My wife and I met in Bucharest over 3 years ago, and almost immediately married in Bucharest. Soon thereafter we began the pursuit of her visa into the US via an online company that appears to have a couple of names. Those names are Fiancee Visas, and/or Allan S. Lolly and associates. Allan S. Lolly is the named partner representing this firm Fiancee Visas that specializes in immigration. When you google “Fiancee Visas” or combinations of those words you will inevitably see 1-800-fianceevisas, Fiancee Visas, or Allan S. Lolly and associates, so naturally, we called them, compared some rates, and decided to foot the bill to proceed forward.
Soon after, we received our “welcome” package, which of course included a list of all the documents we will need to include in our return package in order for a proper submission to the government of the US and so forth for my wife's visa.
We completed the package, and “fedex'd” it out to our case manager, or paralegal, assigned to our case. We were off and running… or so we thought.
After a couple of days, we received confirmation that our package was received and we were good to go. I had qualified with flying colors to be my wife's “sponsor” into the US, and we should have our interview in the not to distant future.
Then it began… after a while we received communication from our “new” case worker at Allan S. Lolly law firm, that introduced themselves and informed us they would be handling our case from here on out. No clue why this happened but we went with it. This new caseworker then proceeded to ask us for additional documentation… documentation she had yet to “receive”. Funny thing was, we had already submitted some of this information (copies of passports included) to the prior caseworker. Wonder what happened to our important, not to mention confidential, documentation? We questioned the necessity of this re-submission of information, stalled a little to do some research, and ultimately resubmitted it via email this time (which took some persuasion to do as some docs required our original signature). So the caseworker had what she needed and now we were good to go… again.
Time for a third caseworker from Allan S. Lolly to introduce themselves to us and our case. This time the request for more documents threw up a lott of red flags, and my wife and I had our first “sinking” feeling, as we now realized we were in the middle of “being had”. We paid them their money already… we now became someone to “deal” with rather than a client. The person becomes a number. Suffice to say, we did not continue to submit “further documentation” as we were now putting ourselves at risk.
Additionally, this period of “caseworker transition” caused such long and inappropriate delays, that I was forced to relocate near permanently to Romania to be with my new family. Any reasonable person would do the same.in doing so, and amidst the economic crisis, it was necessary for me to “close up shop” and cut my losses with a real estate business in the US. This (over a year into the Visa Process) caused me to no longer meet the USA's financial requirements to be my own wife's sponsor into the US. Thank you Allan S. Lolly for not doing your job when you had the opportunity! Allan S. Lolly did apologize for the delays in some emails, stating that it was indeed unacceptable delays, and he even offered to pay for the DHL costs to send yet another package of docs from Bucharest this time. Thanks a bunch.
It was not too long after these “switcheroos” that I became somewhat more “forceful” in my demands that they treat me as a client, which means responding to emails in a timely fashion, locating the documents that I said I had submitted, and answering my questions instead of answering questions they “thought” I asked. Time went by and still nothing except apology letters that passively put the blame on us, as well as excuses of why the caseworkers at Allan S. Lolly were not answering my emails. They were out of the office at the time as it stated on their outgoing auto-reply messages. How convenient.
Finally, we had had enough, we had gotten nowhere with this firm. We had the slight indication that they may have filed some paperwork to immigration on our behalf (a strange forwarded “receipt” email) which is disappointing because the lack of proper communication and their prior loss of our docs insured they could not have submitted a complete package. Or could they have? We'll never know. We finally asked Allan S. Lolly and his firm for a refund of our hard earned money that we paid for this “service”.
After many emails over yet another 2 month period in which we asked for a refund, the response and communication seemed to pick up pace a bit. But no mention of the refund… just how we could be “satisfied” as customers. This included the passive apologies, including throwing the paralegals “under the bus” as well as Allan's “personal” attention to our matter, where he would review our case. Good. We needed our case reviewed. Its About time. During this “review” of our case, Mr. Lolly replied to us in emails where he stated that everything should be squared away and again, an apology, and that if I had any delays in dealing with my caseworker to contact him personally. Of course he doesn't pick up his phone. Well, as they had completely dodged my request for a refund, I pushed harder. Finally this story came to a head this month when Allan S. Lolly forwarded me an email his bookkeeper had emailed him that stated their firm had issued me a refund already back in October! Neither my wife and I nor Allan S. Lolly were aware that this refund had taken place. To make matters worse, this “surprise” refund was issued to a debit card that had been cancelled years prior, and was also tied to a closed bank account! Are there still companies out there that don't re-confirm a financial transaction with customers prior to making said transaction? Apparently. Yes.
My wife and I were outraged. They just gave our money to a bank, that no surprise, was more than happy to accept the transaction. Now Allan S. Lolly has essentially handed our refund to a perfect stranger. I sent off another series of complaint emails, attempting to get them to “step up to the plate” and take responsibility, and issue my refund TO ME, however the best they could do was reinforce the fact that they had already issued a refund to some random bank that, because I used to bank with them 2 and a half years prior was reason enough to wash their hands in any responsible. Allan S. Lolly graciously offered to let me call this bank (whom let me reiterate again I am not a customer of) and sort out his firms problem.
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