TV Licence article Discussion

cw18

Cornucopia said:
A campaign has been suggested whereby multiple letters from multiple recipients are all returned on the same day and that could be a way of gaining publicity and sending a clearer message that their letters are unacceptable.

People dropping them into a post box on the same day doesn't guarantee they'll all arrive on the same day.   Some returns get picked up during the early sorting processes, but others don't - and those then end up back at the office that delivers to the person it was addressed to.   In order to increase the odds of them arriving on the same day everyone would have to completely cover the address AND any barcoding (including the 2 orange ones that can be hard to see on brown envelopes) so that the machines don't just send them back out to the original addressee.

If they end up back in the office they originally went to, then processing times to kick them out vary wildly depening on staffing levels (and how bothered individual members of staff can be).

(I'm a postie!)

Cornucopia

cw18 said:

2010 said:

Is it best just to dump the letters unopened or "return to sender" them, causing them more expense?

Please don't return to sender.    The cost of sending them back is covered by Royal Mail, and is built into the cost of the postage we all pay for sending things out.   There's an expectation of 'x%' of mail being sent back every year, but if that figure starts rising then so will the cost of postage generally

Given that we are talking about threatening propaganda from TVL I think that sending the letters back unopened gives people a way to claim a bit of empowerment.

I assume that with the volume of mail we are talking about, (a) Royal Mail will have a bespoke contract with the BBC that possibly includes provision for a higher than normal rate of returns, and (b) after 30 years of this nonsense in the era of the BBC's management of it that Royal Mail must know that the letters are very questionable even if they may not have any effective remedy of their own i.e. they are obliged to carry it.

cw18

To the best of my knowledge, BBC will pay the same business postage rates as any other company.   It may be that they expect a slightly higher return of business mail than personal mail, but I doubt BBC are charged more than any other company for a higher projection of returns.

I personally have a pile of letters I've received.   Useful for identifying new ones or a pattern to the repeat of old ones, but if/when I'm home and an 'inspector' calls I may hand them back and suggest (s)he puts them to an alternative use when they need a comfort break.

wild666

For a while I used to pop them back in the post to myself, they usually took about a week to arrive back at my address. I used to have a daily collection of reposted letters arriving back at my address, in the end I had about 9 letters arriving back at my address sometime one per day on other days three or four together all with the DL98 postcode, I think the postie sort of knew what I was doing.

Dataless

Although this thread is old it is a great achievement for MSE, when it started many people thought those that opted out of the BBC to be extreme but now it seems they lost 300,000 payers in one year.

I don't think it is the competition or the financial crisis, I think what tipped the balance is how they reneged on their agreement with George Osborne (spits in bucket) and went after our dearly beloved elderly.  I would like to save the BBC but it appears the turkeys that run it won't vote for Christmas.

KxMx

Discussed the subject with my Mum a few days ago. 

There should be an element of public funding, for news content especially, however almost everything else should be run on a commercial basis and NOT funded by license payers.
The BBC should be made to stand on their own two feet because they are doing exactly the same as Netflix, Prime Video etc with the I Player and the type of content they produce in volume. 
I don't exactly want to fund millions on a salary for a sports presenter or pay to make Saturday night prime time game shows. 

wild666

Dataless said:

Although this thread is old it is a great achievement for MSE, when it started many people thought those that opted out of the BBC to be extreme but now it seems they lost 300,000 payers in one year.

I don't think it is the competition or the financial crisis, I think what tipped the balance is how they reneged on their agreement with George Osborne (spits in bucket) and went after our dearly beloved elderly.  I would like to save the BBC but it appears the turkeys that run it won't vote for Christmas.

300,000 is £47,700,000 pounds so not a massive dip in the TVL revenue but come April 2024 it will increase to £50,850,000. I think that from March there are going to be a lot of cancellations with some shifting to a yearly payment or cancelling the licence's altogether. 
I could even see the yearly cancellations surpassing 1 million per year which will even beat the 800,000 to 900,000 that happened between the years 2014 to 2017 which in total was over 3,400,000.
The BBC could even scrap the free licence's to those on pension credit, the 50% concession to the blind and the hotels guest houses and care homes residents who only pay £7.50 for a certain number of residents. This could see places cancel licence's as they won't want to pay whatever the fee is per resident or room.
I think that there are millions of the £7.50 licence fees in operation that if the charged to full licence fee you fetch in hundreds of million more per year for the BBC if everyone paying £7.50 were to pay the full licence fee.  

AvrilGover

I have had letters telling me that I MUST get a TV licence. Also that I can register on their site if I don't need one. I checked no to all the few questions,  and it still side that I need a licence. I do not watch live TV or any sites that show BBC programmes. I pay for Disney+, Paramount+ and Amazon Prime. The BBC say that I need a licence from them to watch channels that I already pay a subscription to. They have now hand delivered a threatening notice regarding fines and courts.   

I'm panicking a bit here. Do I really need to py them so I can watch channels that I have paid for?

Cornucopia

AvrilGover said:

I have had letters telling me that I MUST get a TV licence. Also that I can register on their site if I don't need one. I checked no to all the few questions,  and it still side that I need a licence. I do not watch live TV or any sites that show BBC programmes. I pay for Disney+, Paramount+ and Amazon Prime. The BBC say that I need a licence from them to watch channels that I already pay a subscription to. They have now hand delivered a threatening notice regarding fines and courts.   

I'm panicking a bit here. Do I really need to py them so I can watch channels that I have paid for?

This is their main approach - to try to scare people into buying a Licence, without being too concerned about whether they need one or not.

They only know what you tell them, and you are not obliged to tell them anything.  

I have heard that the "No Licence Needed" form is a bit misleading (a Youtube Barrister made a video about it).   The rules are pretty straightforward - 

You need a Licence if you...

- Watch or record any TV channels from Terrestrial, Satellite or Cable TV.
- Or, you watch online streamed versions of those channels at the same time as they are being broadcast.
- Or you use iPlayer to access BBC TV programs.

If you never do any of those things, you don't need a TV Licence.

In particular, you are free to watch...

- Commercial on-demand content (whether paid-for or not).
- DVDs and other pre-recorded media.
- Commercial on-demand content on services owned by the BBC (e.g. UKTV Player)
- On-demand content originally made by the BBC when it appears on non-BBC platforms (e.g. The Office on Youtube).
- Live streamed content that doesn't originate from a TV Broadcast channel e.g. live video streams on Twitch.
- A slightly grey area - live sport on Amazon Prime and other non-broadcast platforms as long as that content isn't being shown at the same time on a TV Broadcast channel.

FreeBear

Cornucopia said: I have heard that the "No Licence Needed" form is a bit misleading (a Youtube Barrister made a video about it).

And there is no legal or moral requirement to fill out that form.

I've never filled it in, have ignored all their grubby little letters (don't even bother opening them), and gave one of their door knockers short shrift when he banged on my door.