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I'm really pee'd off about this.

The Mrs went on-line to renew her passport the other day and inadvertently used a look-a-like website [passport-UK.co.uk] rather than the official .gov one.
She only realised her mistake today when she went in to the post office to post off the paperwork [forms etc] that the scam website sent on to her and they asked for the £72.50 fee. She's already paid £69 to the fake site....

And now I find out that she is just one of 1000s of people that get taken in by this every year and that we cant get any money back

DAMN!

Coxey.
Sorry to hear this.

We had the same thing with Land Registry.
Look alike web sites posing as official site are the bane of the internet.
Even if you pay with a credit card you still cannot get reimbursed.

There needs to be a way of taking these people to the small claims court, for mis-representation.

Making people aware is the best thing. Thanks.

A work colleague got caught by a similar scam on an EHIC (the old E111) card. These scoundrels pay to promote their ads on Google so that they come top of the search list. Do Google care? Do they *&^% ! Always look closely at the URL before clicking or search on somewhere like moneysavingexpert for the official link first.

The easiest thing would be for the Govinmunt to tell Goggle, Twatter, MyFace etc to have a registered office in the UK which is responsible for the content. If anything untioward happens the filth can go and ask them questions and hold them responsible for the content. If they refuse the UK Govinmunt should ban them from the internet on any UK ISP. They would lose a wad of revenue.

The only way to deal with scammers is with a baseball bat....

If you need to use a Government service just go to www.gov.uk - all there - can search for EHIC and it goes to NHS site.

Mike

Indeed. www.gov.uk is the best portal for officialdom.

The moneysavingexpert forums are also good for searching if you suspect a scam or a website offering offers "too good to be true". My wife signed up for some US based scam that hit your card for a regular payment unless you sent back sample products very quickly. So quickly it was actually impossible. By showing her bank Martin Lewis's warnings from other people that it was a scam they agreed to refund her the money that had been taken.