BBC TV Licence Letters

For those interested, this website provides a great listing of TV licensing letters: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/

Everyone who watches Tv is liable. When you buy a new TV shops must ask for your address which is sent to the licensing agency. Ditto when you subscribe to cable/satellite. If an address doesn't have one, it gets regular threatening letters and after a few months, personal visits where they ask to come in and take a look round - this you can refuse unless they bring a police officer. Someone scanned in all the letters he got: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/ I have been visited too. I have even been prosecuted because the man could see a tv operating but we were playing computer games - he never showed up in court so we were acquitted.

The author shares the full letter (in fact an archive of many years of letters!) on the homepage at http://www.bbctvlicence.com/

He also collects and displays all the previous letters he's got from the BBC: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/ They get increasingly threatening and aggressive. I'd guess that the OCR code scanning is to confirm that he's read the letter and adjust the hostility in the next letter appropriately.

http://www.bbctvlicence.com/ - the website of a guy who posts all the threatening letters he receives.

I like the original programming content the BBC produces. I don't like the BBC, and BBC news in particular, at all. They propagate bias in insidious ways like 'creative' titling of articles, pushing articles off to side channels, and cutting HoC footage, all the while claiming impartiality. Their quality of their writing on the site has truly tanked in recent years, too. And that's not to mention the harrassment of people who don't pay their license fee. Complain about Netflix's content all you want, at least they aren't lying about having signal detecting vans and sending threatening letters calling you a criminal. (To the non-Brits, the license fee is optional if you don't watch TV. But even if you tell them you don't have a TV, they'll send you letters every single month threatening you with court[1]) [1] http://www.bbctvlicence.com/

The stuff on YouTube is pretty ridiculous, but it did lead me to discover http://www.bbctvlicence.com - an archive of the automated and increasingly aggressive (until the cycle resets) letters TV Licensing inundate non-license holding households with. I've got a personal stack of around 10, I've only lived here half a year. The BBC doesn't do themselves any favours in winning back non-payees with these tactics.

Well the vans seem real, http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Detect%20the%20Detector%20vans.htm, but yes their being equipped with detector equipment is probably not real. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/55922/response/164153/attach/ht… however is a FOI response from TVL (run by Capita IIRC) that "TVL uses detection evidence when applying for search warrants". But "detection evidence" is not defined and probably means the guy in the van seeing a CTV connection/aerial/dish or looking through the window and seeing a TV???

> I know a lot of people will call us stupid for doing so, but I'm also convinced that the BBC will lobby (or whatever they need to do) for changes to the licensing laws once the UK officially is out of the economic danger zone. I'm not entirely sure where you've got this idea from, but you do realise that the bulk of the BBC's funding comes from the licence fee[1], and that TVL (the organisation that sends nasty letters through the post if you don't have TV[2]) is part of the BBC[3], right? [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdo… [2] - http://www.bbctvlicence.com/ [3] - http://www.televisionlicence.info/tvl/who

Relevant: http://bbctvlicence.com/

The website has a page where it disagrees with that belief, and argues that TVL and the BBC are in fact the same organization: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/TVL-BBC%20hiding%20of%20identities.htm

Correspondence between the author and BBC (“TVL”) staff, about why “please do not write below this line” is on the letters, makes for an amusing read: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Please%20do%20not%20write%20below%20the%20… Presumably it’s there to invoke a sense of authority? I’d bet they split-tested this and found that it makes people more likely to pay up.

I think that those van were (are?) mainly for show - http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Detector%20vans.htm

Nice find. That site explains the situation clearly: the vans exist, but don't do any "detecting". Instead they spend their time parking them in prominent places to perpetuate this myth. http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Detector%20vans.htm

>Of course it is state-funded. The BBC is not state funded, state owned and state controlled perhaps - but that's a whole other discussion. Television owners can elect to pay or not pay for a TV License which is what funds the BBC, there is a choice. What is state funded are the 4 million or so licenses which are free to anyone over 75. > The state has made a law that requires anybody who wants to own a television to pay money to the BBC Not quite correct. You can own a television and decline to pay the TV license provided you don't watch or record live broadcasts. This means I can watch stuff on iPlayer on my Roku/PC/Android etc and the BBC can't force me to pay a license. I ditched my TV license back in 2006 for political reasons, I've had a couple of visits from the TV License "enquiry officers" (who are in fact employees of Capita, a public limited company). You don't have to permit TV License staff access to your home or provide them with any personal details. In fact you can permanently deny any TV Licensing representative from setting foot on your property. This is known as "Withdrawing implied right of access" [1][2]. [1]: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/foi-administering-the-licence-fee-A… [2]: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Withholding%20implied%20right%20of%20acces…