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Don't pay money to websites offering to process information for travel to the US, writes CONOR POPE

Some online scams are so blindingly obvious that it’s hard not to think that anyone who is fooled by them kind of deserves it. The widow of a sub-Saharan dictator is never going to send you a semi-literate e-mail completely out of the blue because she wants to share a suitcase filled with blood diamonds with you, and you haven’t won the Spanish lottery, mainly because you haven’t bought a ticket for the Spanish lottery, no matter what that letter says.

And the “lawyer” from Burkina Faso who sends you a message after apparently finding your name on a “register of good persons” asking if you’d have any interest in taking part in some class of insurance fraud in order to secure millions of euro left intestate by some random chap who shares your surname is probably not a real lawyer.

However, there are other online initiatives that are not scams but which nevertheless persuade you to spend money unnecessarily. They’re professional, convincing and legal too. The scores of websites, for instance, that offer to process the travel authorisation that all US-bound travellers now need are slick. They do their level best to create the impression that they offer consumers a great deal when they are just charging for a service that is freely available elsewhere.

Since the beginning of the year, Irish people travelling to the US have had to apply for permission to enter the country through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) programme, which allows the US authorities to vet travellers before they board flights.

While it adds another thin bureaucratic layer on to a US holiday, the system has proven to be comparatively hassle free and very easy to use. There are, however, dozens of online operations that have been set up in its wake seeking to take advantage of a certain degree of consumer confusion that the change has engendered.

And the confusion is easy to understand. A Google search for the word Esta throws up dozens of links, many of which ask people for between €20 and €50 for a service that is completely free elsewhere. One site even goes as far as warning users against “fraudulent websites that collect your private information and claim to submit the application on your behalf” before taking you to a billing page and asking for $49.25 for an Esta application guide.

“What are these guys selling?” asks Simon Nugent of the Irish Travel Agents Association. “Advice on filling in a form? They’re just scams,” he says. The ITAA has received correspondence from numerous members since the beginning of the year outlining complaints from consumers who have been charged up to €40 a time for a service that is free. Some of the sites go as far as billing people who use them per application, so a family of four planning an American holiday could be hit with a bill of €160.

“It’s not endemic but it is rattling around as an issue,” Nugent says.

The US authorities have repeatedly warned people to avoid unofficial sites offering to process the authorisations for a fee but Nugent believes more needs to be done to end the confusion. “We have suggested to the authorities that they do more to publicise their own website. It’s not the most user-friendly system they have dreamed up and we have made that point repeatedly,” Nugent says.

The address for the free Estas is https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/. Anything else is unnecessary.

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