We are just scared to death. We have been trying to obtain our residence through Burlow and Spencer. My partner (de facto partner) is Italian. The assistance we received from Burlow and Spencer was just preposterous. Once the residence was refused (the first time) then they charged us another £2500 approximately. Basically we paid the first £2000 approx. to then learn we have to pay another £2500 approx. Both payments made in one single instalment and on the same respective days. After the first refusal they told us the situation was extremely delicate and they pushed us to pay the next full amount. We had an interview on that day. We had the interview with a solicitor who knew nothing about our case. We had to re-explain everything from the scratch. He helped us filling the forms and we re-sent the papers. This time we sent them without having filled the payment details for the home office to take the money out from our account for the fees -£65 approx..- When the application was refused the second time, they blamed us for not having filled the payment section. They tried to charge us again £2500 by all means telling us that if we didn't do so we were taking the risk of being deported. I was very strong this time and I said I wasn't going to pay anymore for this terrible service and I said we should have been advised better on how to fill the form. The form should have been revised before being sent instead of leaving us all stressed up and trying to fill the documents on our own -something that we have paid them to help us with already £4500!- Fortunately, one of the advisors acknowledged the situation was a bit tricky and they agreed to do the application again for us. This time WE worked very hard on it. We gathered testimonials etc. The testimonials were something WE discovered we should do by reading carefully all documents. This third time and out of desperation, we started learning about the whole process ourselves. Then we realised testimonials are indeed very important, so we added them. When we called B&S asking for their advise on adding testimonials, they said the Home Office wasn't going to care about them. Finally the residence got refused for the third time. We received the usual call from B&S this time prompting us to pay again so they could submit, for the first time, the form directly from their firm. I answered, no, "I'm not paying any more for your services". Then one of the advisors suggested they could do it for free. We agreed to allow them to do it one more time... They advised us a solicitor was going to call us. This happened later. The solicitor that called us, knew nothing about the case! and was asking us if we sent any documents at all. You can imagine how we felt... I said: "Please check our folder and call us again. We are making the effort of paying for your professional advise but in order for you to be able to do so, you need to analyse the case first, otherwise we will have our residence rejected all over again." To which he answered, don't worry, I will take a look and get back to you. He never called again... Finally I started calling last week to recover my documents, they answered: "your case worker will call you later today". They did this two times. Today I called again and I said: "Please give us back our documents and most importantly, our passports, we have been left without any identity documents" To which they answered: "Your case worker has already uploaded your documents and they don't have them any more" I was shocked and very scared. Basically they are expecting us to print our passports! Now we are left with no supporting documents and no passports. This is one of the worst situations I faced in my life, this firm has left us with no way of accrediting our identity. These lawyers have managed our case irresponsibly and now we don't now what else to do...