Learner drivers have been forced to wait for months to take their tests this year. In September, the average waiting time for a driving test was 19.9 weeks in England, 15.1 weeks in Scotland and 13.5 weeks in Wales.
Some have been quick to take advantage of learners who are keen to get their licences.
Unofficial sellers have been using bots (a type of automated software) to buy up test slots in bulk and resell them for as much as £180 on Facebook.
These sellers often ask for your personal information and ask you to pay via bank transfer.
It costs £62 to book a driving test on gov.uk, which is the only trusted place to book one.
Read below to see what we discovered when we contacted these sellers.
We contacted admins of Facebook pages and groups where driving tests are being sold, asking to book a slot for next week.
Sellers quoted us between £112 and £180, adding on substantial fees to the £62 cost of a test.
On one Facebook page, a user posted that they had 32 test slots in England, while a separate group admin boasted that they 'specialise in finding early test dates'.
One group admin asked for our licence number, driving test reference number and email address. Concerningly, we were then told to make the payment via bank transfer.
Details shared with people who you don’t know can lead to an increased risk of identity theft and your details being sold on the dark web, though we're not aware of this type of fraud taking place here.
Read more:A sophisticated booking system
On one of the Facebook pages, we were advised to join a WhatsApp group to ‘get updates of early driving tests slots at first priority.’
The WhatsApp group’s admin used disappearing messages (messages that are deleted after a set amount of time) to make announcements. These comprised a list of test slots and another WhatsApp link to follow to book a slot.
We followed the WhatsApp link and were taken to a WhatsApp chat. The phrase: ‘Hi I would like to book test earlier. My preferred test centre name is….’ was already typed out.
After sending the pre-typed message, we were told a slot was available for £120. We were then sent a ‘policy’ stating that we needed to pay via bank transfer and couldn’t cancel after booking.
If we agreed to the policy, we were told to book a test in any test centre in the UK and share details of the booking (as well as a photo of our provisional licence and theory test certificate, driving licence number and date of our last practical exam). After sending this information, we were told a test slot would be booked for us.
Find out more:What is the DVSA doing?
We asked the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) what it's doing to prevent these unofficial sellers from booking up test slots.
A spokesperson told us: ‘Tackling the reselling of driving tests is a key priority, which is why we’ve deployed measures to protect learner drivers and removed nearly 5,000 accounts not linked to approved driving instructors.
‘Gov.uk is the only official way to book your practical driving test, and we urge people to report any social media channels or posts offering unofficial test slots or bookings to the social media network.’
The DVSA also said it has deployed new bot protection technology to stop automated systems from buying up tests unfairly. The technology uses AI to recognise patterns of behaviour by bots and block access to the website.
It's also recruiting driving examiners and conducting tests outside of regular hours to increase test availability.
We shared the Facebook groups that we found with Meta and it told us it would investigate them.
On Facebook, you can report pages, groups and profiles by selecting the three dots in the top right corner and pressing ‘Report’.
On WhatsApp, you can report contacts by clicking on their name or number, scrolling down to the bottom and selecting ‘Report’.
undefinedsource https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/facebook-users-are-selling-driving-test-slots-at-inflated-prices-abX0b2N2uf83