Travelers applying for electronic travel authorizations for countries such as the United States and Canada are repeatedly mistaking private agency websites for official government portals and paying excessive fees, a consumer watchdog said. Some agency sites charge up to 30 times the fees levied on official government portals.
Of 51 consumer complaints filed over electronic travel authorizations in the past three years, 35, or 68.6%, involved agency websites, the Korea Consumer Agency said on the 3rd. Complaints about excessive fees were the most common at 30 cases, or 58.8%. In three cases, travelers paid a fee but never received the authorization.
By destination, complaints related to the United States were the most numerous at 29, or 56.9%. Canada followed with 10 cases, or 19.6%, then Guam and Saipan with eight, or 15.7%, and Australia with two, or 3.9%.
The agency examined 29 electronic travel authorization agency websites that appear in portal search results and found that eight did not separately state that they were not official government portals. Sixteen either failed to disclose their service fees or did not display them on the main page. Some sites laid out their pages to resemble official government portals and used similar names, raising the risk that consumers would mistake them for the real thing, the survey found.
Fees also diverged sharply from official rates. Governments charge anywhere from nothing to a maximum of $40.27, or about 57,000 won, to issue an electronic travel authorization, while private agency sites charged between $21, or about 30,000 won, and $176, or about 250,000 won.
In Canada's case, the official ETA fee is just 7 Canadian dollars, or about 7,500 won, but some agency sites charged as much as $159, or about 230,000 won, a gap of roughly 30 times.
Actual consumer losses were also documented. One traveler learned while checking in for a flight to Canada at Incheon International Airport in May that no ETA had been issued. The traveler then paid $154 to a private agency site listed at the top of portal search results, on the promise of issuance within an hour, but the document was delayed. When the traveler demanded a full refund, the operator returned all but $25, citing its own terms of service.
"Before applying for an electronic travel authorization, check the domain in the address bar to confirm whether it is an official government portal, and look at whether the application fee is excessive," the agency said. "Rather than applying in a rush during departure procedures, obtain the authorization before booking a flight, and if it is not issued within the stated deadline after payment, you can request a chargeback from your card issuer."
