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These TV Licensing letters are the most obscenely aggressive pieces of communication I've ever received from a "public" service in the UK.
I too haven't had a licence for years and have been hounded by these.
But it gets worse, the messaging on TV Licensing's website is borderline fraudulent at times.
They prominently listed "Netflix" as an example of an "online TV service", strongly implying that you need a TV licence to watch it. I emailed them to ask why they list Netflix, and they replied, completely skirting the question with the following bizarre response:
"It would be easier to advise what you can watch without a licence, therefore, please see the following that don’t require a licence:
- Netflix
- {more examples....}"
"An online TV service is any streaming or smart TV service, website or app that lets you watch live TV over the internet. This includes services like All 4, Sky Go, Virgin Media, Now TV, BT TV, Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and ITV Hub"
https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one
I'm pretty sure this is deliberately misleading. What an awful organisation. I don't mind the BBC (there are worse media organisations), they do need funding, but the aggressive tactics around their TV Licensing makes me rather unsympathetic to their cause.
I totally agree, everything about the tv license system just feels outdated, desperate and confusing. I still have trouble understanding what they consider to be "Live TV", especially with the YouTube example. Is that all live content? Or do I need to cross-reference my intended live content with what's being broadcast to see if it counts?
I generally avoid getting a tv license due to this and keep to online services, only bother to pay and watch live tv if there's an election due.
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%20belo...
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.
Hilarious
I'm assuming this has been posted in response to the recently published fact that 1/3 of all criminal convictions for women in the UK are due to unpaid TV licenses. Yes, it's a CRIMINAL offense not to pay the licence, it's insane.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tv-licence-f...
I'd really like to see someone take them to court over this. Not for "TV licences should be illegal", but rather the bullying, coercive and manipulative methods they use to "enforce" it. High pressure sales are illegal in the UK AFAIK, so how is this different? You have a private entity masquerading as an "authority", trying to hand out criminal convictions to unsuspecting people unless they pay large sums of money. How is that not predatory and illegal?
Wow, I didn't know this. This is staggering.
Especially given that the guidance on their website is deliberately misleading (see my comment above).
How can people be ending up with criminal records when their website incorrectly implies that you need a TV licence for Apple TV and Netflix (which is 100% wrong)...
Absolutely unacceptable.
I never understood why the BBC collects revenue this way. Surely this is costing > 10% of the revenue collected.
I always thought the Australian model was better. ABC/SBS are paid out of general government coffers, people don't like it but not enough
I suspect it's a leftover from the earliest days of broadcasting. TV and radio were rare novelties, so telling the 90% of the public that didn't have one yet that they had to pay tax money to support the BBC would have been infeasible.
It's interesting that in the US, there was a significant link between the broadcasters and the hardware manufacturers-- General Electric owned NBC for many years, and DuMont had their own network. I wonder why this didn't take off in Europe, with the airwaves dominated by a "Philips channel" or a "Thomson network"?