By changing the address on my driving licence, I was somehow signed up to something that began charging my credit card £39 a month and was going to carry on charging for ever.
It was Barclaycard that spotted it and warned me it was a ‘scam’ in a text alert. Had I really agreed to a recurring payment to a company called British Drive?
I had no idea what British Drive was, and at first suspected it was an insurance policy, or the firm that organised my recent speeding course.
Eventually, I realised it could be something to do with going on to the DVLA website – or so I thought – to change my driving licence address.
I tried to cancel the payment on the Barclaycard app but it wouldn’t cancel. I rang Barclaycard and it told me I had to cancel the payment with the company involved.
Barclaycard said this was a ‘scam’, but its attitude, to begin with, was that I had to contact the ‘scam’ providers to ask them to stop scamming me.
I put the name ‘British Drive’ into an internet search and found a company that, pointlessly enough, manages all your DVLA needs. Its phone line had waiting times of more than an hour, surprise surprise.
I rang Barclaycard again, and it now had waiting times of 20 minutes and was playing a track by the 1980s legend Sade, presumably because its answering message had been playing so long that Sade was still number one when it started.
When I finally got through, Barclaycard suggested I search my email inbox for evidence, and when I did I found an email from the DVLA confirming I had requested an address change, then another from ‘British Drive’, sent at the same time, confirming it was doing the address change.
Right at the end, after the sign-off, it said this in the small print: ‘If you want to unsubscribe from our services please access this link here: motoring.dvla.gov.uk/service/DvoConsumer.portal_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=VMA&_nfls=false
Am I really so unreasonable to think that link looks like it is related to the DVLA legitimately? Barclaycard said I was not and, what’s more, it thought the link so misleading it now upgraded my query from a ‘scam’ to a ‘fraud’, and began the process of refunding me via insurance. Of course you would not click to unsubscribe on that link even if you saw it, because you might think that would cancel your chance of address application.
But if you did click it, you would find a whole world of trouble – a contract, or ‘Third-Party Service Acknowledgement’: ‘By agreeing to the terms, you, Melissa Louise Kite, have acknowledged that we are a third-party company providing services related to your driving licence application. We are not associated with the DVLA or any government body. This has been clearly stated on our website, and by checking the agreement box, you confirmed your understanding of this distinction… You have chosen to use our platform for the convenience and support we provide.’
Which, to be clear, was not really convenience and support. It was nearly £500 a year to be taken from you for no reason you knew of, because you didn’t say not to take it.
I checked with the DVLA and it confirmed this company was nothing to do with it. But then how did they get my credit card details? Because I’m as sure as I can be that I tried to go on to the official DVLA site to change my address. Somewhere during that process, maybe, this other lot intercepted me.
It’s mind-blowing to me. It’s unfathomable how I got passed or grabbed sideways in cyberspace by a company that then set up a recurring payment on my credit card that would run for ever, taking potentially thousands from me.
British Drive claims that it was all legit, and that I signed up to its ‘services’ by not signing out of them. I suppose I could have clicked on a website that wasn’t the DVLA. But then why the email from the DVLA which came in first?
Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in this simple question: who would agree to pay 40 quid a month for ever to change the address on their driving licence when the DVLA do it for nothing? No one, knowingly.
Only British Drive knows how it seamlessly convinced me to put my credit card number in to pay it quite large sums of money for nothing I knew about.
I asked by email how the company pulled it off: ‘Come on, tell me how you did it?’ But it didn’t reply.
I can see from online motoring forums that lots of people are complaining that the same thing happened to them.
And do you think these people haven’t all contacted the DVLA to complain? I emailed the DVLA. A spokeswoman said: ‘Most third-party websites operate legally. However, where they act illegally or are misleading, DVLA works with our cyber security partners to arrange for them to be removed.’
But this one wasn’t removed, and while British Drive did say it was refunding me after I informed it that I was writing about this, it is still busy intercepting motorists to offer them the chance to change the address on their driving licence for £486 a year.
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