Visitors scammed over new electronic travel authority

Monday, 14 October 2019

From October 1 border controls changed for many travellers visiting New Zealand

Immigration NZ says unofficial websites are vastly overcharging some visitors for new electronic travel authorities.

Some visa processing websites are charging up to 10 times the official processing fee for the electronic travel authorities (ETAs) which became mandatory from October 1, and are also used to collect the $35 a head tourism and conservation levy.

National's tourism spokesman Todd McClay claims the rushed 'clumsy' implementation of the levy and Immigration NZ's (INZ) 'clunky' ETA mobile app are putting visitors off and should be fixed urgently.

INZ general manager Stephen Dunstan urged visitors to use the official government website (www.immigration.govt.nz/nzeta) or ETA mobile app to avoid unnecessary and exorbitant fees being charged by unauthorised third party visa websites.

**READ MORE:

About 1.5 million overseas visitors a year need an electronic travel authority before boarding flights and cruise ships coming the New Zealand. Unofficial travel websites are charging up to 10 times the official processing fee.

* New electronic travel authority compulsory for many overseas visitors

* Tighter border screening may turn away more than 2000 travellers a year

* New border security screening coming for Australian permanent residents visiting New Zealand

* New border security system will cost $14m to run and could cause travel chaos**

He said a growing number of companies with no connection to INZ or the New Zealand Government are operating under potentially misleading names, such as official-newzealand-eta.org and newzealand-eta-gov.org, and charging visitors up to 10 times the official price to request an ETA.

'An ETA costs just $12 using the website or $9 using the mobile app and only takes a matter of minutes to complete.

Travellers can apply for a new electronic travel authoprity using Immigration NZ's mobile app, but National's tourism spokesman Todd McClay claims it has difficulty reading passport numbers and names.

'Travellers shouldn't need to fork out more money than the official cost and should make sure that they aren't being misled into paying more.'

Dunstan said the unofficial websites claimed to provide a faster service, but third parties were only able to submit the traveller's information to INZ using the same web form or mobile app travellers could use themselves.

In some cases, the websites were also collecting additional information from travellers which wasn't required as part of the ETA request.

ETAs are required by visitors from about 60 visa-waiver countries and 24 transit visa waiver countries including the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and most other European countries.

Of the more than 280,000 ETAs processed by INZ, just 106 requests have been refused.

McClay said the ETA app, which was difficult to use, was not reading passports correctly.

'Each visitor has to use it separately, so families cannot pay the tax in one simple transaction. It's bureaucratic and a hassle for travellers.'

He said the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was correcting as many as 1000 ETA applications a week because the mobile app was poor at reading passport numbers and names.

However, INZ policy manager Nick Aldous disputed McClay's figure saying only around 430 of the 4227 corrections related to scanning errors, and the majority concerned mistakes made by travellers.

'For example, incorrectly typing in their passport number, incorrectly selecting male when the traveller is a female or incorrectly inputting their date of birth.'

Aldous said an improvement allowing for multiple requests to be submitted on the same device was scheduled to go live this week.