DON’T BE FOOLED BY SEARCH
RESULTS
Search engines like Google and Bing have transformed out lives. But they
bring with them the danger of being tricked into paying high fees for services
that are available free or cheaper on official sites.
The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) entitles you to health care
from the state, usually free, when you are travelling to any other EEA country
(the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). But if you need
one and do a search on ‘ehic’ the sites at the top of the results will all
charge you for the card which is in fact free. One even calls itself
nhs-direct.org.uk implying that it is part of the NHS. It is not. These firms
typically charge £14.99 for simply passing your application on to the NHS. Some
even offer an ‘express’ service which of course cannot do anything to speed up
the NHS which usually sends it within a few days. Get your EHIC free from the
official NHS site
www.ehic.org.uk.
Another common trick is to hijack searches for helplines for a bank or
company. But if you call these ‘helplines’ it can cost you up to £1.65 a minute
from a landline or £2.55 a minute from a mobile phone. Avoid any service which
uses a number beginning 09. They offer you nothing you cannot find free online
and some even warn that the advice ‘cannot be relied upon’. To find a genuine
helpline it is always better to go to the company website and search there. If
the company uses a number beginning 084 or 087 that can also cost you more than
a normal phone. Use
www.saynoto0870.com
to find a free or cheaper alternative.
Among other chancers that hijack searches are companies which charge you
double the normal cost for a driving test theory exam or practical test (the
real site is here
www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/LearnerAndNewDrivers/LearningToDriveOrRide/DG_4022530 Other sites charge you three or four times the real cost of the ESTA
visa waiver you need to travel to the USA – that costs $14 but some sites charge
$49. Official site is here
https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov. Searching for a visa to other countries will also bring up unofficial
and expensive sites instead of the real thing.
These companies all pay the search engine for their position at the top
of the results list. Their links should show that by a pale cream background but
it is not always that clear. Nor does it always sort the real from the fake.
Some official sites pay to be in the top places. And some fake sites make it
into the non-paid-for list below.
So always be very, very careful when searching for services. Avoid the
expensive traps laid by these legal but undesirable alternatives.
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