The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is warning people with debt problems to be vigilant when approaching companies to help them with debts, as it says it has identified 27 websites run by 13 companies which it believes are deliberately misleading customers for commercial gain.

According to the OFT, these sites are trying to pass themselves off as impartial non-profit organisations by mimicking the web addresses and sites of charities, while in fact charging fees for their services. The OFT has written to these companies (as yet unnamed) telling them to shut down the offending sites.

Under consumer credit legislation, all companies running personalised debt advice services need to be licenced by the OFT, and if found to be deliberately misleading customers, this licences can be withdrawn. Companies offering debt management services without a licence can be prosecuted in the criminal courts.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Debt News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.