TV licensing harassment!

[Lucan Unlordly]

We are repeatedly receiving red letters from TV Licensing with the heading...

'Your premises are being investigated. Why let a prosecution damage your business reputation.'

These used to arrive every couple of years but now it seems like it's every few months.

With a single line towards the top of the letter it says 'Pre-visit notice', towards the bottom threats of prosecutions and fines.

Isn't this harassment?

 

[Mr D]

We are repeatedly receiving red letters from TV Licensing with the heading...

'Your premises are being investigated. Why let a prosecution damage your business reputation.'

These used to arrive every couple of years but now it seems like it's every few months.

With a single line towards the top of the letter it says 'Pre-visit notice', towards the bottom threats of prosecutions and fines.

Isn't this harassment?

Probably.
You may have trouble expecting capita? to accept that.

Friend of mine went years being harassed about a TV license. Then they sent someone round and still insisted he pay a TV license. Except he doesn't own a TV. They never did apologise, still sent him letters.
Legally blind and no TV meant nothing to these people.

 

[The Byre]

Do you have a device that can receive TV programmes in your business (inc. a Windows or Apple PC)? If yes is the answer, you need a license. If no, ignore.

 

[intheTRADE]

Do you have a device that can receive TV programmes in your business (inc. a Windows or Apple PC)? If yes is the answer, you need a license. If no, ignore.

Only needed if programmes are actually streamed and recorded though. If they aren't then no license required

 

[simon field]

Ignore anyway.

Toothless.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

I am ignoring but they are becoming more frequent. There is an option to notify them that we don't need a licence with a 9 page document to read, with requirement for an email address and contact number and still the threat of a visit because '1 in 6 people who say they don't need a licence actually do'. Again a veiled threat suggesting i'm dishonest!

Thinking this through, there is little difference between the tone of these letters and - for those old enough to remember - the directory scams, where tens of thousands of invoices were sent 'for your company to appear in eg., the non existent 'European Carpet Cleaning and Upholsterer's' directory', the price of which was low enough to slip through the accounts department of most sizeable businesses.

The intimation here is that your staff, your customers, the milkman may be downloading and watching TV so the pressure is to buy a licence anyway, just to be sure.

 

[MBE2017]

Only needed if programmes are actually streamed and recorded though. If they aren't then no license required

Small caveat, if those programmes are seen or recorded live.

 

[UrbanRetail]

Small caveat, if those programmes are seen or recorded live.

...or you view iPlayer at all.

 

[simon field]

Remember those ‘detector vans’ they used to show on the telly in the 70’s?

packed full of hi-tech equipment?

there was nothing in them!

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

With the advent of streaming and all that, they've become even less effective now.

It used to be the wording: "if you have TV receiving equipment in your house, you need a licence".

However everyone now has TV receiving equipment in their pockets...so that can no longer be applied. Now they state "if you watch or record live TV, then you need a TV licence."

This is a lot harder to prove and enforce. Do you need a TV licence? If not, then their threats are nothing to worry about. Continue to ignore.

When I was a student I went years without a TV, and they sent me a red letter every month, assuming that I had a TV and was therefore breaking the law. Never questioned whether I actually needed one. That irked me, but I was patient, and saved up every letter they sent me for 2 and a half years.

Finally one day, they sent me a letter with a postage paid envelope, and form to tick a box saying why you didn't have or need a TV licence.
I ticked the box saying "I don't have a TV", put it in their postage paid envelope, and then stuffed every letter they had ever sent me in along with it, a bit of tape to hold it together, and put it in the post box. They will have had to pay for the extra postage for all their "harassing" letters.

Still to this day I consider that one of my greatest achievements.

 

[ethical PR]

I am ignoring but they are becoming more frequent. There is an option to notify them that we don't need a licence with a 9 page document to read, with requirement for an email address and contact number and still the threat of a visit because '1 in 6 people who say they don't need a licence actually do'. Again a veiled threat suggesting i'm dishonest!

Thinking this through, there is little difference between the tone of these letters and - for those old enough to remember - the directory scams, where tens of thousands of invoices were sent 'for your company to appear in eg., the non existent 'European Carpet Cleaning and Upholsterer's' directory', the price of which was low enough to slip through the accounts department of most sizeable businesses.

The intimation here is that your staff, your customers, the milkman may be downloading and watching TV so the pressure is to buy a licence anyway, just to be sure.

If you don't have a TV why don't you just tell them that. The amount of time you have spent here posting about it you could have filled in the notification option.

 

[Alison Moore]

We used to get them regularly. They used to get very confused as there was a flat above us that did need (and did have) a TV license, but the premises below didn't need a license, but as there were two premises at the same address they could never get their head around it. We either just filled out the form or phoned them. There was a time when we used to get them monthly, until I phoned and gave someone a bit of earache about it.

 

[gpietersz]

The letters do not mean anything, and they have no right to enter your premises so even if they do turn up you can tell them to go away.

We do not have a TV either.

You can fill in a form on the TV licensing website which should stop the letters for an year or so.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

If you don't have a TV why don't you just tell them that. The amount of time you have spent here posting about it you could have filled in the notification option.

I don't have the time to read and digest a 9 page document and am not going to give them my email address and phone number. Comprende?

PS: This thread is about the regularity and tone of the letters not whether I have a TV licence or not.

PPS: The number of posts and time you've spent on here you could have built an Ark.

 

[Bob Morgan]

My television works perfectly well without a Licence

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

I don't have the time to read and digest a 9 page document and am not going to give them my email address and phone number. Comprende?

PS: This thread is about the regularity and tone of the letters not whether I have a TV licence or not.

PPS: The number of posts and time you've spent on here you could have built an Ark.

Why don't you just tell them to go and ££££ themselves !
Nobody does this anymore in this snowflake world and it is important that they must know their place

 

[prophet01]

JH said: "Why don't you just tell them to go and ££££ themselves ! Nobody does this anymore in this snowflake world"

Some years ago, when I was living overseas and making short, frequent visits home, one time I found a letter from British Gas waiting for me. They were asking me to explain why my gas bill had gone down to pretty much zero for such a long time long. The implication being that I was, somehow, illegally bypassing the meter to get gas for free.

I sent a short letter back syaing
"With reference to your recent communication querying my gas usage, my response is as follows: None of your ****ing business".

I took my cue from the fabulous Private Eye response to threat of legal proceedings in the case of Arkell v Pressdram

I'd been waiting for an opportunity like that for years.

 

[Bob Morgan]

Crapita are now reaping the rewards of pursuing Private Households for TV Licence Fees. They are simply running-out of people to pursue and are now trawling the Companies House Register! NEVER answer the door to them and always ask them to make an appointment to call again . . . "I can find a slot for you on 03 August 2028 Please arrive SHARP at 10:30 Hrs as I have the VAT People coming in the afternoon to discuss a refund for 2005!"

There are lots of videos on YouTUBE about this. Quite astonishingly, no one has ever been prosecuted for TV Licence Evasion with evidence from a Detector Van!

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Ignore the youtube vidios and tell him you will take him across the road to the boxing ring where the fight can be fair
Hope this helps Bob

 

[Bob Morgan]

Ignore the youtube vidios and tell him you will take him across the road to the boxing ring where the fight can be fair
Hope this helps Bob

Absolutely Right! The 'Craptia' people are 'Salesmen!' - Why do I have to buy something that I do not need?

 

[Mr D]

Absolutely Right! The 'Craptia' people are 'Salesmen!' - Why do I have to buy something that I do not need?[/QUOTE

Could be worse. You could deal with capita.

 

[Bob Morgan]

NO! Mr D they are known as 'Crapita' within my organisation. They were a 'Client' and then decided that they could amend contracts (Unilaterally) to their own benefit. We 'Recovered Costs' and I have NEVER dealt with them since!

 

[Mr D]

NO! Mr D they are known as 'Crapita' within my organisation. They were a 'Client' and then decided that they could amend contracts (Unilaterally) to their own benefit. We 'Recovered Costs' and I have NEVER dealt with them since!

Organisation I was working for several years ago did some subcontractor work for them. The contract was back and forth for a while before signing, every time they decreased something I had the negotiators increase something else.
Very profitable contract in the end. Our additional costs were about 7 pounds per person, they paid dozens of times that through the contract.

 

[gpietersz]

NO! Mr D they are known as 'Crapita' within my organisation.

They are known as Crapita to a lot of people. Try Googling Crapita or search for the #crapita hashtag on Twitter.

 

[paulears]

I think many people forget that all the old rules and the current streaming and catchup service agreements relate entirely to domestic viewing of television programmes. A TV antenna on a business premises is kind of a giveaway.

The story about the detector vans is not entirely correct. The technology did exist, and the equipment fitted into the vans did work - quite well, actually - but relied on technology that has long since changed. Radio and TV receivers have a local oscillator which actually radiated quite a string signal. In effect, the receiver, was actually transmitting as part of its design. They tried to filter it out in the better designs, but with wooden cabinets and later plastic, the frequency the set was on was indeed detectable. The antennas could be swung to produce a null, and a bearing generated. If they then moved up the street, another bearing would be generated and they knew you were where the bearings crossed. As TV penetration increased and multiple sets were in the same area, like flats, it got a bit messy. Every TV dealer filled in a form when you bought a TV set, so they started to build up a picture of who had a TV set but had not got a licence. Soon - this was far more effective than the vans. People back then objected to their door being knocked too. The vans, many were Commers, had a defect in that the antenna when not rotated regularly seized up, so they couldn't rotate it, and eventually the equipment was removed and many were, indeed equipment less, but the crew using the shock value of parking outside and using the database to generate a knock on the right door. Nowadays, with freeview and multiples, local oscillator hunting is a bit pointless because there are so many on lots of different frequencies and trying to DF them would be futile.

I licence my car, my van, my commercial comms radios, my amateur licence (even though I've not used it for 20 years), my marine radio, my videos I produce, my software and my explosives licence for using pyrotechnics in Northern Ireland. I happily pay for my domestic TV licence, even though I rarely watch BBC. I object to people avoiding paying their income tax too, or not having put their VAT aside and using it as theirs. I find it funny that being honest and moral is set to one side on some things, simply because we don't agree with it. I'm of course 100% squeaky clean in every single thing I do. I wish.

 

[The Byre]

my explosives licence for using pyrotechnics in Northern Ireland.

So it was you that bombed me - twice! Once I was lying on a neckless-bomb (only the one under a colleague went off, blew his beret off and bent his rifle) and once a Morris Minor blew up right in front of me - the boot-lid whizzed past me and made a seriously kewl sound.

But I do object to paying £150 a year for a service that wastes £47m on an outdoor set for the World's worst soap opera (and I have seen some real toe-curling freezers over the years). East Enders makes 'General Hospital' look like high-art in comparison. Even 'Pinky-and-Perky' had better scripts than that drivel!

Nearly everything the BBC shows is bought in. University Challenge, Question Time, Poldark and all those trivial quiz and panel shows are bought-in. The very few programmes produced by the BBC in-house are usually dreadful. All of which begs the question - what do all those 20,000 or more employees find to do all day - they can't ALL be fully occupied filling in H&S questionnaires!

 

[KM-Tiger]

what do all those 20,000 or more employees find to do all day -

Read the Guardian by all accounts.

 

[paulears]

I do sympathise on the anger with the Bbc. I’m no longer able to work for them as I don’t qualify for a lorimer letter so cannot invoice them as a self employed person!

 

[The Byre]

Read the Guardian by all accounts.

Beno more likely - at least the accounts and planning departments!

And I must apologise! It was not £47m, in fact that figure is very wide of the mark. According to the National Audit Office, it was no less than £87m.

That is £87,000,000 - about £8 for every viewer of the third-rate and ham-acted pish - and they got one small outdoor lot on rented ground at Elstree Studios.

And just in case you think that they are getting some vast and beautiful movie set like the rebuilding of old New York for 'The Gangs of New York' (a one-mile square set at Cinecittà outside Rome, featuring over a mile of mid-nineteenth century buildings, consisting of a five-block area of Lower Manhattan, including the Five Points slum, part of the East River waterfront with two full-sized sailing ships, a thirty-building stretch of lower Broadway and replicas of a mansion, Tammany Hall, a church, a saloon, a Chinese theater, and a casino at a total cost of a fraction of £87m) the BBC got this -

That is a pokey little one-and-a-half-acre site with about £7m to £10m worth of building work if they were real, which they are not! And I'm putting the raw build cost without fittings of a small terraced house at £200,000 and a larger house at £400,000 - and I know from experience that I can get them a damn sight cheaper!

And don't forget that the £87m wasted on that garbage is part of their £2.4bn, yes - billion - programme budget (2015 figures). The rest is stuff like £1bn spent on building 'New Broadcasting House' and the over £100m it costs to run each and every year!

In 2015 the BBC spent £2.4bn on programme and on-line content, just £217m on playout and transmission costs and the rest of the £5.1bn (a staggering £2.5bn) is spent on admin and fixed-cost overheads. Yes, you read that correctly - the BBC spends about half its £5bn budget on overheads.

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

So it was you that bombed me - twice! Once I was lying on a neckless-bomb (only the one under a colleague went off, blew his beret off and bent his rifle) and once a Morris Minor blew up right in front of me - the boot-lid whizzed past me and made a seriously kewl sound.

But I do object to paying £150 a year for a service that wastes £47m on an outdoor set for the World's worst soap opera (and I have seen some real toe-curling freezers over the years). East Enders makes 'General Hospital' look like high-art in comparison. Even 'Pinky-and-Perky' had better scripts than that drivel!

Nearly everything the BBC shows is bought in. University Challenge, Question Time, Poldark and all those trivial quiz and panel shows are bought-in. The very few programmes produced by the BBC in-house are usually dreadful. All of which begs the question - what do all those 20,000 or more employees find to do all day - they can't ALL be fully occupied filling in H&S questionnaires!

I understand people’s reticence to pay the licence fee when they don’t watch the BBC, and I thoroughly agree that Eastenders is utter p*sh (all soaps are actually), but with young kids, I couldn’t do without the BBC. The content for children that they put on their channels and online is incredible.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

Bring back Eldorado

 

[Mr D]

So it was you that bombed me - twice! Once I was lying on a neckless-bomb (only the one under a colleague went off, blew his beret off and bent his rifle) and once a Morris Minor blew up right in front of me - the boot-lid whizzed past me and made a seriously kewl sound.

But I do object to paying £150 a year for a service that wastes £47m on an outdoor set for the World's worst soap opera (and I have seen some real toe-curling freezers over the years). East Enders makes 'General Hospital' look like high-art in comparison. Even 'Pinky-and-Perky' had better scripts than that drivel!

Nearly everything the BBC shows is bought in. University Challenge, Question Time, Poldark and all those trivial quiz and panel shows are bought-in. The very few programmes produced by the BBC in-house are usually dreadful. All of which begs the question - what do all those 20,000 or more employees find to do all day - they can't ALL be fully occupied filling in H&S questionnaires!

They send a lot of them to Glastonbury, the Olympics, various awards etc.
Plus they need some to read facebook and twitter to find news to report on.

 

[alan1302]

I don't have the time to read and digest a 9 page document

I think that you do...and you know that you do

 

[The Byre]

They send a lot of them to Glastonbury, the Olympics, various awards etc.

No, they do not! The days of only BBC staffers going out to events ended about two decades ago. Here are some of the trucks that did the outside broadcast for the Olympics -

from Arena-HD, not the BBC.

And here is a BBC satellite link truck at Glastonbury -

And here's the OB truck for Match of the Day -

The excellent audio from Glastonbury is done by (amongst others) the company 'Red' who are part of 'The Remote Recording Network' (run by a guy that I have known since we both had hair!) -

The BBC does still have a fair bit of OB capacity, esp. in local newsgathering and it has some festival vision and sound capacity, but the bulk of the OB work is farmed out to contractors.

The content for children that they put on their channels and online is incredible.

But almost none of it created by the BBC.

The BBC used to dop huge amounts that it just no longer does - for example, the technology and R&D department was so large that it had its' own PR team. They developed new ways to build and set up microphones, they developed new speaker systems, they built some of their own transmission equipment.

The BBC used to be more than a broadcaster. Publishing, education, social research, economics, linguistics, building and carpentry. It had its own large film laboratory. It once ran some 17 orchestras, a big band and four large choirs. The electrical systems department alone was huge. The level of expertise within the BBC was once stunning. Now all gone.

A deadly mix of brutal rationalisation and being infiltrated by a woke crowd of what can only be described as slackers (one of my poisonous tribes again!) more intent on H&S regs and political correctness has diminished the BBC from what was once a national institution that served to bind the nation together - to a parasitic irrelevance.

But the BBC still employs 22,000 fulltime staff, but much production and other work is farmed out to some 12,000 contract staff and freelancers. So my question remains hanging in the air - what are all those 22,000 people doing?

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

But almost none of it created by the BBC

The annual CBeebies Christmas panto is.
And even if they don’t create the content themselves, what does that matter? How many successful companies in the UK are importers or distributors of someone else’s product? Does that make them any less “good”?

Ok they have a lot of full time staff, and we may not know exactly what they do (the series W1A I reckon got it pretty close), but it’s a quasi-governmental corp. The public sector is full of organisations like that.

 

[The Byre]

The annual CBeebies Christmas panto is.

No, it is not! It was made by these people - https://www.modernfilms.com/films

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

No, it is not! It was made by these people - https://www.modernfilms.com/films

And yet it’s performed by CBeebies presenters...

 

[The Byre]

. . . who are freelancers and not BBC staff.

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

. . . who are freelancers and not BBC staff.

What’s your point though? We’re talking about a broadcaster, and I was making a point about the quality of the content they broadcast. If they need to outsource the creative part of the process to produce the content, does that devalue it in any way?

I don’t think so, and when my daughters are delighted at watching the CBeebies Christmas production, neither one of them has turned to me and asked “but did they really write it themselves?”

If that “Modern Film” mob you referenced above were in some way responsible for creating the CBeebies production of The Tempest, do they get to take credit or do we then criticise the BBC for outsourcing the writing to Mr W Shakespeare?

 

[The Byre]

If they need to outsource the creative part of the process to produce the content, does that devalue it in any way?

No, of course not! But it's their rampant profligacy that galls me!

Channel 4 also commissions programmes and movies and puts out 10 TV channels and is moving to Leeds and cutting staff from 3,000 to 2,000. It too is a public service broadcaster but costs the taxpayer nothing.