DVLA Scam

I needed to retax my car yesterday and I thought that I had gone onto the genuine DVLA site to do this.

I paid by credit card and check transactions every day. I noticed that there was a charge of an additional £0.50. I queried this with the DVLA and they confirmed that they would not have made the extra charge.

This morning ( 28 Feb) I noticed that a further monthly direct debit of £5.95 had been taken.

I 'phoned my credit card supplier and got the payments cancelled and refunded.

The told me that the way the payments were set up would mean that cancelling the credit card would have made no difference and that the payments would have continued even with a new card.

So please be careful out there in cyberspace.

Brian

Brian, may be worth letting everyone know the url of this outfit so we can all blacklist it ? Personally I tax my cars at out village post office, yes its easier online but local PO's are vital and as the advert says "every little helps" them stay open and offer vital services.

John

Similar "intermediary" websites exist for everything from driving tests and passports to parcel tracking, and they often appear before the real thing on searches. Unlike the "your renewal payment failed" emails, these are completely legal (if morally dubious) "services" as long as somewhere on the site they state that they are not the official websites. To quote Tom Waits "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away".

Brian G

No, please don't put their UR on this website, at least in a form that may get picked up by search engines.

Best advice is to always go via the .gov website.

Neil

John, the name of the scammers is;

vehicleinformation.uk

And I have sent them a rude email, childish I know but it made me feel better.

Neil, I hope the way I've put their name is OK.

I should point out that I started off on the Gov.UK site but got lead off somewhere.

Brian

Edited By Brian H on 28/02/2020 11:09:56

Having had a quick look I actually I would not call that a scam site. They have the costs clearly marked and are providing a service. Problem is the service costs £5.95 a month and most if not all of what they provide it is available on line for no charge. Dubious value but not an outright con.

Robert G8RPI

Yes, I agree Robert but the problem was that you are directed to their site from the Gov.Uk one and there is no signup or mention that any charges will be made.

Brian

There is no link out from the DVLA website (gov.uk) that I can see. BUT if you search for DVLA tax car on google an ad link to a site related to the one you had trouble with is top of the page.
I can't follow this due to protection on the system I'm using at the moment but it could be a less clear webpage than their main one or even a 3rd party. Perhaps this is what you went to. The SCAM sites are set up to look like the official ones. If they have a page like that then it is improper.

I particularly dislike the amount of click bait and ad links we get bombarded with.

Robert G8RPI.

I got side tracked to that site when taxing my car, then realising after signing up that it was nothing to do with the DVLA, I returned to the site and found that I could cancel if done within a certain time which I did. (You don't get the 50P back) but you get conformation that your account is closed.

Edited By MichaelR on 28/02/2020 15:00:01

I nearly got caught with this last year , just noted at the bottom a charge , when i knew there should not be one , I sent an email saying that they were a con , They replied not because they will send me a reminder next year ( but at a cost)

Thanks MichaelR, I paid by credit card so the credit card company reimbursed the £0.50 along with the £5.95 that they charged on direct debit.

I wanted to let people know that this, in my view, fraudulent site existed, and that it was possible to do something about the charges.

Brian

I have heard of this scam before. If you continue with the transaction presumably you do get your tax from the DVLA via the scammers? If so are the DVLA are complicit in this?

Note that when the DVLC (or A, nowadays) send you the letter telling you that you neer to re-licence/tax your vehicle, there is a URL on that letter that will take you to the relevant web site and also a reference number that will link them directly to your vehicle. They do try quite hard to make it easy for us

My car tax is duue 1/4/20 so I visited the DVLA site and checked everything, lo and behold I see that I do not have to carry out a car tax function as they tell me that as they have my Debit card number they will inform a bit before and the extract the money. More detail about changing card numberes and failure to have the card process but it seems all OK.

This is not a process that I am happy with, the automatic annual extracting of payment from a debit card once you have used it once.

I used to pay my Model Engineer annual subscription by cheque, and each year received a reminder that the subscription required renewing. One year I paid by debit card instead, and since then it has been automatically renewed.

Maybe there is way to opt out of this procedure, but I would much rather that it was configured so that you had to opt in.

Edited By Harry Wilkes on 01/03/2020 15:20:44