the downside of it is that if you have someone taking care of everything for you then its easy not to get familiar with the process yourself and you grow dependent on a 3rd party which might disappear at the most inconvenient time. So while using visa agents and fixes to smooth the ride its very useful to figure out the process yourself, either to lower the cost when you need to renew it in couple of years or to remove the dependency needed.
That is of course 100% valid.
Maybe it was not clear, but this is for those situations where that simply is not feasible. Be it from lack of fiat resources to getting stranded in a geopolitical event many will be faced with choices far worse than using an agent.
There is also a lot to be said about learning far more about the system using agents than you'll ever do even if you do it all yourself ;-)
Combining both might be what gains the most reliable and complete knowledge, I kinda ended up in that situation myself
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