DVLA RIP OFF

Renewed my license this week because it was 10 years old and I had to! £93.00 it cost for a replacement credit card sized piece of plastic with an updated photo taken from my passport. Wouldn’t mind as much if some of the fee went to repair some of the gaping pot holes that are opening up  again after temporary repairs done a month or so ago!
Ian

What firm did you use to do this ? If done via the DVLA themselves then it costs between £14 and £20. If done via some of the private websites who set themselves up to do it all for you then it costs....?

DVLA website says £14 and free if over 70. Looks like you have been scammed

Yep scammed , you won’t be the first or the last.

@#@£@&&!!!
You are right! I’m the person whose been ripped off!
I genuinely thought I was applying direct to DVLA and somehow got passed to a company called “licence Secure”. Their confirmation e mail eve n tells me to contact DVLA if I have any problems and to send my old licence back to Swansea.
Robbing **#£@&**!
Won’t make that mistake again. 
Hope others can learn from this.
Ian

Thebeeman wrote:@#@£@&&!!!
You are right! I’m the person whose been ripped off!
I genuinely thought I was applying direct to DVLA and somehow got passed to a company called “licence Secure”. Their confirmation e mail eve n tells me to contact DVLA if I have any problems and to send my old licence back to Swansea.
Robbing **#£@&**!
Won’t make that mistake again. 
Hope others can learn from this.
Ian

You wouldn’t be the first Ian, or the last. Bad luck.

If you’re a member of any club, zoom group or whatever it would be a kindness to warn others. These sort of firms also do passport renewals and I bet they charge an arm and a leg for them. They clearly are very good at it as they take in a lot of no doubt sensible people like you.

How long before they start issuing vaccination certificates I wonder !

It would be interesting to know how you got to their website - if only to be sure that I don't get similarly ripped off!

Did you do an internet search and, if so, exactly what terms did you search for, that led you to "Licence Secure" instead of the actual DVLA site?

Also, literally on the first day of operation there was a scam version of the new GHIS the global health insurance card, charging to ‘help’ you apply for a free card for a fee.

Watch for that one if life returns to normal.

Davy

My neighbour had similar result with the land registry by doing an internet search. £60 for a £4 bit of paper.

It's a major bugbear with search engines. Too many searches for a specific company, product or organisation ends up with someone who provides a similar service (or not) above the actual one you expect. Companies apply "search engine optimisation" to get their product or service as a hit or high up the page when it is not the most relevant result.

A search for Topanol (a heating oil additive) took me to an Amazon page with Canesten Thrush treatment on it

HairyFool wrote:

A search for Topanol (a heating oil additive) took me to an Amazon page with Canesten Thrush treatment on it

Presumably they reckon there is a one in umpteen chance of you changing your mind and buying the thrush medicine instead of the oil additive so it’s worth them paying to get their product up there.  What bugs me is those websites that say:  “ So, you’ve just bought a washing machine. 85 % of people like you went on to buy...”  and point you in the direction of another washing machine.

If you search on G**gle for licence renewals, the first four results to appear are all Ads for services such as these, appearing before the non-Ad link for the www.gov.uk › Driving and transport › Driving licences 

Whenever I use G**gle to search for anything, I always scan down past all the Ad links before selecting anything, as otherwise G**gle are harvesting even more information about your interests etc.

Trustpilot is full of posts complaining about licencesecure.co.uk, which is run by a French national using a UK address apparently.

I guess they've cunningly kept the cost below £100 thus preventing any attempted use of Section 75 refund claims, although those might well fail anyway as the company would say they are simply offering a service for which they charge a fee.

Re Rooperts quiery 
Not sure how I got to the scammers but I know I started off heading for the DVLA site. Maybe in haste I clicked the wrong option but at no time did I suspect I was anywhere other than the DVLA website.
They are obviously deliberately misleading and even tell you that you can track the progress of the application on the gov.uk website. They signed the confirmation e mail “Driving Licence Application, Customer Services”.
At least I received a new licence within a week but a bit worried I passed my debit card details to such a company - will be watching my bank transactions carefully!

Thebeeman wrote:
They are obviously deliberately misleading and even tell you that you can track the progress of the application on the gov.uk website. They signed the confirmation e mail “Driving Licence Application, Customer Services”.

It might be worth emailing the DVLA with details. There are laws about imitation and it seems this lot might be very close to breaking them.

I have been trying over the last few months to wean myself off google and use DuckDuckGo.

Out of interest I have just searched for driving licence, passport and EHIC individually. All answers were the correct government site or else agencies like post office or citizens advice.

Time for us all to make the change. I am also hearing good reports of a browser called Brave although I have still to sample it.

Davy

Agreed - I stopped using Google years ago, because (among other things that I dislike) of the way that they put their "sponsored" links above ones for companies that don't pay them.

I use either Yahoo or DuckDuckGo now. Neither of those serve up anything other than the correct government department on the first page when I search for the department name.

Almost exclusively Bing. Not perfect but a little better

A big problem is actually the pages you visit, most of them get paid by Google Analytics so you end up hooked in even if you try not to.

However (devils advocate here) what everybody has to remember is running the internet IS NOT FREE. We pay our particular ISP (BT, Virgin, Sky etc.) to provide our connection and the backbone they run on but there is a lot going on we do not pay for directly. This has to be funded separately and ultimately the traffic that is generated defines how much is paid. End users (such as us) are only a small part of the mechanics of the internet even if we are a major part of the point of the internet. Like any financial system the money goes around and around and a big part of the injection of money is the advertising industry.

Personally I might be willing to pay something in (as long as it is a reasonable amount) on top of the ISP charges to have the internet without advertising but far too many people won't.

Get "you are" new licence here?

Lisencing !!

There are similar scammers out there that try to charge you for Tax and MOT details which are free on the Gov website, so easy to get scammed.

Barleycorn wrote:There are similar scammers out there that try to charge you for Tax and MOT details which are free on the Gov website, so easy to get scammed.

Same with the "green" windscreen stickers required for many towns in Europe.

Purchased direct from the foreign site they are usually only 4 or 5 pounds. Ten times as much (or more) from the scam sites, so beware for when we are released from house arrest!! 

Thanks for highlighting this scam. It prompted me to check my license, and without the period of grace given by dvla due to covid, I needed to renew. All done on line very easy , £14:allthumbz:

Don't Google or use a search engine for any Government department or agency. Type in 'gov.uk' which is the umbrella interface to all Government sites whether it be DVLA, HMRC or DWP (benefits, pensions), Passport Office etc. and follow menus and links from there. That way you don't get scammed by bogus sites.

Do the Google search and then report to Google.  Maybe if enough people complain, they may do something.  On the other hand, who is paying the piper?

SteveUK wrote:Do the Google search and then report to Google.

Sorry Steve, but that would be a waste of time. As long as they don't actually pretend to be the DVLA - which generally they don't - they are doing nothing illegal. And, as you say, Google get paid by them, and the government sites don't - and Google always put the payers first.

Best solution IMO: don't use Google for anything. They have grown way way too big for anyone's good except their own now.