TV Licensing face fresh allegations of dishonesty after threatening a Glasgow student with prosecution for an offence he hasn't committed.
The student, who we will call Jack, received a copy of TV Licensing's most heinous threatogram to date, which wrongly implies the recipient will be heading straight to court to account for their licence free status. Closer examination reveals that the letter, which TV Licensing helpfully say the recipient "will be allowed to take into court", contains nothing more than legally baseless threats designed to scare them into paying for a licence they probably don't need.
Jack was so incensed with the menacing tone of TV Licensing's letter that he phoned them to complain. The employee he spoke to confirmed the organisation had no evidence of wrongdoing and passed the letter off as routine.
Jack has now written to TV Licensing informing them of his intention mount a private prosecution against them on the basis of the dishonest implications in their letter. He has informed them that he will be charging them to deal with any future correspondence, which might sound fanciful but it is no worse than writing to someone and accusing them of law breaking with zero evidence.
His opening volley is shown below and we'll be very interested to see how the case develops.
Edit (2/11/14): You might also be interested in this post, where we explain how a TV Licensing Blog reader successfully sued TV Licensing for the time taken to process receipt of its threatograms. We encourage other readers harassed by TV Licensing's menacing correspondence to take similar action.
3 comments:
Best of luck to the guy.
I find it somewhat ironic that TVL now owe HIM £145. That figure seems to go round in circles!
Threatening to take them to court is no different from what they're doing.
Legal action is pointless as a threat, either take action or don't. They can simply turn round and say 'see you in court'. A very inefficient way to reclaim £145.
Don't be driven by indignation. If you have no business with them then have no business with them.
Good luck to him. I received the fake "you're going to court" threatogram and complained to TVL, even trying to sue them for harassment as this latest letter failed to meet the BBC Trust's recommendations that all communications should be factual and not misleading. However, TVL in their response simply maintain that this letter was merely an 'enquiry' designed to ascertain my licensing needs- erm, well anyone who can read can see that's not true. After some very frustrating and lengthy communication with them, escalating my complaint to the BBC Trust, I was not successful. You can see the long (very long!) details over at thedailynag with my blog post 'A spoonful of lies helps the brainwashing go down' http://thedailynag.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/spoonfuloflies/ However, if you read my latest posts you'll see I'm back on them for breaching a withdrawal of their implied right of access and I'm going to lump this into my current case (a cherry on the top as it were). Not plugging my blog- just hoping to contribute lol! I've been trawling through your site for help with my own case recently.
Regards,
Lady Nag x
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