Martin Lewis

I'm going to call it a tweet.

It all came from a tweet I got from Andy RFC Charman on Twitter.

X, obviously it was on X because it's a tweet.

He said,

So my brilliant team did more work into it, and absolutely right.

British Airways is directing customers to a travel permit tool on its website, powered by a firm called Sherpa.

And if you then go through that, and it sort of says, we'll help you work out what visas you want.

So it's a visa tool.

But within it, it talks about travel permits.

If you then go through it and you apply...

you will pay more than you would going to the official websites.

So, for example, when we checked, Sherpa charged £51 for a US ESTA that costs about 30 quid when bought directly from the US government, while an Australian e-visa, which is totally free if you go direct,

costs £17 if you go via Sherpa.

The same is true, too, that you're going to pay more for a Canadian ETA and a New Zealand ETA.

And I suspect once the European system sets up later on this year, they will be doing the same there.

So my warning to you is be careful going through these third-party sites.

you need to be aware that you'll be paying more.

Now, Sherpa told us that its service fee is shared between Sherpa and its airline partners, which, if so, means British Airways will be making money from this tool on the excess.

Though neither Sherpa nor BA would tell us how the fee is split.

So my overall summary here is I doubt most people would really pay £17 for an Australian e-visa document if they knew they could easily click to get it for free from the official route.