tv licence They only refund three months!

Richard_E_C

Is this legal?

I have put my house on the market. To make it easier to sell I have moved into my parents and the property is now empty. It's taken quite a bit of work to get the TV licence cancelled, a long email exchange that seems to be done to encourage you to give up.:mad: I then find out that I have paid up to May 2018. But as I don't have one of their proofs of not living there (house not sold yet) they say they will only refund a maximum of 3 months. They also say they only refund whole months and that it can take up to 21 days to process. Also, to make it even harder, you HAVE TO do it buy post! You fill a form out online which you then download and post to them :mad: and it's not free post! :mad:

Is this legal?

Cornucopia

A lot of what BBC TV Licensing do is of questionable legality. In this case, they have the authority to set the Ts & Cs of a Licence, and presumably these complex refund terms are part of that - though you could challenge them to prove it.

A simpler approach is to state that the reason why you are giving up the Licence is because you will no longer be watching/recording TV broadcasts or using iPlayer. When you specify that reason, there is no question of evidence (because there cannot be any).

I would suggest that unless you are already part-way through the process, you go back to them, by phone, and cancel your Licence using that reason. Hopefully they should be able to provide a full refund accordingly.

Richard_E_C

Thanks for the info. I've already been throw the cancellation process. Just have to post :exclamati the form to them. Will put in there that they are welcome to send an inspector to the house to view it being empty. Will also add a copy of the advert showing empty rooms.

What really is getting me all worked up is that it is so easy to buy a TV licence online but to cancel it is a nightmare. There must be a lot of people who meet someone and move in with them as a couple meaning a rented house is vacated or an owned house is sold. And so basically be in the same place as me.

My advice to anyone is don't do direct debit for your TV licence if you are going to get one. These people are doing things that if say a broadband company were doing there would be a press out cry.

This experience just reinforces my view that the BBC should be sold. We'll need the money to pay for Brexit :rotfl:

But in short, they win as it'll be worth less than my time to sort this. The BBC are a bunch of royalist sycophantic crooks! :mad: (ok off at a tangent there)

Cornucopia

I think it's safe to say that they've designed a intentionally tedious process.