TV Licence article Discussion

Cornucopia

Yes - the Licence is required to receive the content.   Once received, you can watch later at any time, anywhere, and without needing a Licence to do it.

It makes no difference whether it is BBC content or commercial (though if it were commercial, it might be easier to view it on catch-up, which also wouldn't require a Licence).

Olinda99

agreed - a licence is needed for recording,  not for playback

Shadebather

Cornucopia and Olinda 99 - Thank you both.

So, a perfectly viable legal pay of reducing one's liability to the BBC is to simply record plenty of programmes, and when your license expires, simply let it lapse.... while watching either legal alternatives [Netflix etc] and/or clearing your backlog of recordings.

So, for example, a three month holiday every year, and you'd reduce the bill by 25%. 

If enough people were to do that, it'd put quite a dent in their ability to splurge cash on their useless presenters.

Cornucopia

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia and Olinda 99 - Thank you both.

So, a perfectly viable legal pay of reducing one's liability to the BBC is to simply record plenty of programmes, and when your license expires, simply let it lapse.... while watching either legal alternatives [Netflix etc] and/or clearing your backlog of recordings.

So, for example, a three month holiday every year, and you'd reduce the bill by 25%. 

If enough people were to do that, it'd put quite a dent in their ability to splurge cash on their useless presenters.

In theory, yes.   

There are a couple of practical details...

- If you are paying for an annual Licence, you can let it lapse at the end of the year.  They will write to remind you, and you can ignore them.   If you are paying by DD or you want to cancel part way through the year you would need to contact them (but the upside is that you will probably get money back).

- If the period between Licences is short-ish, they will try to impose backdating on the new Licence to span the gap.  

Shadebather

Cornucopia said:

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia and Olinda 99 - Thank you both.

So, a perfectly viable legal pay of reducing one's liability to the BBC is to simply record plenty of programmes, and when your license expires, simply let it lapse.... while watching either legal alternatives [Netflix etc] and/or clearing your backlog of recordings.

So, for example, a three month holiday every year, and you'd reduce the bill by 25%. 

If enough people were to do that, it'd put quite a dent in their ability to splurge cash on their useless presenters.

In theory, yes.   

There are a couple of practical details...

- If you are paying for an annual Licence, you can let it lapse at the end of the year.  They will write to remind you, and you can ignore them.   If you are paying by DD or you want to cancel part way through the year you would need to contact them (but the upside is that you will probably get money back).

- If the period between Licences is short-ish, they will try to impose backdating on the new Licence to span the gap.  

What happened with me is, once upon a time, I forgot to renew... I thought I had a direct debit, but hadn't.

Quite soon after, I got letters basically saying they were going to send the bailiffs round and sell my stuff etc... which I found rather irritating, very heavy handed, rather a long way "over the top" for a simple admin error.

So I went license free for a protracted period, got lots of letters, ignored them all.

Eventually, I decided to renew, or, more accurately, take out a new license. Which I did, with cash. That gets round their desire to backdate.

Rinse and repeat.

My observation would be that the advice, from sites like this, to never ever engage with them in any way at all, ignore all their letters, everything, is good advice. Nor do I see the slightest reason you should engage with them when you decide to terminate, just let it lapse.

[Obviously, I am not watching live tv in the "gaps". Now I know watching recordings made with a license but watched after its expiry is legal, the gaps will be longer...]

Shadebather

Cornucopia said:

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia and Olinda 99 - Thank you both.

So, a perfectly viable legal pay of reducing one's liability to the BBC is to simply record plenty of programmes, and when your license expires, simply let it lapse.... while watching either legal alternatives [Netflix etc] and/or clearing your backlog of recordings.

So, for example, a three month holiday every year, and you'd reduce the bill by 25%. 

If enough people were to do that, it'd put quite a dent in their ability to splurge cash on their useless presenters.

In theory, yes.   

There are a couple of practical details...

- If you are paying for an annual Licence, you can let it lapse at the end of the year.  They will write to remind you, and you can ignore them.   If you are paying by DD or you want to cancel part way through the year you would need to contact them (but the upside is that you will probably get money back).

- If the period between Licences is short-ish, they will try to impose backdating on the new Licence to span the gap.  

What happened with me is, once upon a time, I forgot to renew... I thought I had a direct debit, but hadn't.

Quite soon after, I got letters basically saying they were going to send the bailiffs round and sell my stuff etc... which I found rather irritating, very heavy handed, rather a long way "over the top" for a simple admin error.

So I went license free for a protracted period, got lots of letters, ignored them all.

Eventually, I decided to renew, or, more accurately, take out a new license. Which I did, with cash. That gets round their desire to backdate.

Rinse and repeat.

My observation would be that the advice, from sites like this, to never ever engage with them in any way at all, ignore all their letters, everything, is good advice. Nor do I see the slightest reason you should engage with them when you decide to terminate, just let it lapse.

[Obviously, I am not watching live tv in the "gaps". Now I know watching recordings made with a license but watched after its expiry is legal, the gaps will be longer...]

Olinda99

if you don't want to.pay cash the other way to stop backdating is to apply for a licence in any other adult's name living at the property if there is one. 

or if you live alone and have a middle name for example apply for it in your middle name.

name change on licence stops backdating

paying with cash doesn't stop back dating anyway because all they do once they see the new license is contact you and say the license is backdated

also don't forget if you take out a license for a year you don't have to keep it for a year you can always get a refund halfway through - for example if you have filled your boots with recordings

Shadebather

Olinda99 said:

if you don't want to.pay cash the other way to stop backdating is to apply for a licence in any other adult's name living at the property if there is one. 

Yes, that's what we did.

If more people were aware that they can take a license holiday, perfectly legitimately, the whole shebang would collapse quite quickly.

I also find it distasteful that on some of their documents they say you need a license to watch "live tv on streaming services like Amazon Prime...." they, with, imo, deliberate intent to deceive, do not make it explicit that you ONLY need a license for those services IF you watch LIVE tv on them.

Cornucopia

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia said:

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia and Olinda 99 - Thank you both.

So, a perfectly viable legal pay of reducing one's liability to the BBC is to simply record plenty of programmes, and when your license expires, simply let it lapse.... while watching either legal alternatives [Netflix etc] and/or clearing your backlog of recordings.

So, for example, a three month holiday every year, and you'd reduce the bill by 25%. 

If enough people were to do that, it'd put quite a dent in their ability to splurge cash on their useless presenters.

In theory, yes.   

There are a couple of practical details...

- If you are paying for an annual Licence, you can let it lapse at the end of the year.  They will write to remind you, and you can ignore them.   If you are paying by DD or you want to cancel part way through the year you would need to contact them (but the upside is that you will probably get money back).

- If the period between Licences is short-ish, they will try to impose backdating on the new Licence to span the gap.  

Quite soon after, I got letters basically saying they were going to send the bailiffs round and sell my stuff etc... 

If it said that, it was either fake or from a different organisation.  

Shadebather

Cornucopia said:

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia said:

Shadebather said:

Cornucopia and Olinda 99 - Thank you both.

So, a perfectly viable legal pay of reducing one's liability to the BBC is to simply record plenty of programmes, and when your license expires, simply let it lapse.... while watching either legal alternatives [Netflix etc] and/or clearing your backlog of recordings.

So, for example, a three month holiday every year, and you'd reduce the bill by 25%. 

If enough people were to do that, it'd put quite a dent in their ability to splurge cash on their useless presenters.

In theory, yes.   

There are a couple of practical details...

- If you are paying for an annual Licence, you can let it lapse at the end of the year.  They will write to remind you, and you can ignore them.   If you are paying by DD or you want to cancel part way through the year you would need to contact them (but the upside is that you will probably get money back).

- If the period between Licences is short-ish, they will try to impose backdating on the new Licence to span the gap.  

Quite soon after, I got letters basically saying they were going to send the bailiffs round and sell my stuff etc... 

If it said that, it was either fake or from a different organisation.  

Just poetic license... but it was a pretty strongly worded letter.