TV Licensing direct debit scam email

nrsql

Just had an email to say that my tv licence direct debit had failed and to pay asap.
It looked convincing and had a link to go to the site - I never click on those.
My dd was meant to go out a few weeks ago but that might be a coincidence.

The actual sender email address was dubious but that was the only clue from the email.

I checked my bank account and the dd had been taken.
Went to the tv licence site and the licence number in the email was wrong and my licence had been renewed.

So it was a scam but it's one of the more convincing ones so I thought I'd warn people.

Terry_Towelling

Can you please contact the TV licensing authorities and let them have a copy of the email with the link in it? They may be able to take some action.

hoc

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

Can you please contact the TV licensing authorities and let them have a copy of the email with the link in it? They may be able to take some action.

Unfortunately TV Licensing customer service are truly useless. Without exaggeration I have found them to be the laziest and most incompetent customer service of any UK organisation, private or government, I have had to deal with.

le_loup

hoc wrote: »

Unfortunately TV Licensing customer service are truly useless. Without exaggeration I have found them to be the laziest and most incompetent customer service of any UK organisation, private or government, I have had to deal with.

That's outsourcing for you!

alanq

I am not sure what action TV Licensing office could take other than to report to Action Fraud which one can do oneself.

https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/scam-emails

colsten

Definitely report it to Actionfraud. Whilst they might not do anything about it, it adds to their statistics.

If you are in a Neighbourhood Watch scheme, report it to your coordinator, too.

eskbanker

It also wouldn't do any harm to post more specific details of the email on this thread, which may help those searching for information. I'm thinking of the sending email address, the email title and preferably content and maybe even the dodgy URL too (as long as it's clearly caveatted with 'do not click'!)....

Terry_Towelling

alanq wrote: »

I am not sure what action TV Licensing office could take other than to report to Action Fraud which one can do oneself.

https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/scam-emails

Neither am I sure what action the licensing authority could/would take (not a lot if @hoc's post is anything to go by) but it involves the misuse of their brand and facility and they need to at least be notified and given the chance to do something.

Jlawson118

I think it's a dodgy email, there's a lot of spam TV licensing emails going around at the moment. Avoid!

A girl I'm friends with on Facebook posted a screenshot of the same email a few weeks, asking if it was real, and it did look genuine, but it was fake and a lot of her friends claimed to have had the same email.

Firstly, is the email addressed to you? Such as "Dear Joe Bloggs." Or is it 'Dear Joebloggs@gmail.com?" If it's the email then it's a scam. If it's your name, then dig a little further into the small print. Is there a partial postcode or anything in there that might suggest they hold real information about you. Again, this is still not to be 100% trusted if they do, and your best bet might be contacting the TV licensing company

eskbanker

It seems that Action Fraud and TV Licensing are both already well aware of this issue and are offering plenty of (the usual) advice about how to spot such emails:

https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/alert/action-fraud-warns-against-fake-tv-licensing-emails-as-over-2500-reports-are-made-in-two-months-alone

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ288

nrsql

I did send it to action fraud but don't expect much from that.
It would probably need the email junk mail filters updating.

Not sure there's much point in posting more as people will forget about the detail and I've deleted the email.
It's just that for this one there was nothing obvious in the email without looking at the (hidden) email address and that there was a link to click on which is always dubious.
One of the better scam emails - have to give them credit for that.

Seems to me that scammers have stopped being satisfied with the low hanging fruit and are developing longer ladders. I guess once they've set up an infrastructure it's easy and cheap to change the target audience. Especially as any personal information now has value.