[danpalmer]

This is a common "scam", there's an equivalent for many countries. I say "scam" because the service these companies claim to provide is an easier, guided process to apply for things than the official process. And, sometimes, for some people, maybe that's true.

If you're an EU citizen travelling to the US, that's kinda playing on easy mode, and the value add here is clearly so low that the $70 feels like a scam. If you're a citizen of another country with more complex application procedures, it could be trickier (although unlikely to warrant $70). If you're a less technically literate user and they have an easier to understand process, maybe it's worth it? I don't want to make that judgement call.

It is highly unlikely that your passport details are going to be sold on. It's somewhat likely that your email address will be sold on to advertisers. It's fairly likely that you'll get upselling emails for other services they provide, although you should be able to GDPR them. The aim is the $70, not to steal your identity. The business model is to be technically-not-a-scam, legal, and therefore not something that advertisers realistically can de-list. It sucks, but thankfully you're only out $70, and you'll probably be able to expense it, just don't give your work too many details about what it is.

[13of40]

The same sort of "scam" has helped me immensely in getting visas from countries like Russia and India, where the official process seems like it's geared toward supporting a cottage industry for third party agencies. For India in particular, doing it through the official web page required things like fitting a 100 character street address into a 40 character text box (or you get an error and it's back to square 1), trial and error to figure out what they think a valid date format is, etc. There was even a whole side quest around an alleged alcohol consumption license from Maharashtra State that featured prominently on government websites but no Indian person I knew had ever heard of.

So yeah, I think you're spot on, and this is just spending a little extra money to make the process easier, but it's just not super useful in this case.

[smsm42]

These types of companies have been very common before government agencies were on the internet. When I traveled to the US for the first time in the 90s, I had a choice - apply for visa myself, and deal with all the bureaucracy and lines and stuff (nothing was online back then), or pay additionally to the company that just takes my papers and after a while returns my passport with visa stamped and all that. I chose the latter and never regretted it. Yes, they took money for something that I could have gotten for free, but it'd cost me time and effort and annoyance. Now though, a lot of these processes are much more convenient online, so the same companies have to resort to tricks to still make the same living they used to make before.

[marcosdumay]

> If you're an EU citizen travelling to the US, that's kinda playing on easy mode

Whatever country you are traveling from, the procedures are the same. The only variation is if you need a visa or not.

What changes from one country to another are the rules the US will apply to decide if they'll allow your entry or not. But that's not something you do.

Services like those sell two things, the legitimate one is knowledge of the rules. But for US entry, the rules are some 5 or so steps you can easily get on their immigration pages. If your country has an embassy, the steps will be even translated to your language. The other one is bribes, that I don't believe would apply to the OP's case. So yeah, it's nothing more than a scam.

[danpalmer]

This may be true in the case of getting an ESTA from the US, but that's a very specific non-visa case. In general rules vary wildly depending on the source and destination countries. I'm in the UK, my colleagues here in the UK who are Indian citizens for example, have a much harder time getting entrance to the US.

> So yeah, it's nothing more than a scam.

I want to be really clear here because it makes a difference. I completely agree that this site is bad behaviour, and I think it shouldn't be allowed to operate, however I don't think it's a scam (i.e. illegal), and I'm not certain how one would craft a law that makes this illegal while keeping morally justifiable businesses.

Calling everything we don't like a scam makes it easy to miss things that are useful to someone that just doesn't have the same requirements as us. As an example, there was a time when I thought payday loans were scams, why would anyone get that it's just a terrible financial decision. Well, cash flow is A Thing, it's worth something, and people earning much less than me are more exposed to cash flow issues.

[ohwellmaybe]

thank you. yes. that's what I was thinking too.