Search "Turkey eVisa" or "India visa" and the official government portal is rarely the first result. Above it sit polished private sites — some outright scams, most something slipperier: legal "assistance services" charging £60–£100 for a document whose government fee is £20, without ever quite saying so.
How to spot the real portal
- Government domains: .gov.tr, .gov.in, .gov.eg, .gov.sa, GOV.UK. A .com or .org selling visas is an intermediary, whatever its design suggests.
- The fee matches the published government fee — official portals do not charge "service fees" on top of themselves.
- Ads at the top of search results are bought placements. Official portals rarely buy them; copycats always do.
Are the copycats scams?
Some are — details harvested, money gone, no visa. Many technically deliver: they take your £79, file the £20 application on the government site, and forward the result. You have paid a 300% markup for form-filling with no expertise attached, no liability accepted, and — read their terms — no refund when it fails.
When paying someone does make sense
This distinction is the honest heart of it, and it is why we can write this page while charging service fees ourselves. Paying is rational when you are buying something real: judgement (which of three possible routes suits your case), accountability (a named human who checks the file and answers when something bounces), or time (thirty applications a month teaches what portals reject before they reject it). Paying is irrational when you are buying a hidden markup on data entry you could do in ten minutes.
Our rule, stated plainly: government fees and our service fee always appear as separate lines, and when the cheapest official route means you do not need us, we say so. Any provider unwilling to make both promises is telling you which kind they are.