Interestingly enough Mr G Laffeley-Lane is director of IQ Channels Ltd t/a passport-uk.co.uk 111 Buckingham Palace Road London SW1W 0SR If you Google this company you will find that they do search engine optimization as a specialty. The website say: As search engine's evolve and develop new algorithms, marketers and businesses also need to evolve. Having an adaptable optimisation strategy that is well planned and implemented will ensure your business stays ahead of the game. So it is no wonder then that Passport-uk .co.uk achieves its high ranking. Anyway perhaps one of the reasons these kind of set ups carry on with impunity is that customers who get caught overpaying for zero product give up complaining because of the time consuming nature of the process. So far I have seen a daily mail article on this company, a guardian thread and the MP David Davies' view. Also the ASA recommendations. I am going to persevere a little longer on this. I have Trading standards calling me Monday. I may even try and get IQ Channels to design me a website warning people of this kind of thing and ask them to ensure it sits above Passport-uk.co.uk in Google rankings! The last point was a light hearted attempt at telling myself that throwing away £200 doesn't really matter.

Hi Yes I just read this from Mr Davies, clearly it is wrong for these sites to be operating but is there any real way of policing them? The research I have done today seems to suggest that there are huge sums of cash to be made and that these characters can, with the aid of large bank balances and expert legal minds operate with impunity.

Anybody know how to crowd source disgruntled victims of this kind of things and create some viral momentum to get these kinds of operations permanently shut down and outlawed.

Yes I like the idea of creating some momentum on this kind of thing. In the end I have to work to raise the £200 that I have just wasted, and the likes of these people are getting money for less than old rope - to coin a phrase. It just seems so wrong that a company can (in my opinion) go out with the intention to mislead and then captalise on customers good intentions whilst delivering very little.

My credid card company said that if the "product" failed to materialize in 10 working days then I should get back to them with copies of any emails or letters I sent and any responses from the company then they may have grounds to investigate further. They also said that they were getting daily contact from people in similar situations as myself.

How do I make a claim? This is what they say: If you make a purchase for goods or services that fail to materialise, are faulty, are poor quality or are inadequate in some other way you have the option to place a claim with your credit card provider right away. However, it is usually best to first approach the retailer or service provider directly (where possible) and ask for a refund. Read from a: money.co.uk article ( can't post link as I am newbie I think that the passport uk co.uk position is that as soon as a customer click on the pay now tab, the payment is processed and the customer immediatly get an email saying "Your payment has been received and your application is being processed." This then covers them as it means that the the product is on it's way. The product itself, I assume when it arrives will just be a copy of the details I have input , so whilst very expensive since I could have got that far for free, it is I guess technically correct and not faulty. It is frustrating as they have quite obviously thought this through very carefully to avoid the dreaded refund.

Hi - this is very interesting, I have stupidly done the same thing this morning for 3 renewal passports at £69 each. Once I realized that it was not the gov website I tried to get my credit card company to intervene to no avail. I too discovered the ASA web info on this company also this morning and also passport uk.co.uk's circular cancellation policy which means a refund is impossible to get. My research also pointed to Mr G. L - Lane who seems to have connections to numerous companies. I feel pretty sad and slightly stupid at making this costly mistake but I am so sure that the intention of this kind of website is to extract cash for very little service whilst protecting themselves with clever contractual small print. I have emailed them asking for a refund but don't expect to hear back. I just know that this kind of thing is morally reprehensible and clearly the company is using legal speak to absolve itself of responsibility. I will of course be particularly careful in future.