My oversea holiday plan has been like on a dry spell until lately, H told me that we need to make a short trip to the land of Oz. So I had to apply for an Australian subclass 601-T tourist visa. This application can be done online and it's easy. On the other hand, I also understand that applying for it will cost me AUD20 per person and seeing how expensive MYR to any global currencies, I decided to google for cheaper alternative.
Finally I ended up using the service from EasyETA, it cost about USD9.95 (at the time of application) and save about AUD8~ per applicant using this service. My application was submitted on a Thursday night at about 11:34PM by the next morning, Friday 7AM my approved visa is already sitting in my mailbox. It's really quite a breeze and all done in less than 12hours!
I was excited but not for long. Seeing that I only received an email with my approved visa in the form of text, not even a PDF file or Australia immigration logo, I became uneasy. In my email, it's even noted as below but that doesn't give me a peace in mind and it just feels too sloppy:
An ETA confirmation email is equivalent to a visa, as there is no stamp or label in your passport and no further need to visit an Australian diplomatic office. Your ETA visa is electronically linked to your passport number.
It's like asking me to have faith in a stranger and you know how our parents always taught us never to trust a stranger. The day of my departure and I get kicked out of my plane, I will be super piss and I can't blame anyone but myself for falling into some sort of stupid scam. Then I started to think, how do I know whether my visa is valid? Rather than waiting to be kicked off the plane, is there any way for me to verify and correct the situation if I really fell for one? There are many scams out there, how can this service be cheaper than the one offered by the Australia Immigration?
So I started to look for ways to verify the validity of my visa and what better way to check other than the Australia immigration website, right?
I click on Check an ETA and came to an input screen with the below:
I don't have a reference number and have no idea where to find one. I entered all possible numbers that I can find from the email I received from EasyETA but to no avail. I became worried, have I been scammed? I've been such a internet savvy person, there is no way I can't sniff a scam. I even google using the keywords like "EasyETA + scam". Thank goodness, I manage to read reviews saying that it's legit but that doesn't mean I can let it go. Surely there is a way to prove that my visa is valid from the Australia immigration, right?
Then I read some where that the only way to know if your ETA is legit is by attempting to apply for one and I did just that. When through all the hassle, keying in the necessary information all over again and right before payment is being made, the system did a verification and notified me with a screen like below:
To cut the story short, there is no direct way to find out your visa validity except you go through with the Australia's immigration system like applying for a new one.
The following are the links I used:
I found another cheaper options for visa application (only MYR20!!!) but I have not used it before and can't comment about it's validity. If you have, let me know your thoughts. I may try it the next time I need to apply for visa.
Cheers!
My oversea holiday plan has been like on a dry spell until lately, H told me that we need to make a short trip to the land of Oz. So I had t...
