We don’t have a TV and haven’t had one for so long I can’t remember what it looked like, so we don’t have a TV License (nor watch iPlayer). I used to phone them up once a year to tell them but a couple of years ago I couldn’t be bothered so they started sending letters threatening us.

They started off quite polite, could you please contact us, then went on to ‘or we’ll have to visit you’, to ‘we will definitely visit you asap’, ‘this time we really will visit you’, then ‘no we really mean it this time’, to ‘The Cambridge enforcement team are camped outside your front door in full para-military kit and you have 20 seconds to comply’.

But now, things are getting really serious, we’ve been issued with the terrifying INO100A14 notice.

I am quite intrigued as to what comes next as they’ve shown they’re bluffing as this is the nth letter from the local enforcement team about to storm the house and they’re not taking any prisoners.

I do wonder if at some point you just get a letter saying ‘we give up, carry on’?

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2m4UeNX]TV Licensing nonsense[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

I don’t think they ever do. Death, taxes and TV License reminders for properties that do not have one.

We had them “visit” my previous house and intimidate/threaten us a couple of times.

Here, so far, they just send us recycling. I should start charging them a processing fee.

Bullies. Ignore.

Love the BBC but my god… add it to income tax or something. Don’t send goons out in plastic vans intimidating old people and students.

our experience is that eventually they run out of escalating letters (I think the ‘top’ one is the one that says on the envelope court summons or something similar, with small print that says you may get a court summons if….) and then revert to the first polite one again (‘I say old chap have you forgotten something…?’)

We have this every couple of years at our office. Ignore them.

Or, as my old boss did, collect every last single one of them over a couple of years, pop them in a large envelope, and include a letter that say (to paraphrase)  ‘you waste my time on this and wind me up, so I thought I would return the favour’… And deliberately underpay the postage.

sounds like something from Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life!
We don’t have gas installed but we kept receiving red letters from the gas board for an ever increasing gas bill!

ANYTIME! Day or evening! Weekday or Weekend! Wow.

Why don’t you just go
https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/cs/no-licence-needed/about.app

And stop getting the annoying spam through your doorhole?

Why don’t you just go

Doesn’t make any difference. There’s a certain conceit in thinking no address could possibly not want a TV licence, but even if you say why, they ignore it.

Why help them? Let them waste their money.

Why don’t you just go

They don’t bother me, I’m just intrigued to see how they progress.

Let them waste their money.

Also this. There’s no obligation to tell them anything.

I just fill the thing in on the website once a year (or whatever it is) and they never send me any other letters at all.

I just fill the thing in on the website once a year (or whatever it is) and they never send me any other letters at all.

Ah, but then you don’t get to go Oooh look at me! ladidah I don’t have a telly you bunch of easily entertained plebs!

I’m just intrigued to see how they progress.

They’re just spat out by computer. Goes round in circles. There’s a good one that says ‘ARE YOU GOING TO BE IN ON …?’ 🙂 As if you’re going to ring them up and say “err, sorry, that date is inconvenient. Would it be possible for you to come round and pull my trousers down on the 22nd instead?”

Absolute scumbags.

Thing is you are under no obligation to let them in even if they do turn up at your door.

Thing is you are under no obligation to let them in even if they do turn up at your door.

Exactly, but they’re bullies. I was once staying at my girlfriend’s who lived in a student house with a few other girls. One morning I was in bed and heard an almighty commotion from downstairs. An ‘inspector’ had wedged his foot in the door when one of the girls had tried to close the front door on him. He’d then barged in and was in the process of trying to plug some device into the back of an old TV the landlord had left there. I ran down half naked with a clear intent of doing a bit of the old ultra-violence when he ran out the house.

Vermin.

One of them once while haranguing my (naive and foreign) housemate, pointed at my car on the drive and told him that we could afford a TV license. We didn’t have anything connected to an aerial in the house. Unfortunately they never called around when I was in for me to practice my finest blue language on the subject of their tactics.

So who are the ‘enforcement’ team? Actual Pravda employees or is it subcontracted out?

Write ‘ this address does not exist’ on the next letter, return post and see what happens.

So who are the ‘enforcement’ team? Actual Pravda employees or is it subcontracted out?

IIRC the whole TV License collecting contract is subbed out to Capita…

Looks like that code is randomly generated per household as it completely flumoxed Google!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2m4WB4o]Capture[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

I took am the recipient of an IN01O0A14 code letter.

When I moved in (>4 years ago) I received red marked TV licensing letters to the legal occupier. I figured they must be for the previous occupant so ignored them.

They keep telling me that an enforcement officer will visit any day (or night) now. For pretty much the last 3 years.

I’ve previously don’t The don’t have a tv thing but it’s the filling personal details I object to. So **** em.

The presumption of guilt in their letters also sticks in my craw.

I don’t have a tv, haven’t watched one (at home) for >13 years now. Don’t watch iplayer or live tv.

Is anyone going let strangers in their house at the moment anyways?

Is anyone going let strangers in their house at the moment anyways?

I was wondering whether they’d stopped visits due to Covid. Does sound like the do actually exist though (from the posts above).

Theres a detector van outside my house right now pinging away.

There are X number of properties in the UK, some are residential homes, some are businesses and some are either empty or demolished. TV licensing send out to everyone.
They only know if said property has a license and if it doesn’t, for whatever reason, they send that property a letter.

There are 24 million residential properties in the UK.multiple that by the £160 cost of a license which gives the BBC a potential income of £4,000,000,000.
So they want to maximize their income and can easily afford to send some parasite to each and every one to see if there’s a TV there or not.

Add to this the cost of a commercial license and the income will be considerably higher. Commercial license income is approximately £1,500,000,000
Total income for the BBC from licensing alone is just short of £5,000,000,000.
The UK treasury gets its tax cut, which is why they allow the BBC to do what they want.

Looks like that code is randomly generated per household as it completely flumoxed Google!

I’m pretty sure it’s not generated per household, but I do wonder if the 0/O thing is deliberate to make it more annoying to google.

TV licence enforcement is bollocks and outsourced to Crapita.
I haven’t used a TV for years but that doesn’t stop the enforcement letters.
The guiding principle appears to be…prove to us you don’t need licence; my response has always been…prove to me – and court, if necessary, that I should have a licence.
What a bunch of clowns.

Refer them to the case of Akrell vs Pressdram.

Theres a detector van outside my house right now pinging away.

No there isn’t.

Refer them to the case of Akrell vs Pressdram.

Post reported for swear filter avoidance.

Theres a detector van outside my house right now pinging away.

They don’t work anymore.

In the old days of analogue TVs, the flyback frequency was quite distinctive, so very easy to detect with a directional antenna if a TV was being used. With LCD screens a) they create far less spurious RF and b) you can’t distinguish between a TV and a computer. So, the detector vans thing is pretty much obsolete.

the flyback frequency was quite distinctive

They used the IF or intermediate frequency generated by the TVs tuner. This was 39MHz above the signal from the channel being received.
For instance, the bottom channel #21 was at 470MHz. So they would use a receiver tuned to 509MHz and a directional hand held aerial to pinpoint a set to gain their evidence.
These days just say nothing (they are recording every word) and shut the door.

They were pretty taken aback when my dad’s mate pretty much dragged then into the house, showed them his TV and declared he would buy 10 licenses if they could get anything.
Being tucked up a coastal valley, they found he has zero reception and have never been since.

They don’t work anymore.

…

They used the IF or intermediate frequency generated by the TVs tuner.

Bollocks they did.

TV detector vans “detected” by means of a little man jumping out and peeping through your window to try and catch you watching Coronation Street. At the height of their popularity there were three across the entire country. They’re a myth, a(nother) scaremongering tactic dreamt up by the licensing people.

They were pretty taken aback when my dad’s mate pretty much dragged then into the house, showed them his TV and declared he would buy 10 licenses if they could get anything.

“Got iPlayer on your Internet connection then have you, sir?”

I live in the NW Highlands. Quite amusing to be threatened with a visit from the Achnasheen Enforcement Team. Friends a few miles away get threatened with the Garve Enforcement Team. Nice to know that the licence fee is doing so much to support local employment!

@Cougar despite him working for BT at Goonhilly, the internet hadn’t made it there, albeit 20 years ago when they visited.

There’s a guy that’s been logging the threatening letters he receives from the BBC licence for 15 years now! He used to comment on it all, and has some interesting links about detector vans and how the BBC bought all similar Web addresses 2 weeks after him. Now he’s just routinely scanning each one in. Have a look at bbctvlicence.com, it’s a gold mine of fun.

albeit 20 years ago

Ah, that’d do it.

I have no telly. Had the threatening letters for years, even let in some bloke to see I didn’t have a telly when you could see no aerial anyway. The letters continued (they must be paid by the letter rather than the number of licence renewals). So I contacted my MP, it stopped.

TV detector vans “detected” by means of a little man jumping out and peeping through your window to try and catch you watching Coronation Street. At the height of their popularity there were three across the entire country. They’re a myth, a(nother) scaremongering tactic dreamt up by the licensing people.

Wrong. I personally counted four parked up in the yard of the Royal Mail sorting office about 20odd years ago, never saw them turn a wheel but I refuse to believe they stored the entire fleet in Troon.