INS Zoom for Immigration Attorneys

INS Zoom offers software and website development services for immigration lawyers. On their website at INSZoom.com, the company makes broad promises in connection with their Search Engine Optimization packages and 24-hour customer support. However, immigration lawyers nationwide have expressed concern over whether INS Zoom delivers on those promises, or whether the company misrepresents itself and defrauds its clients.

My immigration law firm contracted with INS Zoom earlier this year, selecting their Premium Package, which is supposed to include 24-hour customer support and specialized Search Engine Optimization services. After four months and thousands of dollars, all INS Zoom delivered was a website template and immigration software that could have been designed by any first year law student.

INS Zoom provided 60 pages of standard immigration text that was replete with spelling and grammatical errors. When customer support was contacted, we were shuffled off to a handler in India, who explained that the company receives constant complaints.

The technical division of INS Zoom is so inept, it took several days for them to learn how to change the host of our website domain. It took several weeks for INS Zoom to set up three email accounts using Microsoft Outlook. No work at all was done on the website for a full month following the signing of the contract and initial payment. When the website was finally completed, it was merely a standard template similar to those offered for free by many other sites.

Our immigration law firm also contracted for INS Zoom's software services. Training was terribly inadequate, but that was beside the point. The forms offered by INS Zoom are provided for free by the U.S. Government on the CIS website, along with all instructions. INS Zoom charges a full $100 a month for what amounts to a blank page on which you can list your clients, and a number of hopeless questionnaires that can be drafted by a layman on a word processor in a matter of minutes.

The sales division is slick and quick to withdraw your funds once you enter into a contract. After that, they are at a loss. Because they have no knowledge of immigration law or what occurs behind the scenes in India. These sympathetic characters have no one to turn to, because there seems to be no company hierarchy in the United States. In fact, INS Zoom offers no transparency at all. Ask for the name of a manager or supervisor and you are instructed to send an email to "escalations" at INSZoom.com. According to the sales department, there are so many of these "escalations," i.e. complaints, that getting to all of them in a timely manner is an impossibility.

Immigration lawyers looking to build or enhance their law practice should steer clear of INS Zoom. Those who are smitten with their brochures risk flushing thousands of dollars and man hours down the proverbial toilet. As a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, I hope colleagues will heed the many warnings about INS Zoom. Or else your practice -- and your clients -- are bound to suffer for it.