INBOX Your letters and online comments

I was planning a holiday trip to the US in winter and was looking to renew the ESTA documents for my wife (I personally have a visa for the US). I googled ESTA and the top result was a website (esta-onlinevisas.com) that looked like a US government site. I opened the form, which was a US government form, and filled in my wife’s details. I was expecting to pay US$14 for the ESTA. However, paying with my credit card, I discovered that I was charged US$99 for the ESTA document. I went back to the website and discovered a disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying that this was not an official government website and that they charged US$99 for obtaining the ESTA document via them.

I know I should have read the small print on the website. But it looked very much like a US government website so I started to fill in the form not realising I was using a “middleman”. Besides the obvious deception, the website doesn’t provide any service/added value at all for the US$99 charged that I could see. I still had to do all the work myself !

In the end I did receive the ESTA, so the site is not illegal. However, please beware of these sites and make sure not to be fooled by a website that looks “official”.

Meir Malinsky, London