To ignore the TV license people?

[Fellia]

So the TV licensing people knocked on my door at half 8 on Saturday morning.

I was in bed and didn’t answer but I’m expecting them to come back.

They put a red letter through my door saying I am watching tv illegally and they can “help me watch legally.”

I’m finding this absolutely ridiculous. I do not watch tv apart from Netflix/DVD’s and the one tv I do have isn’t connected to actual channels (sorry, I don’t know how to explain this properly as I don’t know much about it)

But the fact is I do not watch regular TV. I have written to them, called them numerous times to explain this and I had a visit last year (at a different property) where I also explained this.

AIBU to just ignore them if they keep coming to my door? I’m sick of being harassed by them for no reason.

You need a licence to watch/access alot on the internet

No you don't.

You need a lisence to watch iplayer and other channels as they are being broadcast. If you watch on catch up, Use Netflix/Now TV etc you are fine.

The only two things you need a license for is iplayer and streaming as it's being broadcast.

Keffie12 😂😅😂😂😂😂 you didn’t read the thread did you..

I took there implied right of access away. They sent a salesman a few times i told them to leave my property and they did. Then got a letter saying they wont contact me for two years. I dont watch tv anyway. Ignore the salesman and never give your name

I agree with pollymere.
Just answer the door and tell them that you do not need a TV licence and take it from there.
It’s no big thing, either you watch Tv or you don’t.
I pay my licence monthly and it works out about £3 a week.
Let’s be honest it’s not worth going to court for and getting a criminal conviction for £3 a week .

You can send them an e mail to tell them that you do not require a licence. Also state that you are willing to report them or their representatives for trespass if they enter your property again. I have amazon prime and do not watch terrestrial tv . I made it very clear that I would report them and pursue criminal action against them if they left the pavement to enter my property. They have no right to do that.

Reading this takes me right back to being a child the 1970s. For the whole decade, from when we moved in to the house in 1971, until we moved out in 1979, we didn’t have a tv, and therefore (!) didn’t have a tv license. We regularly had letters through the door from the licensing people demanding we pay up. I remember my mother getting really irritated with them; for the first few years she filled out the forms to say we didn’t have a tv and sent them back, but eventually she stopped doing that.

We lived in a village, and our house was the very end of a dead end lane. The house was behind a very tall wall — though perhaps if I saw it now as an adult I’d not think it as tall as I did then! But certainly you couldn’t see over the wall, and the house was set well back from the road. You couldn’t see the roof, let alone through any of the windows. But that didn’t stop the detector vans from coming and sitting at the bottom of the lane just outside our house. They were kind of hard to miss, and it was pretty obvious whose house they were pointing their rooftop equipment, since there were no other houses or vehicles around. We used to laugh at them, and one time mum even offered them a cup of tea ... but that was back in the day when the job wasn’t outsourced to companies paying on commission to men with potentially dodgy pasts. The men in the vans were invariably polite and slightly apologetic.

We got a tv, and a license, in 1979.

hi,
i would suggest reading through this article from the martins money saving tips website, apparently the rules have altered a bit.
one would question why we finance the BBC when it is biased toward the current government views.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/tv-licence

best wishes

That's an interesting article Henry however they skirt around an important issue namely that it's not possible to prove that someone has watched live TV via streaming

the BBC is a dinosaur it hasn't kept up with the changes in technology and it's rules are unenforceable
Rather than deal with the situation it's trying to confuse and intimidate people

I'm another one who doesn't understand why the BBC don't have some kind of log in to ensure only subscribers use their service. I have Netflix, Amazon and Spotify, I'm sure they'd lock me out PDQ if I stopped paying. So, if the technology is there why aren't the BBC using it?

Saskia, my guess is that they know if they allowed this people would share login details as you can with Amazon or Netflix.
For instance I have a Netflix account and I share the login details with three other family members Who all live separately from me and from each other.
So one Netflix subscription is being used for 4 separate households.
The BBC want the public to feel as if each household has to purchase a licence and they would have to let go of that if they use the same model that Netflix or Amazon use

Because devices are portable and content can be streamed from many locations via multiple ISPs it is no longer possible to lock a subscription down to a premises or a person

ohfortuna, that sounds like the most likely reason. It does seem outdated though. I'm not sure how much longer they can keep this model going, with more and more people switching to other services surely it will become unsustainable at some point.

I'm another one who doesn't understand why the BBC don't have some kind of log in to ensure only subscribers use their service. But they do now, don't you? It is currently voluntary, giving people time to get used to it. I even had to sign in for streaming the radio!

Oooh! Maybe not the iplayer, they just ask you to confirm you have a license...

one would question why we finance the BBC when it is biased toward the current government views. Huh?

Some bits of it are, some are not... same as it ever was .

It waxes and wanes in how good it 'neutral news voice' is!

CuriousaboutSamphire I don't know, I haven't used any BBC services for years, I just know that when I last used them they didn't have any way to verify that you did have a licence. Do you now have to put the licence details in before you can use it?

I ignore them. I did answer them to start with, but they were always full of threats and accusing me of lying. They also told me that regardless of if I actually watch/record live TV..I need a license. As my laptop and such are capable of streaming live TV

I have to say though the day the TV license guy literally barged past me as he said I was lying and he absolutely HAD to check (whilst proclaiming it was legal for him to force his way past me) was quite fun. He stomped his way into the living room and saw DH and literally turned and ran back from the house. DH didn't even say a word to him, or even look at him. Just the fact that there was a man there seemed to put the shitters up the little creeps who was trying to bully me.

I even had to sign in for streaming the radio

they ask you to sign in to use iplayer for radio but there are numerous other apps via which you can listen to bbc radio which dont require a sign in

I will drop this right here

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2017-11-20/debates/CF3F652E-0E66-4089-A30D-D9229792E31A/TVLicenceFee

Make absolutely certain that you don't need a licence as these people are very persistent. Quite a long time ago I got regular letters from them telling me that they'd take me to court despite the fact that I'd bought a licence from the local Post Office. I felt like thumbing my nose at them and saying, "See you in court."

At the third letter I got so fed up and screwed it up and put it in the bin. My dear old mum unravelled it and took it to the Post Office where they found that the clerk hadn't completed the procedure at their end. I never heard from the again.

Oooh! Gingersnapshard Every side of every discussion point, all covered, examined, jeered at and moved on

CuriousaboutSamphire
:-) It is mind blowing.

Yes I was a bit surprised at the level of discussion and lack of knowledge from some of the MPs (still thinking you need to have a licence because you own a physical TV set). A lot of them just seemed to use it as a chance to list their favourite TV shows and throw in a few lame jokes!

They do have a point though that it is good to have the BBC as an independent news source. I think that a lot of what the BBC does is excellent. It could probably be slimmed down quite a bit though.

The licence fee model will clearly become unsustainable in the future though, so some thought needs to be given as to how to replace it. The main thing I object to is how it is a regressive tax (affecting the poor much more, so unfair), and also how TV licencing assumes everyone must have a licence because watching TV is the norm (which is becoming more and more out-of-date), and their aggressive techniques for collection.

Ah! But did you read the part about how much less onerous a regressive tax it is than some of the alternatives?

It did also cover, quite a lot, that it isn't the BBC who do the aggressive collecting, but that the company that does (can anybody guess who that might be) needs to be reined in a bit... I'd love to se that in ALL of their ventures.

It was really interesting, odd, and quite comprehensively covered at least 2 sides to all of the points raised here... and then some!

If you read it with an open mind it becomes extremely obvious that, whilst it is obvious that something needs to change any change would be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water!