There are many unscrupulous sponsors out there praying on the uninformed and / or desperate. The number of migrants being charged an “administration fee” before a COS is issued is becoming an increasingly worrying trend. Some migrants are knowingly buying their COS and that is an entirely different issue, which leads down the path of criminality for the sponsor and the migrant.
My concern is for those that are paying administrative fees before the issue of a COS in the belief the sponsor has legitimate costs to cover. I would think very carefully about paying those fees unless the sponsor properly explains how the fee is arrived at and the precise amounts being charged and for what. Any sponsor that is not willing to demonstrate the fee being charged is highly unlikely to be worth joining. Even more so that if the fee is in the £1000’s.
Sponsors do not have huge costs that have to be paid to issue a COS - £199 - that is it, nothing more. This cost can be passed onto the migrant. Most sponsors do not pass on the cost.
What sponsors are actually doing in the main is passing on the immigration skills charge and that is why amounts of £2000 plus are being charged under the heading “administration fees”. Sponsors are specifically forbidden from passing on the immigration skills charge but are using these so called administration fees as a method to recover their costs.
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