000RMB fine but Simon took care of that, or had his guanxi take care of it. At least he took responsibility for that mistake. But the problem was not a small one. Because of Simon, I now had a bad mark on my record at the Immigration Bureau. He forgot to submit my visa application on time, and now I was paying for his mistake.

Just when you think it could not get worse

After wasting a lot of time going back and forth from the immigration bureau and the police station, Simon’s assistant told me that because it was a Chinese holiday, they could not give me a 1-year F visa at this moment. Instead, they would give me a 1-month L visa and then, after the holiday, they would finally give me my 1-year F visa. Keep in mind that we are now at mid-January 2009, and the whole story started at the end of August 2008. On January 20th, Shirley called to tell me to come pick up my yellow paper, which allowed me to go pick up my visa on the 23rd of January. At that time when I picked up my visa, I did not think of looking at the date on the visa because it was supposed to be for 1 month.

The day after I picked up my visa, I go to the police station to register and notice that my visa was for only 7 days. It was issued on the 19th and expired on the 26th of January! Panicked, I called Simon urgently to see what was happening. It was supposed to be for 1 month!! Of course, Simon did not pick up the phone… I called Shirley who casually asked me if I could « Go to Hong Kong, and make a new visa there ». I was going crazy!!! She then told me to go to the immigration to see if I could extend my visa for 10 days, which I did. Since it was a holiday, the immigration main building was closed, but there was an emergency office behind it. I met with an agent. She took my passport and disappeared for 45 minutes. When she came back, she told me that I had to leave China. She said that 1) I had already broken the law (with my expired visa by Simon’s fault), and 2) there were documents in my record that were not too legal apparently, regarding travel tickets. So she said that if I did not leave China right away, that I could go to prison! This was on the 24th of January, and I had 2 days left to pack and leave the country!!

I had been living in Beijing for nearly 5 years and I now needed to leave everything behind because of Simon’s negligent work! I was upset and very angry, especially since he still would not take my calls. Shirley, always pleasant, suggested that if I wanted to come back to China, I could simply « change a letter in the middle of my name or something », when renewing my passport. Apparently, with all these short term visas that I had to get, because of Simon’s inability to get me that 1-year visa, I had to either obtain a new passport, or add other pages to my passport. But since there was a problem with my record now at the Immigration Bureau, I was being asked to « change a letter in my name ». I simply could not believe what I was hearing.. Change my name???? What the $% »%!??

So there I was on the 24th, urgently needing to pack up everything and leave China for good, not knowing if I could ever come back again unless I… changed my name in my passport! So I lost my employment opportunities… lost my friends… lost my apartment… I lost everything I had built in 5 years because of Simon’s poor visa services. He never bothered to ever contact me again.

So this is the story, my friends. Think twice before using his services. As I said, I am not saying that Simon is a bad guy, but he clearly has issues regarding how to do his work right. My guess is that he takes too much work for what he can handle, and he ends up with too much on his plate to do everything well. Either that or he has serious time management and organizational issues, which are not excusable anyway.

If you think you can help me in any way regarding this issue, please contact me directly. As for now, I am staying here and there at friends’ places, about to leave soon for another asian country to live with a friend, somewhere I can stay inexpensively until such time as I manage to restart my life. This has been a crazy adventure and I hope that this warning will help others avoid the kind of problems that I have been through.