ESTA crap

Tony EH

I'm off to the US in a couple of weeks and have to do this ESTA scam, which now costs people money. I haven't got an ESTA since 2010 and it was free then, but it seems the racket now includes handing over money as well as all your details.

Anyhow, after typing everything out, I get to the end of the nonsense and see the following line:

You will see the charge for our Service on your credit/bank statement displayed as: ESTA-AMERICA - $89

$89???

WTF?

Avada

Tony EH wrote: »

I'm off to the US in a couple of weeks and have to do this ESTA scam, which now costs people money. I haven't got an ESTA since 2010 and it was free then, but it seems the racket now includes handing over money as well as all your details.

Anyhow, after typing everything out, I get to the end of the nonsense and see the following line:

You will see the charge for our Service on your credit/bank statement displayed as: ESTA-AMERICA - $89

$89???

WTF?

My guess is you are on a private companies website. The correct fee is $14.

Here is the official website: https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/

ProudDUB

Hate to break it to you, but it sounds like you were scammed by one of the many bogus ESTA sites out there.

The application fee is only 14 euros and that is what you'll be charged if you use the official government site.

http://dublin.usembassy.gov/general/esta.html

Jayop

I'm going in a few weeks and need to do it too. I hate the though of it.

There's three in the office that need to do one, can we all go on the same one even if we're unrelated?

Tony EH

God damn it.

I went here: http://www.esta.ie/

Is there any way I can cancel it?

Avada

Tony EH wrote: »

God damn it.

I went here: http://www.esta.ie/

Is there any way I can cancel it?

Try to contact them, they say in their t&c's that they have a 30 day cancellation policy.

https://www.esta-america.org/contact.html

Tony EH

Aye, I will.

Still not happy about handing all that info over to them though. My parents names and who I'm staying with? :mad:

How are these bull sites allowed?

Fck sake.

jaymcg91

They're providing a service. It's your own responsibility to check it's the correct service.

Uncle_moe

Feels like this shouldn't be allowed by IEDR the registry for all irish websites using the .ie domain.
This site is purely a mask that redirects here when you go to apply: https://www.esta-america.org

According to .ie you are supposed to have some connection to ireland in order to have a site on .ie but i can't see much of one here. The whois lookup gives a name of an individual in Ireland so i can only assume he makes a couple of cents out of every click through from his site. Seems like complete illegitimate use of the .ie top level domain according to their rules.
In future when doing anything with the american government online always lookout for .gov at the end of the url as they are the only ones who can use this.

Tony EH

jaymcg91 wrote: »

They're providing a service. It's your own responsibility to check it's the correct service.

Go way out of that. It's scam, catching out the unsuspecting.

It's not clear at all what their charges are until you get to the end of the process.

That's slight of hand, if ever it existed.

novarock

From the front page of esta.ie

Legal Disclaimer: This website is operated by a private company which provides information about the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. We are NOT affiliated with the government of the United States. Any outgoing links on our website to third parties may offer services and products for a fee. You are encouraged to read and agree to the operating policies of all websites you visit.

Tony EH

Uncle_moe wrote: »

Feels like this shouldn't be allowed by IEDR the registry for all irish websites using the .ie domain.
This site is purely a mask that redirects here when you go to apply: https://www.esta-america.org

According to .ie you are supposed to have some connection to ireland in order to have a site on .ie but i can't see much of one here. The whois lookup gives a name of an individual in Ireland so i can only assume he makes a couple of cents out of every click through from his site. Seems like complete illegitimate use of the .ie top level domain according to their rules.
In future when doing anything with the american government online always lookout for .gov at the end of the url as they are the only ones who can use this.

Seems the "admin" and "technical contact" is in Peru. According to Scamadvisor anyway.

aperocot

Any chance you could dispute this with your credit card provider?

Tony EH

I tried. Got onto them, but they said that there was nothing they could do.

In any case, I fired off a mail to whatever company is behind esta.ie and told them not to draw down on the payment.

toadfly

To be fair OP its your responsibility to ensure you know how much you are being charged before putting in your payment details. That's the most basic rule of paying online.

I applied for mine last week and was $14, less than €13.

godtabh

Brother in law did that recently. Spoke to the bank and got it cancelled. They said its a common enough charge to cancel

Tony EH

toadfly wrote: »

To be fair OP its your responsibility to ensure you know how much you are being charged before putting in your payment details. That's the most basic rule of paying online.

I applied for mine last week and was $14, less than €13.

An honest website would have the charges front and centre.

This is a scam, nothing more.

ProudDUB

godtabh wrote: »

Brother in law did that recently. Spoke to the bank and got it cancelled. They said its a common enough charge to cancel

Yep. I'd say that Irish credit card companies are well used to getting phone calls about ESTA charges.

jaymcg91

Tony EH wrote: »

An honest website would have the charges front and centre.

This is a scam, nothing more.

A scam would infer it was dishonest or illegal - this is neither of those things.

They take advantage of people who are too lazy to research the correct ESTA website.

Tony EH

Of course it's dishonest. Not having your charges present and clear until the user reaches the end of the process is dishonest. Why are you making excuses for scams?

iusedtoknow

Tony EH wrote: »

Of course it's dishonest. Not having your charges present and clear until the user reaches the end of the process is dishonest. Why are you making excuses for scams?

Caveat Emptor...buyer beware.

A 2 minute google will show that it's not official, the fourth section on wikipedia on ESTA talks about 3rd party website. The airlines tell you what site to go to and finally the site itself (as cited above) makes it clear it is not the official page

Legal Disclaimer: This website is operated by a private company which provides information about the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. We are NOT affiliated with the government of the United States. Any outgoing links on our website to third parties may offer services and products for a fee. You are encouraged to read and agree to the operating policies of all websites you visit.

Short of the Secretary of State knocking on your door and typing in the address into your browser for you, it is more than clear that esta.ie is not an official site.

Missyelliot2

An easy mistake to make OP, especially as you were probably just anxious to get this part of your trip out of the way.
I would contact your bank, but it's unfair that you have to go through the this stress.

heavydemon

Missyelliot2 wrote: »

An easy mistake to make OP, especially as you were probably just anxious to get this part of your trip out of the way.
I would contact your bank, but it's unfair that you have to go through the this stress.

As someone mentioned above you don't need to contact your bank and cancel the transaction. You can contact the website and they will refund the money.

Tony EH

iusedtoknow wrote: »

Caveat Emptor...buyer beware.

A 2 minute google will show that it's not official, the fourth section on wikipedia on ESTA talks about 3rd party website. The airlines tell you what site to go to and finally the site itself (as cited above) makes it clear it is not the official page



Short of the Secretary of State knocking on your door and typing in the address into your browser for you, it is more than clear that esta.ie is not an official site.

Bullshit.

Incredible. People advocating this sort crap.

Truly incredible.

toadfly

Tony EH wrote: »

An honest website would have the charges front and centre.

This is a scam, nothing more.

Its not a scam really, its laziness on your part that meant you're out of pocket. Dont blame others for your laziness and lack of research.

Tony EH

Of course it's a scam, don't be ridiculous.

It goes about its scheme in an underhanded way. Their costs are not made explicit to the user, until the very end of the process and designed deliberately as such. An honest website has their costs in the clear and upfront, not buried in reams of text, or at the end of a process.

Your attempts to justify it and advocate these scams are falling on deaf ears. I'm not interested.

While it may not be fraud exactly, the sites operation falls well within the realm of scam.

_______________________________________________________________
scam
skam/
nouninformal

noun: scam; plural noun: scams

1. 1.
   a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
   "an insurance scam"
   synonyms:fraud, swindle, fraudulent scheme, racket, trick; Morepharming;
   informalcon, hustle, flimflam, bunco, grift, gyp, shakedown
   "the scam involved a series of bogus investment deals"

verb
verb: scam; 3rd person present: scams; past tense: scammed; past participle: scammed; gerund or present participle: scamming
1.
swindle.
"a guy that scams the elderly out of their savings"
synonyms:swindle, cheat, deceive, trick, dupe, hoodwink, double-cross, gull; informalrip off, con, fleece, shaft, hose, sting, bilk, diddle, rook, gyp, finagle, bamboozle, flimflam, put one over on, pull a fast one on, sucker, stiff, shake down, hornswoggle
"he was trying to scam residents with phony insurance policies"



_______________________________________________________________

silja

Mod note:
Enough with the scam/ not scam discussion. If you have anything to add to help the OP, feel free to post, but the philosophical discussion will stop here.

Tony EH

Well, in fairness, there's not much people can do to help.

I await a mail from this esta.ie crowd to state that they've not drawn down on the transaction. Once I receive that, I can go through the .gov site and set it up properly.

Doing a bit more research, it seems that there are quite a number of these esta "fronts" in operation.

él statutorio

If you end up getting the (expensive) Esta you'll just have to chalk it down to experience.

TBH there's no excuse for not doing your homework on this. All the airlines link to the legitimate site and a simple bit of searching (not clicking on the first link you see) would've gotten you to the correct site also.

Tony EH

Aer Lingus only sent the .gov site link to my email today. I don't recall them mentioning it when I bought the ticket and I'd forgotten about the ESTA requirement. It's been 5 years since I set one up and the process was both free and straightforward.

I clicked on the .ie site because I thought it would have been Irish based and if anything went wrong I could sort it out quicker.

But, as it turns out the .ie is a front.

Besides, this nonsense isn't attributable to "homework". The site is deliberately hiding the fact that they charge 6+ times the actual charge of an ESTA. They don't even have the cost to review before you hit the pay button, precisely because people wouldn't use the "service".

It's extremely deceptive.

And speaking of excuses, there's no excuse for the site not to display their prices in a clear and transparent manner.

Tony EH

Most people wouldn't know what a US government site would look like and frankly that site looks quite official to me, or I wouldn't have been sucked in, which it's clearly designed to do.

Also, I know they are technically not breaking any laws, but that's no excuse.

Again, why are people defending this?

That's the most staggering thing about the whole nonsense.

FreudianSlippers

Tony EH wrote: »

I think it was a bit of a cheeky racket to set something up as free and then later start charging a fee for something that should be free.

Anyone shocked by the US Government charging administration fees is clearly not the most worldly individual.

But, as far as the "front" sites like esta.ie are concerned, I consider them to be very much scamming people out of money.

let me guess, you think that's perfectly fine.

It's obvious fraud where they indicate they are working on behalf of the US Government, but anyone falling for a 500% mark-up isn't getting a lot of sympathy from me.

Bayberry

Tony EH wrote: »

I think it was a bit of a cheeky racket to set something up as free and then later start charging a fee for something that should be free.

The US government decided that the cost of running the ESTA scheme should be borne by the people applying for ESTAs. An easy decision for them to make, when the people who elect them will never need an ESTA

(Yeah, I know, the counter argument is that the ESTAs are required by the US, so the US should bear the cost, but if you need an ESTA, you don't have a vote, and the US has decided that it doesn't actually need foreign tourist dollars, so you pays your money and you takes your choice).

Tony EH

Bayberry wrote: »

The US government decided that the cost of running the ESTA scheme should be borne by the people applying for ESTAs. An easy decision for them to make, when the people who elect them will never need an ESTA

(Yeah, I know, the counter argument is that the ESTAs are required by the US, so the US should bear the cost, but if you need an ESTA, you don't have a vote, and the US has decided that it doesn't actually need foreign tourist dollars, so you pays your money and you takes your choice).

Well, actually they say the cost was introduced to "...to fund a programme which aims to promote tourism in the US and attract foreign spending."

Which is a load of old pony.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10899968

twowheelsonly

Tony EH wrote: »

An honest website would have the charges front and centre.

This is a scam, nothing more.

It's a case of live and learn I'm afraid.

You're saying now that it's a scam and they should have their prices up front but you're saying that in hindsight. As pointed out, they provide a service and you paid for it. No point in complaining now that there was no prices up and that it was $14 everywhere else. You wouldn't order a television online if there was no price on it just because it was €250 on every other site.

On the other hand, you have to be thanked for pointing it out as otherwise I'm sure there's plenty more would be caught like this.

silja

Due to the ignored Mod warning in post 27, this thread is closed.