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An unofficial passport website has sued more than 150 of its own customers after they tried to cancel or refused to pay believing they had been misled. Some who used Britishpassportservices.co.uk said they thought they were on the government's official website when trying to book appointments for urgent passports.But the website told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours that there were disclaimers which the customers did not read.
Some of them have now been sued.
'Threatening'Retired City of London Police officer Mark Dilliway paid Britishpassportservices.co.uk £117 for an appointment - which is free of charge from the government. "There was a button there to arrange an urgent appointment," he said. It was not until he rang the official Passport Office that he realised his mistake....Read more here
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http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/b...ers-court.html
Hiding behind the safety of a computer screen, the architect of a scam passport appointment service routinely shows no mercy in bullying customers who have the temerity to dispute his outrageous bills. Threatening emails – parts written in red for emphasis – surcharges galore and county court claims are his speciality. But when tracked down in person last week by The Mail on Sunday to his office in South West London, Richard Howard, owner of copycat website British Passport Services, was suddenly lost for words. He became a trembling 6ft 3in shadow of the individual who normally has no compunction when it comes to texting vulnerable customers late at night stating he may report them to the City of London Police for failing to pay his ‘bills’. Emerging from his first-floor office on an industrial estate just outside Wimbledon, the 28-year-old refused to answer questions about the legitimacy of his business or to explain why he was happy to throw county court claims around like confetti, including one against a 51-year-old woman suffering from sensory paralysis from the chest down......
Read more here on this story
Similar exchanges took place for the next five minutes before it became obvious that Howard was not in the mood to defend his business methods through use of the spoken word. The Mail on Sunday decided to visit Howard in person because for the past nine days he had refused to answer by email detailed questions about the legality of his business. This followed our probe into British Passport Services after complaints from readers that they had been hounded by UK Services & Support Limited, the website’s owner, over disputed payments. Howard, from Orpington in Kent, is the sole director of UK Services & Support Limited. In nearly all cases, people had used the website to obtain an appointment for a passport in a hurry – not realising until it was too late that the £117.60 payment they had made was not to the official HM Passport Office but to third-party British Passport Services.