The Office of Fair Trading has taken action against five websites that the OFT allege misled consumers into paying a fee for a free health card. When UK citizens go abroad within the European Union, they are entitled to a free health card, called the EHIC. However, when some people were searching for EHICs on the Internet, they were being led to some websites that were charging £10 for a service to forward those cards. Those websites, however, were not clear that the fee was a service fee and people were confused into thinking that it was an official fee.
The OFT took action against the sites under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 for being misleading in their presentation as they had copied the EHIC brand, used an official sounding domain name and omitted important information by failing to show that they were not an official provider of EHICs. There was also a failure under the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 to provide certain information in a form and manner which is easily, directly and permanently accessible.
Three of the companies have given formal written undertakings to the OFT to not engage again in deceptive practices, one company has folded and the other has had its domain name suspended by its domain name registrar.
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