Review: is Cayman really the solution for your PR application needs

If you're one of the people googling about Singapore PR applications, or PR application help, you'll be sure to come across this website http://singaporeprapplication.com/.

The company behind this website is actually Cayman Management Consultants.

This post is a review based on true, personal experience from dealings with Cayman Management Consultants. All opinions are entirely my own, based on the services provided (which we paid for).

Why we engaged Cayman for their services:

K tried applying for Singapore PR himself once. It was really easy for his friends and so he didn't really give it much thought. It was eventually rejected, but I attribute it partly to the insufficient preparation that he did in terms of the document submission.

Due to personal issues, this may be the last time K could apply for PR for the time being, so we decided that it may be better to engage someone more professional and more familiar with the process for peace of mind.

Note: you can apply for it yourself perfectly, since the instructions is really clear. We only decided not to do that because it may be our last shot.

K approached one other company besides Cayman but Cayman seemed the more capable of the two.  The consultant said some stuff that sounds vaguely convincing, so we decided that oh well, we'll just give Cayman a shot.

When did this happen:

We went for the consultation around November 2013, but the actual document submission happened in February 2014.

What service is included and how much it costed:

They quoted K a total of $2400 for the whole service. No guarantees for success and no refunds if it is unsuccessful.

For that huge amount of money, their services included 

1) helping you fill up the application forms (which needs to be pre-filled up by you first)

2) arranging the documents to be submitted (you also need to scan this yourself)

3) an 'insider' list of documents that will supposedly boost your chances

4) a cover letter written by their in-house author

Seriously, $2400 is a crazy amount of money. And you're basically paying only for points 3 and 4 because 1 and 2 can be easily done by yourself.

What actually happened:

During the consultation, the consultant seemed professional enough. She didn't know everything that we asked and tried to smoke through some of our questions, but she also admitted her inadequacy by saying that it was because she wasn't in charge of the accounts but more of marketing, which sounded fair enough.

But everything went downhill from there.

The whole episode with them was just very disappointing.

1). Before they fill up the form for you, you have to pre-fill one on your own, so they know what to put in. There were parts that K overlooked and left out. 

Instead of highlighting those fields to him, they filled the fields with "????" and sent the form back to K to "check". No mention of the left out fields, no clarifications, no highlighting the overlooked parts to K's attention.

If we hadn't been looking through the completed forms carefully, we wouldn't even have noticed the "????" parts. I was already very unhappy about this. 

Then came the "specially prepared cover letter".

2). The cover letter was just...a complete let down. I'm quite sure that no proof reading was done, at all.

This was literally my face while I was reading what they wrote. 

Firstly, the formatting wasn't standardized. I'm not talking about minor issues, I'm talking about how certain paragraphs are "justified", some are not, and some are in italics for no reason. Sometimes there weren't spacing after punctuations, sometimes there were random double spacings after words. 

Secondly, the standard of the writing was so bad that it left me speechless. Seriously, a secondary school student could write better. I don't know who their in-house writers were, but reading it made me feel as if it wasn't written by a native English speaker. The sentences sounded odd and disjointed. The phrasing was weird as well, with sentences that were way too long and inappropriate.

Thirdly, I found this the most unacceptable. There was so many spelling mistakes and grammar errors. How can you have spelling mistakes and grammar errors in a professionally written document which we paid $2400 for? 

For example,
1. "first" was spelled "frist",
2. "client" was spelled "cliet",
3. "general" was spelled as "geenral",
4. "integrate" was spelled "intergrate",
5. "pharmaceutical" was spelled "pharmaceuptical" (this was misspelt multiple times, so maybe the person writing just thinks this is the right spelling)
6. "Mandarin" became "Manarin",
7. "studies" was spelt "stuedis",
8. "speaker" was spelt "speker",
9. "these" became "thsese",
10. "marketing" became "markeing",
11. "responsibilities" was spelt "rsponsibilities",
12. "planning" became "planing"
13. "F&B" became "F&N"
14. "development" became "deveopment"
15. "consultant" became "consultatn"
16. "highlight" was spelt "highlite"
17. "during" became "duris"
18. "successfully" was spelled "sucessfuly"
19. "exciting" became "exiting"

For parts that were supposed to be in past tense, they used present tense. For parts that require present tense, they used past tense. I think my blood pressure went through the roof just reading the document.

The company name was misspelt. They even wrote "20th of February 2014", I kid you not.

The last straw was "a managers". 

It was just so unprofessionally done that I was hopping mad after K sent me the copy. 

It was in Microsoft Document format for god's sake, don't they know how to use spell check?

But K didn't want to make trouble so I had to re-correct the whole thing for him again. 

The verdict:

Do I think you should engage their services? An absolute NO.

I'm basing my judgement purely on the services provided. After all, they don't change your circumstances. If you profile is good, it will be good regardless whether you engage Cayman or not. All Cayman supposedly does is to 'beautify' your application and make it look more professional. Something which I think they failed terribly at.

If they were professional about it and provided good service, I would say that yes, $2400 is a small amount to pay to have somebody take care of things for you and give you some peace of mind.

But not only did we not get that, we had to clean up their shit, we had to correct all the mistakes that they made (which should not have happened).

All in all, I would say that the $2400 is money wasted. And I would strongly suggest that you do that application yourself.

Disclaimer (again): I'm writing this review since there aren't any proper reviews on Cayman out there. I'm not trying to defame the company in any way, the entire post was based on our experience. Others may have better luck/service with them, so it's entirely up to you if you want to engage them or not.