Cost of renewing driving licence (80 year old)

Ciprico

I helped my mother renew her licence on-line ....

On the posted reminder letter it stated the renewal process was "free".

She is 80

Yet when we came to fill the form out, at the end were had no option but to enter cc details and agree to pay £60.

Before clicking we confirmed we were on the correct website, and we received an acknowledgment email from Swansea.

We used the URL given on the reminder letter from Swansea, who strongly recommended the process was done on-line (as opposed to on-paper)

The new driving licence has arrived

Did we do something wrong...

Did we unkowingly get redirected to a 3rd party website who took a hefty "management" fee

Before agreeing to pay we did check we were renew'ing an existing licence for someone over 70

The £60 has been deducted from her credit card, so she has paid for the "free" renewal.

It is not easy to speak to anyone at DVLA - so any help/explanation would be much appreciated....

Mojisola

What's the exact name of the site you used?

elsien

It is free. I suspect you’ve still somehow ended up on a third party site. 

None of the fees are showing up as £60.
https://www.gov.uk/driving-licence-fees

Can you do another dummy application to check what happened? Or check the receipt to see who it shows the payment has gone to? 

You should be on here. It’s generally easier if you find the link on gov.uk and go from there. 

https://motoring.dvla.gov.uk/service/DvoConsumer.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=RE7&_nfls=false

daveyjp

"We used the URL given on the reminder letter from Swansea"

Which is?

Ciprico

Hmm, we used the URL as below, we copied it off the form.

I cannot retrace steps as don't have all the info to hand, but the start of the menu driven process looks familiar...

I suppose we were somehow scammed, and diverted to another website, at the time we thought it very strange to have to enter cc details, and we looked long and hard at the page before clicking yes, but assumed that was part of the authentication process.

Its not impossible the Google auto-completed the URL to something similar

If we were diverted from the main site to a scammer site, it was very well done and clearly designed for fool us

On the cc statement the payment is described as "licence services"...

Were we scammed or duped into using a legimate 3rd party company who as far as I can see did nothing to justify charging £60.

Any point in pursuing our loss, or put it down to experience...

jimjames

Did you enter the URL into the address bar or into the search box? If search box then it could take you to a different site

What comes up on this search for you?

https://www.google.com/search?q=gov+uk+renew+driving+licence+at+70

Pollycat

Ciprico said:

Hmm, we used the URL as below, we copied it off the form.

I cannot retrace steps as don't have all the info to hand, but the start of the menu driven process looks familiar...

I suppose we were somehow scammed, and diverted to another website, at the time we thought it very strange to have to enter cc details, and we looked long and hard at the page before clicking yes, but assumed that was part of the authentication process.

Its not impossible the Google auto-completed the URL to something similar

If we were diverted from the main site to a scammer site, it was very well done and clearly designed for fool us

On the cc statement the payment is described as "licence services"...

Were we scammed or duped into using a legimate 3rd party company who as far as I can see did nothing to justify charging £60.

Any point in pursuing our loss, or put it down to experience...

You weren't scammed.
You've paid a fee for something that is completely pointless - that is a quote by Martin Lewis.

"They are not scams, they're shysters," said Martin Lewis, founder of the website Money Saving Expert.

"They're not stealing your money, they're charging you a fee for something that is completely pointless."

Source:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56886957

If you were told the renewal was free, why did you continue with the application when you were asked to pay £60.00?

MSE warned of this a couple of months ago:

Warning issued to motorists over copycat DVLA websites that charge a premium for services — MoneySavingExpert Forum

Ciprico

As I recall we copied the URL letter for letter from the document into the address bar - but can't be 100% sure now...

Your search above does deliver to the proper site .gov.uk but I'm on a different PC now....

maisie_cat

I just tried google search and the first 4 results were ads before you get to the actual gov.uk link so suspect that is what happened.

Manxman_in_exile

I've just tried typing into my browser address bar what it says on that letter (ie  gov.uk/renew-your-driving-licence-at-70) and then if I hit return it does not take me to the DVLA site but it takes me to search results, the first two of which are non-DVLA "scammers".

Is that because the address in the letter is not a complete website address so it can't go straight to the correct site?  (By contrast, if I preface the address in the letter with "www." it does go to the gov.uk site, but can't find the right page - presumably because it's still not the full address?).

If it's because the address in the DVLA letter is "wrong" because it's incomplete, that is a bit bad of DVLA...

Ebe_Scrooge

Manxman_in_exile said:

I've just tried typing into my browser address bar what it says on that letter (ie  gov.uk/renew-your-driving-licence-at-70) and then if I hit return it does not take me to the DVLA site but it takes me to search results, the first two of which are non-DVLA "scammers".

Is that because the address in the letter is not a complete website address so it can't go straight to the correct site?  (By contrast, if I preface the address in the letter with "www." it does go to the gov.uk site, but can't find the right page - presumably because it's still not the full address?).

If it's because the address in the DVLA letter is "wrong" because it's incomplete, that is a bit bad of DVLA...

Interesting.  I've just tried that, typing "gov.uk/renew-your-driving-licence-at-70" into the address bar and hitting enter, it goes to a "proper" Gov.uk "page not found" error message.  But type in "gov.uk/renew-driving-licence-at-70" (as per the renewal form), and it goes to the proper Gov renewal site.

So I'm guessing that depending on what browser/operating system you're using, a small typo (in this case, erroneously adding the word "your"), could bring up search results containing links to dodgy sites?