Quick £70 for TV Licence direct debit payers

BurwellBlue

EVERY READER OF THIS POST PAYING THEIR TV LICENCE FEE ON MONTHLY DIRECT DEBIT CAN SAVE AN EASY £70 NOW! :j

The BBC charges a 50% premium to all viewers who pay their licence fee by monthly Direct Debit! What a con! To clarify, the monthly DD plan takes your 1st years licence over the 1st 6 months (£24 per month) and then continues to take payments for Year 2 from month 7 (£12 per month). This means you pay a 50% premium for your DD 1st year which you never get back if you continue to pay by DD.

A Freedom Of Information request in Mar 31st 2013 showed 972,844 households on 1st year direct debits and 8,678,267 on 2nd or more year direct debit. This means 9.65 million of you have been overcharged by 50%, a circa £0.7 billion overpayment to the BBC that is never recouped.

THE ANSWER is to pay by DD for 6 months at a time at the £24 rate then cancel the direct debit. You will then get a call from TV Licensing asking you to reinstate the £12 payment or they threaten that you may not be able to pay by DD when the next licence is due but just go online and do it like a new user. I have done this for 5 years now.

Cornucopia

Your tip is fine - anyone can do this. But some of your "facts" are not true.

There is no "unrecouped" overpayment, as such. The double payments are not a fee, but bring the licence up to the state where you are paying 6 months in advance and then 6 months in arrears.

You can get it back at any time by cancelling the Monthly DD scheme, and then reinstate Monthly DD whenever you like. I would suggest that people do this by speaking to TVL. If you simply cancel the DD, there is the possibility that debt collectors will be instructed.




Or you can save even more by not having a TV Licence, and just watching on Catch-up services, Netflix/Amazon etc.

tronator

BurwellBlue wrote: »

EVERY READER OF THIS POST PAYING THEIR TV LICENCE FEE ON MONTHLY DIRECT DEBIT CAN SAVE AN EASY £70 NOW! :j

The BBC charges a 50% premium to all viewers who pay their licence fee by monthly Direct Debit! What a con! To clarify, the monthly DD plan takes your 1st years licence over the 1st 6 months (£24 per month) and then continues to take payments for Year 2 from month 7 (£12 per month). This means you pay a 50% premium for your DD 1st year which you never get back if you continue to pay by DD.

A Freedom Of Information request in Mar 31st 2013 showed 972,844 households on 1st year direct debits and 8,678,267 on 2nd or more year direct debit. This means 9.65 million of you have been overcharged by 50%, a circa £0.7 billion overpayment to the BBC that is never recouped.

THE ANSWER is to pay by DD for 6 months at a time at the £24 rate then cancel the direct debit. You will then get a call from TV Licensing asking you to reinstate the £12 payment or they threaten that you may not be able to pay by DD when the next licence is due but just go online and do it like a new user. I have done this for 5 years now.

Your post is quite misleading. Nobody saves ~£70 this way. With monthly payments you just pay half a year in advance after the first 6 month.

When you cancel your license you can claim overpaid monies.

The only amount you save is £1.50/year compared to yearly and £6.50/year compared to quarterly payments.

Edit: And after 18/30/42/... months you paid exactly the same with your method as if you had never canceled the direct debit in first place. So why all the hassle?

Cornucopia

The TV Licence Monthly payment scheme must be one of the most complicated and consequently misunderstood of all major companies in the UK.

The sort of garbled misunderstanding as in the OP does not help.

BurwellBlue

Wake up Cornocopia, of course you can save. Do you want hat £70 in your pocket or their account? You save it by not putting your £70 into the BBC coffers that you don't need to. And everybody that has done so can claim it back.
Regardless, the real point of the posting is the outrage that the BBC can get away with sticking £700,000,000 into their account that is not theirs!
I would also ask why the BBC still had £87,000,000 sitting in it’s Children In Need account 1 year after the 2013 campaign and just days before the 2014 campaign started. They are sitting on another float of almost £100 million for at least 12 months at a time!!!

chazsucks

BurwellBlue wrote: »

Wake up Cornocopia, of course you can save. Do you want hat £70 in your pocket or their account? You save it by not putting your £70 into the BBC coffers that you don't need to. And everybody that has done so can claim it back.
Regardless, the real point of the posting is the outrage that the BBC can get away with sticking £700,000,000 into their account that is not theirs!
I would also ask why the BBC still had £87,000,000 sitting in it’s Children In Need account 1 year after the 2013 campaign and just days before the 2014 campaign started. They are sitting on another float of almost £100 million for at least 12 months at a time!!!

Did you read the previous replies to your post?

jon81uk

You aren't saving anything. The license costs the same whether you pay for it over six months or twelve.
For some people, they might not be able to afford £24 a month, but by spreading the cost further and paying £12 it becomes a lot more affordable.

JimmyTheWig

jon81uk wrote: »

You aren't saving anything.

Well, that's not quite true.
You are saving something.
By following the OP's plan you pay your TV licence partly in arrears and never in advance - which is exactly what TVL don't want to happen.

With the OP's plan, you are
£12.12 better off after month 7
£24.24 better off after month 8
...
£72.72 better off after month 12
£60.60 better off after month 13
£48.48 better off after month 14
...
£12.12 better off after month 17
Break even after month 18

So on average over the year (month 7 to month 18) your bank account balance is £36.36 higher than it would be if you paid normally.
If you earn, say, 3% net interest then that would be worth £1.09 to you.

So, yes, by following the OP's plan you can be £1.09 a year better off.


[Do you have the same problem with people paying for their licence in one lump sum?]

tronator

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

So, yes, by following the OP's plan you can be £1.09 a year better off.

Wow, this much?

3% are way too optimistic at the moment. The savings are more in the region of 30p. And for that I need to cancel my TV license and apply again (and not to forget it). There are easier ways to earn 30p

JimmyTheWig

tronator wrote: »

Wow, this much?

3% are way too optimistic at the moment. The savings are more in the region of 30p. And for that I need to cancel my TV license and apply again (and not to forget it). There are easier ways to earn 30p

I was giving the OP the benefit of the doubt.
Some people will be getting 3% net these days. E.g. non-tax payers with Santander 123 account.

Cornucopia

What do we want? £1.09

When do we want it? Just before we reinstate our TV Licence Direct Debit.