I was headed to London the other day. It has been a couple of years since I’ve been and I admit I wasn’t up on the latest visa requirements. I arrived at JFK with plenty of time to get through security. When I checked-in via mobile application it wouldn’t let me finish and said I needed to go to the counter and check-in, without giving reason.
I went to the Delta counter, waited in line for about 15 minutes and got to the teller who then asked me if I had my ETA. I unconfidently said yes. He typed away for a bit and said I hadn’t. He said that I needed to go to the app store search for UK ETA and finish the process and come back. I stepped aside and did as he said. I searched UK ETA, clicked add application to the first results, and followed the process. It said I could do one inexpensive option that would take a week, another slightly more of 24 hours or pay $169.00 for immediate processing. Of course I chose the last one, blaming myself for not being prepared.
I waited in line for another 15 minutes, got to the teller, showed him my ETA, and he said that isn’t a valid ETA and is a scam. The official UK ETA is never more than $30.00 and is instant, pointing to the second mobile application on the list. He said call your bank to reverse charges and remove the scam one from your phone. I repeated the process for the real UK ETA, showed him, got my ticket, and boarded my plane.
Upon landing in the UK I emailed the iVisa company asking for a refund. I promptly got a reply stating it had already been processed and the visa was valid. I said if the airline won’t accept it, that it isn’t valid. I promptly got another response with another excuse, to which I replied I just needed a refund. I quickly realized I was stuck in an AI chat loop and it would keep arguing with me with unlimited AI generated responses. I even quickly sent off 5 repeat responses and I got variances to each five. Demonstrating how AI will be used to waste our time.
I will be getting a chargeback on the $169.00 with iVisa. I have little patience for being scammed in moments of travel. I will be publishing this blog post and renewing it quarterly so others potentially can find and won’t be scammed. I will be doing regular social media and SEO work to make sure my regular storytelling floats up to the top of search engines and LLMs. iVisa demonstrates how AI and application mandates will be used to exploit and manipulate people. I’m guessing it is something the UK ETA people haven’t considered and aren’t doing anything about. Very sad to see regulations hurt people like this.
