Today, there are laws that require the owner of an emotional support animal to have a valid esa letter for housing confirming that an animal is an emotional support animal. The government facilitates these owners by allowing them to bring the emotional support animals on airplanes as well as Housing Societies which otherwise do not allow them.  

Now the people who are in emotional distress,  send to find online websites that offer esa letter.  The shocking news here is that some websites which claim to offer letters are fraud and contribute to causing financial loss to the owners of an emotional support animal. If you are one of those, this article is to guide you about 5 red flags which you can identify easily and avoid being scammed.

The easiest method to recognize a fake ESA website is to go to their website, as flags can be identified there easily. The first Red flag, which is quite widely used by the scam websites,  is that they promise to offer an emotional support dog letter instantly.  Now the issue is that any such letter cannot be issued to any emotional support animal owner instantly.  

There are certain requirements which must be fulfilled and those requirements take time.  The emotional support animal letter must be issued by a healthcare professional residing in the state the same as yours.  In addition to this, it is also necessary that the Healthcare professional analyses your mental health condition and then determine if you really need an emotional support animal. So reaching out to a health professional and performing assessment right away seems doubtful.

Another Red flag that you can identify evening on this website is that websites offer emotional support animal letters at very cheap rates as compared to the health professional. A healthcare professional charges you for services like assessment and verification. However, these websites, which are not even operated by any certified Healthcare professional, claim to offer the esa letter online for an ESA dog, cat, or any animal at very cheap rates. From this, you must understand that such a website is scamming you by taking the lesser amount but offering no authentic letter in return. 

These scamming websites only aim to take your money,  and in return sometimes they offer an authentic letter or even no letter at all. So, to find that if any particular website is valid or not, check if it provides client support.  It happens sometimes that staff of the housing society or management staff of the Airlines do not recognize the letter. It may be because they also require additional information from the Healthcare professional. In this case, you must get them in touch with the HealthCare professional.  Do not flight information on the client support which is a red flag.

Let us look at another way to identify. These websites usually tend to claim registration or certification of the emotional support animal. But you must remember that there is no need for ESA Registration or any certification. All you need is a simple letter from a certified healthcare professional. 

Lastly, if you already have an ESA  from any such website and now you are in doubt,  then you can use this red flag. Take a look at the issued ESA letter. Does it have the information of the health care professional you gave you this letter? Does the healthcare professional belong to the same state as yours? And if the healthcare professional is licensed? The ESA letter must include the contact information as well as license information of the Health Care professional. Also, they must belong to the same state as yours. 

So, if you are in need of an ESA letter it is highly recommended that you only trust your own health care professional. With the increase in evidence that emotional support animals help people with mental illness. There has also been an increase in the websites which claim to issue a registration letter for these animals. So, be more careful than ever!