Essentially, they are charging for a service, the service of buying stuff stuff from the official gov website for you. When it comes to Tax discs, it’s a bit ****, as it’s not exactly hard. But fundamentally, it’s no different than paying a firm to get you a visa stamped on your passport, you pay someone to take your passport, sit in the queue at the embassy and do all the leg work. It’s like paying someone to submit your tax return, you pay them to take all your numbers and stick them in the right places on the Gov website. Neither are particularly hard, but some are genuinely willing to pay for someone else to it for them.
In all walks of life, it’s often cheaper to do stuff yourself, but you always make a decision to pay someone else to it or not. Be it cleaning your car, spot of plumbing, sorting out weeds in garden, teach you how to ride a bike and pass test etc. None of which are you forced into doing. So long as the cost you pay and what you get for it is made clear up front it’s not breaking any law. Whether it’s morally right for them to charge that money is another matter. What’s legally right and what’s morally right often fail to overlap.
What you can do, is spread the word that what they’re charging cash for really isn’t worth it.
You can lobby/partition etc for the legal stance to move slightly and actually overlap with what is morally right here.
You can also pester Google, so their site gets blacklisted and doesn’t appear at the top of the SERP. Without traffic from Google, they’ll undoubtedly won’t last long.
Speaking as a civil servant, albeit not on behalf of the government as such, I know that a lot of effort across multiple departments has been put into stopping this practice. It affects driving licences, tax returns, passport applications, VED, all sorts. Ministers have met with google execs and there are ongoing discussions at official level too. Correspondence teams and counter and telephone staff get it in the neck from duped public and it is taking a lot of time to answer as well as help where we can.
So long as these sites do point out that they are providing a service - such as “helping” you fill in a form - it is legal and there is no practical way to get them banned as there would be unavoidable collateral damage to legit businesses. I can assure you that gov departments are checking these sites pretty much daily to make sure they comply.
My strong advice is NEVER to use google or another search engine (although most of the problems do seem to be through google) but just go straight to www.gov.uk and search within the official government site for the service you need.
Looking at the Whois above you might want to visit this chap to get your money back…
Domain name: tad-services.co.uk Registrant: Peter Hall Registrant type: UK Individual Registrant’s address: Knighton West Tisted Alresford Hampshire SO24 0HJ United Kingdom Data validation:
The information is there to read, saying pretty clearly that the website is not affiliated to gov.uk or DVLA, and it clearly states that they charge a £40 service fee, for which you do get some additional benefits over and above what DVLA will give you, including a replacement V5C, which usually costs £25.
The use of the orange colour on the website, and the buttons on the left are a bit sneaky, I will give you, but the information is there to see if you can be bothered to read it. Sorry, but I still don’t see how it is immoral. It would be immoral if they were charging for a redirect to the DVLA website, and not actually doing anything for that money.
Here’s another one. You can now access Land Registry information online. Is it immoral for your conveyancing lawyer to charge a fee to do the search which is well in excess of the cost of the search? I don’t think so. Its immoral of them to charge for doing all the searches when they only do one, but if they actually do what they say they are going to do?
I am sorry but that site is almost like the official site…if a shop set up doing that it would be closed down. I dont see why copying an e commerce site should be any different?
Well probably quite long. Anyway how this looks the same? (screen below)
Not to mention the certificate and encrypted connection to genuine site (HTTPS).
One statement for all non IT people on here:
Never use plain (non encrypted) connection to type any details, or further more any data.
I’m even to facebook or google search engine connecting on HTTPS and now there is site where you putting your details and it is just plain site?
I know most of you have “life” and not going to check gov.uk every 2-3 months but maybe is time to start looking into it in more details as you can see that being more literate within IT area may safe some time, money and distress.
If they have not delivered the service write this…
To whom it may concern,
Under the distance selling regulations, I exercise my statutory right to cancel the product that I ordered from you within the 7 day period set down in law, effective immediately.
What you seem to be missing - is that these sites are impersonating the official sites -
same colours / logos/ similar names etc - to trick people into thinking they are on the official site.
Then - once the victim / mug / gullible surfer* *take your pick has been tricked into thinking
they are on the official site - they take money off them - for doing - sfa to be honest.
They might have put something in the small print - might had added an official warning - but
people who think they are on an official HRMC / Gov - or whatever site - are not going to be
looking for such warnings - declarations.
Bottom line - is people are deceiving them - pretending they are official sites - charging them
extra for nothing - without them realising. That is deception and (imho) fraud and theft.
That the police are powerless - unwilling - unable* *take your pick - to do anything, doesn’t make
it legitimate in anyway. If you want to provide a service - why would you brand / colour / present
a website as if it was the official one? Only reason for doing so - is to deceive people - which is what
they are doing.
They are pretty damned similar. Frankly I think this behaviour is fraudulent - the purpose of it, the fundamental business model, is to take people’s money based on tricking them into thinking that they are using the original site.
You can bet your panties that if a site appeared which did the same to a commercial enterprise, it would be treated as fraud. These should be the same.
with exclamation mark, which looks similar to DVLA sign? Clearly everything is done to make money from people who don’t pay attention to all the details.
Maybe if there was a campaign to click through the google ads and clock up his costs he might give up. Obviously Google ends up with the income (tax free) so bit of a double edged sword…
