[smsm42]

These types of companies have been very common before government agencies were on the internet. When I traveled to the US for the first time in the 90s, I had a choice - apply for visa myself, and deal with all the bureaucracy and lines and stuff (nothing was online back then), or pay additionally to the company that just takes my papers and after a while returns my passport with visa stamped and all that. I chose the latter and never regretted it. Yes, they took money for something that I could have gotten for free, but it'd cost me time and effort and annoyance. Now though, a lot of these processes are much more convenient online, so the same companies have to resort to tricks to still make the same living they used to make before.