Driving Licence Scam

[Harbo]

My wife fell foul of a Driving Licence Renewal Scam.
Instead of the free DVLA site, she accidentally logged into a paid service which cost her £5 for their service!
What made it worse was that she got an email later, offering her access to free books which after 48hrs would be charged to her Credit Card £25 every two months!!
It seems when you google DVLA Licence Renewal you come up with several of these sites carefully worded to mislead.
About time the Government did something about them?
The worrying thing also is that she still hasn't got her new licence!

Rod

 

[blackrodd]

Yeah, me too, nearly!
The dirty dogs have also invaded the car/motorbike taxing pop ups
I nearly got caught out taxing my bike, there must have been 5, or 6 that popped up by way of the usual google search.
As you say, It's all too easy to be taken in as the original and genuine dvla site.
Regards Rodders

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

same with passport renewal. I got stitched for about £60 with a service that masqueraded very cunningly as the actual passport website. All I got was a pre-filled in form!!

 

[Sawyer]

There are a lot of these freeloaders about as unfortunately, it's not illegal. They will claim to be offering a service to make it easier and charging for the privilege, whereas in reality they don't (and can't) do anything more than the official sites. Having nearly been led astray by such a site once, a Civil Servant friend gave the useful advice to check whether the http. contains ' .gov.uk ' If it's not there, the site is unofficial; don't touch it.

 

[bugbear]

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/m ... tax-return

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

The scammers exploit our natural tendency to have just a vague idea of the site we want and rely on a search engine to find it for us. For cars, passports, tax and pretty much all of the government transactions you might want to do, the answer is to learn one simple url - gov.uk. No www, no 'direct' just those six characters to get to a portal for the detailed site you need. Add it to your bookmarks / favourites.

gov.uk

Google is not always your friend.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I get very weary of having to be constantly on guard. There are similar scams for European Health insurance cards (EHIC), the USA's Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). All seem to position themselves near the top of a Google search page. Since the state seem incapable of stopping people committing actual fraud by internet and telephone scams, I can't see them preventing this which is technically legal.

 

[jonbee56]

Can't understand all this talk about scams.

I've received an email from a lottery in America telling me that I've won $300,000,000 & all they need is my bank details and passwords to transfer the money.

Sounds like I'm onto a winner........ :shock:

 

[krashbandikoot]

I'm not sure why so many people fall for these scams.

With the driving licence and passport it's easy, go to the post office and get the form. Fill it out and send it off with the relevant renewal fee which is £20 for a driving licence and £70 for a passport. No need to pay the extra fee's.

When I renewed my passport I found they don't actually renew on line, they send out a form you've already filled in on line and you still have to sign it, put your old passport in there along with the new photograph and send it back with a cheque or postal order.

It's really simple folks, if they're charging a fee for the service they're ripping you off. The second you hit the payment page where you put in your card details you should close the browser and go to the post office. Either that or go to the official site and download then print out the relevant form to be sent off in the post which costs nothing except a bit of time and printer ink.

 

[Harbo]

Very easy to fall for them as they are designed to mislead! And fine going to the Post Office if you've got one near?
Renewing online, the DVLA don't charge any extra fees.

Rod

 

[tbone]

Life can be one big pitfall, you have to be on your guard all the time. If you miss your renewal you are also in the do do, it's not good either. Life is set up to get you by default. Bummer.