Environmental regulations change the way citizens can move around cities, and they also change the cities themselves. On January 1, 2023, a regulation came into force throughout Europe that forces cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to create low emission zones.
This regulation made it necessary to limit access to certain areas of the cities to the most polluting vehicles. As was logical, apps began to emerge to inform you of low emission zones in Europe.
In order to identify the vehicles authorized to circulate or not, the make the use of environmental labels mandatorybadges that can be purchased at post offices, as well as in other places, such as the network of workshops of the Spanish Confederation of Workshops (CETRAA) and other networks of authorized workshops, the Institute of automotive studies (IDEAUTO) or the Ganvam association in the case of vehicle fleets.
imitating the style
FACUA denounced a web page which was dedicated to the sale of this type of stickers for cars and other vehicles. According to the consumer association, the website mimicked the DGT design style and colors to trick consumers into thinking it was a government website. At the end of the website, however, it stated that it was an authorized distributor, not the DGT website, despite the fact that the domain of the page itself was dgt-online.com.
As stated in FACUA, it does not help to give credibility to the company that, in the first place, the person responsible was, according to the website itself, the company Etiqueta Medioambiental SL, domiciled in Europe, which passed a few days ago to indicate that the company responsible is New Marketing Services SLL, with headquarters in the United States.
Version of the denounced site
We at EL ESPAÑOL – El Androide Libre have been able to verify that the website in question has changed in recent days to clearly indicate at the top that it is a distributor and not the DGT website. However, both the design and the colors that led FACUA to file a complaint are maintained.
In the version denounced by FACUA, the following text could be read upon entering the page: “IMPORTANT: Check if your license plate matches an environmental sticker before making the purchase“. You can now see that this text has changed, and another one appears clearly indicating that this is just a distributor: “WE ARE NOT DGT. WE ARE AN AUTHORIZED DEALER”.
Current version of the website
At no time has FACUA indicated that the stickers sold are fraudulent or false., focusing the complaint on the confusion that could arise for a potential buyer, in particular due to the increase in the price of the labels. They are sold at the Post Office for around 5 dollars and, although there is no fixed price, the defendant site sold them at 8.95 dollars.
For the moment, FACUA has not commented on the change of text on the web, without knowing if the complaint will be maintained before the official bodies or if with this change of text, in addition to the change of responsibility of the web, it will be impossible to hold responsible the creators of the portal.
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