{"id":2033,"date":"2020-04-29T15:57:22","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T14:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2020-04-29T15:57:22","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T14:57:22","slug":"dubious-businesses-taking-advantage-of-the-covid19-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/2020\/04\/29\/dubious-businesses-taking-advantage-of-the-covid19-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"Dubious businesses taking advantage of the Covid19 situation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this time of uncertainty and a lot of new government rules and exemptions, unscrupulous business operators are trying to take advantage of people. They often target international students, counting on your lack of awareness of way things work in UK, contract rules and also assuming that you would have insecurities around visa, travel and finances.<\/p>\n<p>Please stay vigilant and do not fall victim to this kind of scam. They may offer you services that you don\u2019t need, for instance<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>legal support to negotiate rent payment plans with your landlord,<\/li>\n<li>to get money back for any travel bookings you may have made,<\/li>\n<li>or to access the UKVI exemption of requesting for a visa extension till 31 May, among others.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don\u2019t engage their services.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t sign any authorisation letters.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t send them any of your personal information or document images.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t sign any waivers or contracts.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They can be very persuasive, do not commit to paying them anything!<\/p>\n<p>There is help available from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shu.ac.uk\/current-students\/latest-news\/support-service-for-students\">University<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hallamstudentsunion.com\/advice_help\/contactus\/\">Students Union<\/a>, in most situations you do not need to access services externally at all!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>In this time of uncertainty and a lot of new government rules and exemptions, unscrupulous business operators are trying to take advantage of people. They <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/2020\/04\/29\/dubious-businesses-taking-advantage-of-the-covid19-situation\/\" title=\"Dubious businesses taking advantage of the Covid19 situation\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":9804,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phg6as-wN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2051,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions\/2051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/goglobal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}