TV Licensing has just unveiled its latest letter designed to coerce the occupiers of unlicensed properties - at least 80% of which are correctly unlicensed - into buying a TV licence they probably have no legal need for.
Senior member 198kHz of the TV Licence Resistance forums (a marvellous community, as discussed here) received the new format letter a couple of days ago. As he also reads our blog, we hope he doesn't mind us reproducing his image above.
This threatogram is unusual in that features a red ink stamp-type mark indicating that an enforcement visit has been approved by TV Licensing uber goon John Hales.
The full text of the letter is as follows:
______________________________
Will You Be In On [Date]?
As there is no record of a TV Licence at your address, you should expect a visit from an Enforcement Officer.
It may be on [date] or on another day. If you are caught watching or recording live TV, on any device, you face a fine of up to £1,000 plus any legal costs and/or compensation you may be ordered to pay.
We visit 10,746 addresses a day.
Our Enforcement Officers visit an address every 5 seconds. Day. Evening. And even weekends. And if no one answers, they can come back.
Stop a visit before it's too late.
- Buy a TV Licence at tvlicensing.co.uk/pay with payments starting from £5.60 a week.
- Or, move an existing TV Licence to your current address at tvlicensing.co.uk/moving.
- Or, tell us you don't need one at tvlicensing.co.uk/noTV
For help with any of the above, please call 0300 790 6077 or turn over for more information.
If you do not do any of the above, you can expect a visit soon.
Yours faithfullly,
[Name]
Enforcement Manager, [Location]
______________________________
All very scary. Not.
In common with every other TV Licensing threatogram, if you read carefully you'll say a generous splattering of the words "may" and "if" and very little of substance.
The simple fact of the matter is that TV Licensing probably won't visit on the date mentioned at the head of the letter. Even if they did, the occupier would be well within their rights to ignore the knock at the door. If TV Licensing want to waste their time returning to knock for a second time, then so be it.
Remember that a legally-licence-free person is under no obligation at all to TV Licensing. Simply ignore their letters and keep the door firmly closed on any TV Licensing goon that calls.
Don't be one of the unfortunate innocent people who makes the mistake of trusting TV Licensing and ends up accused of an offence they haven't committed.
TV Licensing are complete and utter scum and cannot be trusted.
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13 comments:
LOL So they visit a home every 5 seconds. Lets do some maths then. For the sake of it lets say they can visit over a 12 hour day. There are 43,200 seconds in that 12 hours divided by 5 that equates to 8,640 homes EACH AND EVERY day. LMAO
They might visit that many properties, but we believe only a small proportion of those visits - say 1 in 5 - are successful in that a normal adult occupier answers the door and purchases a licence/gives a statement.
All TVL letters are mass produced and sent out in their millions. An attempt is made to make it seem that the address is being specially targeted - in this case the bogus stamp and signature.
Goons download addresses to visit every week onto their infamous "hand held device". It's clear there is a priority put on some addresses based on the last time a payment was made at the address or a licence held there. The BBC is very interested in addresses where someone was prosecuted for not having a licence and subsequently no licence is bought.
I haven't held a licence for many years because I don't need one. Although I still get regular letters, the goons no longer visit. Presumably they are in my area but looking for "easy pickings" elsewhere
Hi, just received my monthly Threat-o-Gram this morning in fact. This one was unusual due to an inserted card that tells me that due to a change in the law, after September 1st. a licence will be required to watch catch up TV and i-player on all devices.
I find this very strange that, if true, I've not heard about it here first.
Hello Chris and thanks for dropping by.
We did write about the change in legislation a few weeks ago (see here).
Please note that a TV licence will only be required to watch on-demand on the BBC iPlayer.
It will still be perfectly legal to enjoy the on-demand services of other providers without a TV licence.
Yes... the new rules really are ridiculous!
As he also reads our blog, we hope he doesn't mind us reproducing his image above.
No problem - please feel free to publish anything I put on TVLR or elsewhere. :}
My upmost apologies Admin, I notice your report was on the 7th. July, sorry, I missed it as I was, lets say, at the time, a guest of Her Majesty.
No probs Chris.
Please give Her Majesty my regards if you see her again.
I had a look at the Performance Pack for March 2015 - Front Office section, page 9 which has a table detailing the mailings made by the BBC's TVL contractor. I was interested in the different mailing types, the titles of which which were not properly redacted.
A total of 3,009,237 letters were sent during the month which were broken down as:
HM 1 340,436
HM 2 205,268
HM 3 63,658
HM 4 0
HM 5 0
HM 6 0
Inactives 1,581,404
Business 78,011
E-Mail Reminder 0
1st Rem 398,361
2nd rem 107,859
3rd rem 51,827
Students 0
TVL 256 9,103
TVL 257 33,019
Des Res 15,517
Ex Payments 55,948
NLN - Confirmation 24,018
NLN - Refresh 44,808
It's possible to work out or guess what most of these letters are. Rem is obviously reminder, presumably HM are their standard letters (M for mailing?), inactives are probably addresses that haven't had a licence or responded to letters for a long time, NLN is No Licence Needed. What caught my eye though was "Des Res" - does the BBC really have a letter specially designed to be sent to "Desirable Residences"? Perhaps these are especially polite in tone so as not to get the powerful and wealthy people of the UK complaining about being threatened with court action when they've done nothing wrong?
It might be worth asking the BBC to provide information about these abbreviations/truncations - FOIA maybe?
It will really piss them off if you quote redacted information from the Performance Pack in the text of your request.
Today a man in black with a handheld device was trying to push mail through my letterbox....i opened the door and said "can i help"....."you better read that" he said"its from tvlicencing".... it wasnt the usual letter no envelope just glossy like an advertisement...i refused and handed it back but he wouldnt take it and i said more strongly i do not want it. he got in his car and i followed him saying i do not want advertising from tvlicencing....i tapped on his window and twirled my finger to ask him to wind down the window i was on the passenger side and had my other hand on the edge of the car....he said no and put his foot down i was dragged with the car and thrown down to the ground ...i wasnt able to move out quick enough when he took off as i have health conditions....i was laying in the road shaking uncontrollably when some dog walkers found me ...he just drove off he must have seen me fall but he left me lying there...i fell face first into stinging nettles and badly bruised my thigh and knee... luckily i missed hitting my head on a stone wall by inches.....is this harassing of people really necessary....if they knocked and ask why there isnt a tv license at this address i have no problems saying because i dont need one...i feel very angry at their tactics and even this chaps first sentence was implying I was breaking the law. It needs to change.
also the letter was in my hand that was holding the doorjamb with and it got stuck against his car as he drove off we looked but couldn't find it..would anyone know what it was as I didn't get chance to look properly but it was definitely not in an envelope. thank you
Anon. 5 May 2017...
Are you delusional? This sounds like utter nonsense.
It does seem a bit of a tall tale, doesn't it?
Almost as fanciful as you being Jane Powell.
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