Citizen Card Scam

justjayne01_2

My daughter is 33 and her passport due to expire next month. She couldn’t afford to renew her passport and has no intention of travelling abroad any time soon, so when she found this citizen card online, she decided to apply for one. 

Now, she has never submitted her passport as proof of ID to this company and she hasn’t verified her address, but, the company have taken her £15 as “an application fee” and are refusing to refund it because the “7 day cooling off period/money back guarantee doesn’t apply” (I thought it was 14 days cooling off period anyway?) She paid via PayPal and is making a claim via their complaints process. In the meantime, the company have said that she must cancel that before she can claim her money back from them. But even then, they can’t guarantee she will get it because of the above reasons. 

The card isn’t accepted anywhere she would want to present it as proof of age/ID etc anyway. How are they allowed to run this company like that? It’s disgusting. 

davidmcn

Why does your daughter want a refund, and what's the "scam"?

[Deleted User]

 She really should have looked into where it was accepted before agreeing to buy. It's useless, Only good for underage students to get in to clubs. 

Aylesbury_Duck

They can run a company like that because there is no shortage of people prepared to buy something into which they haven't done any research.

What terms did she agree to when applying?  We can check that they are lawful or not.

unholyangel

They do have buried away in the small print you can cancel but will not be refunded. 

However, terms don't overwrite law and by law, they still need to provide certain information (such as that you will not benefit from the right to cancel) and nor do their terms imply they're seeking to rely on an exemption from either the right to cancel or the CCRs on the whole.

So what information was she provided by them in a durable medium? As part of the process, do they explicitly get you to request the service is to begin before the end of the cancellation period? 

jasonwatkins

I don’t have a passport or a driving licence and I was led to believe that applying for one of these cards was the next best thing.

Revolut, for example, take these as ID if you want to verify an account with them.

So I started the application process and found out that I had to pay the “processing” fee as well.  I’d found a voucher code that gave me £5 off which was handy.

So the first lot of documents it asked for was .. a passport or driving licence.

It gives you another option of presenting a birth certificate to a professional person you know who agrees to verify that they know you but, as you’d expect, nobody will do it because they either haven’t heard of the card or they literally have to know you.

So I’ve asked for a refund of the processing fee which I don’t expect I’ll get so yes, they ARE a scam.

[Deleted User]

jasonwatkins said:

I don’t have a passport or a driving licence and I was led to believe that applying for one of these cards was the next best thing.

Revolut, for example, take these as ID if you want to verify an account with them.

So I started the application process and found out that I had to pay the “processing” fee as well.  I’d found a voucher code that gave me £5 off which was handy.

So the first lot of documents it asked for was .. a passport or driving licence.

It gives you another option of presenting a birth certificate to a professional person you know who agrees to verify that they know you but, as you’d expect, nobody will do it because they either haven’t heard of the card or they literally have to know you.

So I’ve asked for a refund of the processing fee which I don’t expect I’ll get so yes, they ARE a scam.

 Still not a scam that you didnt read the small print before paying 

jasonwatkins

I'll withdraw the "scam" remark as I was exceedingly irritated and frustrated earlier on.  The money isn't really the issue.

When you're encouraged to apply for this card because you don't have a passport or driving licence and you subsequently find out the only way you can apply is to supply a passport or driving licence then it becomes head-bangingly annoying.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Small print is pretty clear to me!
https://www.citizencard.com/requirements-for-a-first-uk-id-card

[Deleted User]

jasonwatkins said:

I'll withdraw the "scam" remark as I was exceedingly irritated and frustrated earlier on.  The money isn't really the issue.

When you're encouraged to apply for this card because you don't have a passport or driving licence and you subsequently find out the only way you can apply is to supply a passport or driving licence then it becomes head-bangingly annoying.

 I can understand that, your GP not willing to help, college tutor, vicar? 

jasonwatkins

_shel said:

jasonwatkins said:

I'll withdraw the "scam" remark as I was exceedingly irritated and frustrated earlier on.  The money isn't really the issue.

When you're encouraged to apply for this card because you don't have a passport or driving licence and you subsequently find out the only way you can apply is to supply a passport or driving licence then it becomes head-bangingly annoying.

 I can understand that, your GP not willing to help, college tutor, vicar? 

The thought of me having a vicar did make me smile

I'm going to ask at my GP's tomorrow but my options are very limited unfortunately.  I asked in my local Post Office today and they said no.   Went to the bank and the girl I asked clearly hadn't even heard of the card so rather than going to ask someone, she just said no we don't do that.

The one thing that might present a problem is that the way the CitizenCard application works is that you need to either text or email a link to the nominated professional person for them to fill out so I suppose there might be some hesitation about letting me text someone's personal phone.

We'll see though.   If I don't get any luck at the GP's then I'm going to give up and just accept i'll never have the "right" ID.