Does your business like threatening people that have done nothing wrong?
How about bullying little old ladies into paying for a service they don't legally need? Would your business be happy to distribute threats, lies and innuendo to innocent people on an industrial scale?
If you can answer "yes" to any of those questions then sadly you've missed the latest ISIS recruitment window, but don't despair because the BBC has an equally "exciting" opportunity that might be of interest.
The national broadcaster, in its statutory role as Licensing Authority, is seeking a new contractor to distribute TV Licensing threatograms.
By the BBC's own admission, the overwhelming majority of those letters - which are daubed with accusatory red print and riddled with shit-scary (not) legal threats - are destined for people that do not legally need a TV licence. The BBC is seemingly unable to distinguish between those that legally need a TV licence and those that do not, so all potential "licence-dodging scum" get the same heavy-handed treatment.
The new contract begins on 1st April 2017 (no joke) and initially lasts for 3 years.
According to the BBC: "These mailings play a key part in assisting the BBC to manage the collection and administration of licence fee revenue.
"Around 40% of TVL letters are sent to unlicensed addresses as part of ongoing enforcement programmes. TVL also issues letters to customers as payment reminders, notifications of missed direct debits or for customer service activity (for example confirmation of change of circumstances).
"Although significant progress has been made in reducing the reliance on postal mail as a communications channel, it will remain a very important method of communicating to licence fee payers for the foreseeable future, particularly for unlicensed addresses and customers without internet access."
In 2015/16 TV Licensing distributed a staggering 50.9 million mailings to properties across the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. With the TV licence fee having recently been "unfrozen", the number of mailings is expected to rise to around 61 million per annum. This is because TV Licensing is obliged to contact anyone paying by Direct Debit to notify them of the annual TV licence fee increase.
The BBC has previously confirmed to us that it costs on average 18.3 pence (at 2012 prices) for the distribution of every letter, not including the printing and finishing process. When these factors are taken into account, the true cost of every TV Licensing letter is around twice as much. No wonder it costs the BBC more than £100m a year - roughly equal to the combined spend on BBC Radios 1 and 2 - simply to administer the TV licence.
Any company wishing to bid for the new contract has until 9 am on 24th October 2016 to submit the necessary paperwork to the BBC.
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3 comments:
“95% of UKK properties are correctly licensed, Why isn't yours?”
Because it is correctly Un-Licensed you BBC idiots.
These letters are possibly the worst aspect of the BBC TV Licence racket. Profoundly dishonest and misleading (lots of rubbish about "Officers", "Investigations" "Before a hearing is set at your local court", "Legal Occupier" etc etc.), the BBC would never dare post out such threats under its own name. They hide behind the trademark TV Licensing, hoping that the majority of recipients of their letters assume this is some government body.
During 2016 BBC threatograms started arriving in white envelopes, rather than the hitherto usual brown, but still easily enough identified (despite the return address on the reverse being in very small print). These new ones seem to burn slightly better than the old and therefore I hope any new contractor will be encouraged to maintain use of white.
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