Tweet
Re: UK Services & Support Ltd BRITISHPassportServices Copycat Website issues
consumer-Rights latest news:
The UK’s largest third party website in the British passport industry,BPS which offers a range of value added services such as a passport lodging and collection service which saving the consumer from travelling to one of the 7 regional Passport Offices themselves thus saving them time, travel and potentially accommodation expenses has today announced that it is celebrating 12 months of maintaining its market share of 0.02% of the passport application and renewal industry.
This is in spite of a number of significant changes in the third party website industry. In early 2014 the website has heavily reliant on paid advertising on the major search engines however due to a sudden change in February 2014 it was no longer able to market itself in this way. The website has since been able to evolve and is now less dependent on the traffic of search engines and relies more on the traffic of online affiliate partners and offline marketing methods. Richard Howard of BritishPassportServices.co.uk said the following when speaking of this achievement.
“It has been a challenging year for us. We had to respond to the government officials efforts to ban consumer choice by putting pressure on search engines to banish all competition to their Gov.uk website and have suffered a botched investigation from the Advertising Standards Authority however I am proud to state that our effort and hard work is beginning to pay off and as the largest unofficial third party website I confirm that we believe that 0.02% of all consumers who apply for a passport choose to use our services rather then use services offered by the Post Office or going direct to Her Majesty’s Passport Office. This jaw dropping market share is sure to shock many.”
“We have a bold 5yr plan which some consider ambitious of being able to secure 0.04% of the market. Its going to be tough especially based on what appears to be many agencies agendas which is to eliminate choice and force consumers to use the Gov.uk service directly but we’re going to do our best to gain an extra 0.02% from the 99.97% that is held by the Post Office and Her Majesty’s Passport Office. Furthermore we are finally going to hire someone to correct the grammar on our articles. We are aware that the punctuation on our website is shite and a factor that is holding us back. This will be corrected by the end of the first quarter.”
According to the Passport Office’s 2013-2014 annual report around 5.7m consumers apply for or renew a British passport ever year. It is believed that BritishPassportServices.co.uk is the largest third party website in the British passport industry and based on our analyzing the traffic to other known third party websites who also provide value added services in this industry we believe a further 0.01% of applicants that apply for or renew their passport use another unofficial website and so we calculate the percentage of consumers who use the services offered by the Post Office or process their application directly through Her Majesty’s Passport Office to be 99.97%.
Whist these calculations have not been audited by a third party we consider them to reflect an accurate breakdown of the market share. It is unusual based on the low market share that all third party websites control that some government officials or consumer bodies insist that there is a “problem” with third party websites in the passport application industry. Even if these calculations were not accurate and the market share of unofficial websites was three times what we calculate then the Passport Office and Post Office still controls a 99.91% share. Typically private companies that hold a 40-50% or more of the market are sometimes considered to be a problem and potentially not in the public interest. This is the first time that we are aware of that such a focus has been given to lawful companies in an industry that collectively hold 0.1% of a market.
Some have stated that they do not find it surprising being that the passport industry is worth £450m a year and that it would be expected by government that any threat towards steps to privatize certain elements of the process as the Home Office has done with visa and immigration services would be ruthlessly attacked regardless of public opinion in order to protect the interests of the treasury.
consumer-Rights latest news:
The UK’s largest third party website in the British passport industry,BPS which offers a range of value added services such as a passport lodging and collection service which saving the consumer from travelling to one of the 7 regional Passport Offices themselves thus saving them time, travel and potentially accommodation expenses has today announced that it is celebrating 12 months of maintaining its market share of 0.02% of the passport application and renewal industry.
This is in spite of a number of significant changes in the third party website industry. In early 2014 the website has heavily reliant on paid advertising on the major search engines however due to a sudden change in February 2014 it was no longer able to market itself in this way. The website has since been able to evolve and is now less dependent on the traffic of search engines and relies more on the traffic of online affiliate partners and offline marketing methods. Richard Howard of BritishPassportServices.co.uk said the following when speaking of this achievement.
“It has been a challenging year for us. We had to respond to the government officials efforts to ban consumer choice by putting pressure on search engines to banish all competition to their Gov.uk website and have suffered a botched investigation from the Advertising Standards Authority however I am proud to state that our effort and hard work is beginning to pay off and as the largest unofficial third party website I confirm that we believe that 0.02% of all consumers who apply for a passport choose to use our services rather then use services offered by the Post Office or going direct to Her Majesty’s Passport Office. This jaw dropping market share is sure to shock many.”
“We have a bold 5yr plan which some consider ambitious of being able to secure 0.04% of the market. Its going to be tough especially based on what appears to be many agencies agendas which is to eliminate choice and force consumers to use the Gov.uk service directly but we’re going to do our best to gain an extra 0.02% from the 99.97% that is held by the Post Office and Her Majesty’s Passport Office. Furthermore we are finally going to hire someone to correct the grammar on our articles. We are aware that the punctuation on our website is shite and a factor that is holding us back. This will be corrected by the end of the first quarter.”
According to the Passport Office’s 2013-2014 annual report around 5.7m consumers apply for or renew a British passport ever year. It is believed that BritishPassportServices.co.uk is the largest third party website in the British passport industry and based on our analyzing the traffic to other known third party websites who also provide value added services in this industry we believe a further 0.01% of applicants that apply for or renew their passport use another unofficial website and so we calculate the percentage of consumers who use the services offered by the Post Office or process their application directly through Her Majesty’s Passport Office to be 99.97%.
Whist these calculations have not been audited by a third party we consider them to reflect an accurate breakdown of the market share. It is unusual based on the low market share that all third party websites control that some government officials or consumer bodies insist that there is a “problem” with third party websites in the passport application industry. Even if these calculations were not accurate and the market share of unofficial websites was three times what we calculate then the Passport Office and Post Office still controls a 99.91% share. Typically private companies that hold a 40-50% or more of the market are sometimes considered to be a problem and potentially not in the public interest. This is the first time that we are aware of that such a focus has been given to lawful companies in an industry that collectively hold 0.1% of a market.
Some have stated that they do not find it surprising being that the passport industry is worth £450m a year and that it would be expected by government that any threat towards steps to privatize certain elements of the process as the Home Office has done with visa and immigration services would be ruthlessly attacked regardless of public opinion in order to protect the interests of the treasury.
Comment