Apologies to readers for our recent blogging hiatus, but there hasn't really been anything newsworthy about TV Licensing recently.
Two stories that are currently doing the rounds:
1. The continuing TV Licensing phishing scam.
It was almost a year ago that the recent TV Licensing phishing scam first gathered momentum. Things started to go awry, entirely coincidentally so those dishonest shysters at TV Licensing would claim, a few weeks after the personal data of thousands of TV licence holders were compromised by a security flaw in the TV Licensing website. Ever since then there has been an incessant stream of online news articles saying how scammers are targeting TV Licensing customers.
We would encourage everyone to be very wary of emails purporting to be from TV Licensing. If in doubt they can always call TV Licensing to confirm the authenticity of any missive received (not that we normally recommend it).
There are a few tell tale signs of TV Licensing phishing attempts:
- Quite often they contain typographical errors (e.g. "TV Licencing" instead of "TV Licensing"; "TV license" instead of "TV licence"). For some inexplicable, grammatically incorrect reason the genuine TV Licensing always capitalises the letter "L" when talking about a "TV Licence".
- Phishing emails quite often pressurise the recipient into immediate payment (e.g. "renew your TV licence now to avoid prosecution"). Of course the genuine TV Licensing does a fair bit of pressure selling too.
- Phishing emails often contain an incorrect licence number and renewal date. A genuine TV licence number contains 10 numerical characters and no letters. A genuine TV licence will only ever expire on the last day of the month, never part way through the month.
Anyone who decides to pay for their TV licence online is advised to type the full URL of the TV Licensing website into their browser, instead of clicking on potentially dangerous links embedded online or in emails.
2. TV licence refunds for university students.
It's not often that TV Licensing's massed army of PR harlots spin positive news stories to the media, but breaking with tradition they have done on this occasion.
TV Licensing is reminding students across the land that they can claim a partial refund on their TV licence if they vacate their digs before its expiry date. The sum of £50 is being bandied about quite a lot, which suggests that TV Licensing's PR harlots have somehow planted that seed.
Of course claiming a TV licence refund is akin to plaiting fog, but TV Licensing clearly omitted that point when mounting this particular media offensive.
Pretending to be the students' friend does not come naturally to TV Licensing and you can rest assured that normal threatening service will resume shortly.
Pretending to be the students' friend does not come naturally to TV Licensing and you can rest assured that normal threatening service will resume shortly.
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I have only had a TV Licence for 6 of the 37 years I have legally needed one so that's 31 years LLF in that time I have had a stream of letters between 1983 and 2009 which I sent some back with "NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS" just to annoy them. I had BT TV for 6 years and paid them just to use the BT box. The BBC should only be allowed to prosecute those who watch BBC TV Live or on Iplayer without a licence not those who watch none BBC content Live at the time shown on the TV Listings. FREEVIEW should be as the name says FREE TO VIEW.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen a goon round here since 2017 when they tried it on with me. Maybe they don't want to do the area I live in case they get thrown into the wall attempting to enter illegally?