Please help - scam?

[JibberJabberBlahBlahBlah]

Morning mumsnetters. I’m hoping someone here may have had the same experience and can advise…. I moved house in December and contacted the DVLA to change the address on my licence. I have email confirmation from them. I realised yesterday that a company called ‘British drive’ have been taking £39 a month from my credit card ever since. I called them - the man was aggressive and said I’d signed up to their subscription service and should have read it more thoroughly. He said I hadn’t changed my address with the DVLA but with them. I had never heard of them before seeing them on my statement. They have sent me an email ‘proving’ that I ticked some box apparently saying I’d signed up. I informed my bank and the DVLA about it. I see on trust pilot than others have been caught out by this. Is there anything I can do to get my money back? Actually, it’s the principle more than the money which I realise is a privileged position. I’m so angry!

OP do you have any other emails from the time you did this? If you did it through the official DVLA site I'd expect the email to have come through almost instantly. If you used a third party then it would have taken a day or two for them to process your application. Did you get an email receipt at the time for the payment you thought was the one off payment for changing your name?

I suspect you have accidentally clicked on a look a like site and not the actual DVLA. It's easily done unfortunately, it's happened to me with paying a ULEZ type charge.

Otherwise it's a mighty coincidence that your card details got hacked by a site offering the exact service you used on the official gov.uk site, I think the most likely thing that has happened here is the obvious one.

You may well have had an email from the DVLA, on account of you handing over your details to a middleman. Still doesn't change the fact that you did NOT do it via the DVLA site. All the middleman did was email DVLA, give them the licence number and change of address details and charge you money for doing something that would have taken you 5 minutes and cost nothing to do via the correct site.

You can argue all you want that you went through the DVLA site, but you didn't and apart from stopping the payments going forward, there's little else you can do.

How did they get your bank details then?

You must have signed up

OP is saying that isn't what happened.

Obviously without being privy to the OP's complaint and the bank's yet-to-happen response, I can't predict what the Ombudsman would do.

OP you don't seem to understand how these companies work. You inadvertently clicked on an unofficial site.
However it is not a scam.
They take your details and forward them to the official body.
For a fat fee.
The official body then responds to you.
You have paid for an unnecessary middleman.
It's a bit like buying some item and then finding much cheaper ones were available elsewhere.
Caveat emptor.

@JibberJabberBlahBlahBlah you have an email from them because you handed your details over to a middle-man who then passed them on to the DVLA.

The DVLA don't charge for a change of address so you can't have done it through them - it's just not possible.

There are lots of warnings out there about spoof websites and companies offering services like this - they're not scams (you got what you signed up for) but they are dodgy and need to be reported.

What is the ongoing service they are providing for a monthly subscription charge?

I got caught with something similar a few years ago when applying for a new passport I think it was. Filled out an identical form on a copy cat looking website and somewhere in the small print they said they weren’t the passport authority and would pass the application on for a fee (at least not an ongoing monthly one). What sort of business model is that??

I nearly got caught similarly when trying to get the register entry for my house from the land registry.

Clicked on the first link on Google and thought the price had gone up from what I thought it was. Luckily, I realised I wasn't on the correct site before I paid four times what the price should have been.

I've heard of people getting similarly caught when ringing their insurers to report a n accident.

I don’t think it’s card fraud as such, I think it’s a scam. It was the dvla and I have proof. I don’t know how it happened. I was posting to see if anyone else had been caught out by it.

If that is the case then I don't see how it could have happened

Did their email include an receipt/invoice?

Indeed! I have absolutely no idea what it’s a subscription for - I cannot see why anyone would need it. Hence the scam bit I guess.

That’s what’s she’s saying but she’s also saying she paid to change her address but there is no charge for changing address so she’s clearly done something wrong.

No it didn’t actually - just the standard dvla thanks for you application your new licence will be with you… etc and definitely from the official dvla.

You have an email from DVLA, because they started the change request with them on your behalf.

I agree it is unethical though.

If you still have the same browser you will be able to go back in your browser history and find the specific URL (web address) you used at the time. Can you do that and copy & paste it here?

It’s funny that at no point did I have any communication whatsoever from British drive.

If it tried to charge you then it wasn't the government website. Which is good as that means you must have been on a well faked site rather than having malware on your device getting your details another way. I would be far more concerned if you'd used the actual website and therefore not entered your card details when applying as that would've put your card details at risk of further fraud.

@JibberJabberBlahBlahBlah

You didn't do this through this official DVLA site though, as you wouldn't be asked to pay to do this so wouldn't have shared your card details.

When you applied for the new license, did you enter your card details at any point on the site you did it through? If so, it wasn't the officially DVLA site but one pretending to be.

I'm unsure as to whether you understand that from your responses?

Then you did not pay the DVLA the money.

What makes more sense? That you put your info into a 3rd party website and paid, they then put those details into the DVLA website who emailed you, or the DVLA decided to charge you and nobody else for a service then pass your card details to a 3rd party?

If you paid then you were definitely on a 3rd party site OP, sorry.
They are very clever and its easy to get caught but its not illegal

Speak to your bank's fraud department. My son got caught in a similar way with is DBS. He got all his money back

Of course it's a scam. OP signed up for something only because she contacted the DVLA to change her address. You don't need to pay a monthly charge.

Did you type your card details in to any website?

If not, it's fraud.

If so, you paid for something without checking what it was. It would not have been the DVLA site because they do not ask you to enter card details for address changes.

You seem to be saying that you entered your card details into the official DVLA site, and a copycat site somehow got hold of them. Is that what you think happened?

If you're convinced you actually typed dvla into the address bar then potentially it was a minor difference such as dvia in the address name.