Contractors urged to be wary of misleading websites

Many a sole trader, limited company or contractor in London will have encountered copycat sites portraying themselves as legitimate public services – and now, the government has announced funding for a major crackdown by Trading Standards.

A press release from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) stated that a further £120,000 had been committed by the Consumer Minister Jenny Willott to the National Trading Standards Board (NTSB) this financial year, enabling an investigation into such websites.

BIS said that NTSB would also use this money to take on websites that exaggerate the nature of the services that they provide, or those that fail to make clear that official websites can provide the same services less expensively or free of charge.

The conscientious contractor in London should therefore be pleased to read that the additional funding will make easier the NTSB’s identification, investigation and enforcement action against sites that wrongly portray themselves as official government services.

Willott commented: “Misleading websites which dupe people into believing they are using the official government channel need to be stopped in their tracks. The unfortunate reality is that a minority are exploiting those who are perhaps less web-savvy and we need to clamp down on them. These rogues that con people out of their hard earned cash need to know that the full glare of Trading Standards is now on them.”

She was supported by Lord Toby Harris, NTSB Chair, who described such deceptive copycat websites as “a growing problem”. He said that consumers – doubtless including many a contractor in London – had been urged by such sites to pay a fee or additional charge for a service that the official government website already offered, sometimes for free.

Harris added that such sites also posed a data protection risk to those duped, who were often required to volunteer information of a personal nature, in need of being securely stored. He said that it was “most welcome” that further support in tackling the problem had been offered by the government, concluding: “By working together in this way we look forward to reducing consumer detriment and supporting legitimate businesses.”

The government is also continuing its work alongside such organisations as Which?, major search engines like Google and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to make the average contractor in London more aware of misleading websites and the threat that they pose.

Editor’s Note: SAIL Business Solutions (http://www.sailsolutions.co.uk) are represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Email: info@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.