TV Licence article Discussion

pinkmami

We're renovating a property which has been empty for 2 yrs. No Tv, no habitants. Letters keep coming though the letter box even thoguh we've told them the place is empty. So I ignored them & they sent aletter saying "we'll send someone round"...yeah bla blah we're still waiting. Then threatened court....we ignored them & that was 10 months ago....still waiting for the nice man to arrive.....and he'll have no welcome as no one lives there.

I called them a month ago to tell the to stop sending these letters & they apologised & said they'd stop & for me to call them in 6 months time to update the situation ...then yesterday I saw a letter - "we're taking you to court"......yawn!

C_getty29

Hi all,

Me and my girlfriend are moving into our first house next week, renting together for the first time. As we have both been living with parents up until now, we have had no need for a TV licence until now as we have been covered at home.

Trying to get everything sorted before we move in, I went on the licensing website yesterday to set up monthly direct debit payments for a licence and came out extremely confused. It told me that our payments would be £29.10 per month until January (5 instalments), and then from February we would pay 12 monthly instalments of around £12. This is fine, but what I am confused about is why we have to pay the full amount for a 12 month TV licence when we are only going to be using it for 5 months of the year we are paying for?!

Is the onus on us to prove to TV licensing that we have been living with family and therefore haven't needed a licence up until now? Or is the overpaying something that I can't do anything about and we're just going to have to lump it? If that's the case then fine, I'd just like to try and save anything I can as this moving house lark is proving to be extremely expensive!! lol

Any help/advice anyone can give me is much appreciated

lois32

I have the same problem.... If I buy TV licence now (from 1 of September) I have to pay full yearly amount £145 just for 4 months!!! Is there any way to pay just for 4 months which left?

lois32

What I found out on the internet is that the 5 payments £29.10 you will pay (£145.5 in total) will cover a full year (12 months since now Sep 2011 -Aug 2012). But you have to pay anyway £12 a month since Jan 2012. It means that your licence will be paid in advance for 8 months! (Which is unfair). I read that what people do is paying this £29.10 till december , then cancell direct debit (which would be £12 a month) for 8 months (as TV licence was paid till 31.08.2012), then start to pay DD agine. But I am not sure if u can start to pay DD agine (1.09.2012) which would be £12....I have never cancel DD.

If anyone has done it this way, please shear ur experience.

Ionkontrol

How about phoning them up?

lois32

They said the same. If buy new licenece you have to pay in advance. But why - I do not know

TFER

Hi there I am student moving into a shared house and want to save money by not having a TV licence, but of course I/we still want to watch TV. Cake and eat it kind of thing I know.

I/We were wondering is watching live TV on your laptop possible, on your parents television licence. According to the TV licensing website "Your parents' TV Licence will not cover you while you are away at university unless you only use a device that's powered solely by its own internal batteries. You must not plug it into the mains when using it to receive TV." This is where the conumdrum sets in. The first section says "You need a TV Licence if you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV - online, on a TV, or on any device (even a laptop)". Is this not a contridiction if the laptop is not plugged?

If you use a laptop to watch live TV online and it is not plugged in to the mains it is then running on its "own internal battery", is it not? This in turn means you are then covered by your parents television licence, but as soon as you plug it in to charge it up you are not. Is this correct?

Any comment, suggestions and advice on this matter would be much appreciated.

sweetenoughcrafts

Hi All,

after moving house, receiving TV licence letters, trying to pay by direct debit and getting really frustrated with their rubbish website I decided to pay the full £145.50 for my TV licence today 31/08/2011. Much to my annoyance my licence will expire on the 31st July 2012 and will therefore only be valid for 11 months not 12 - I warn you all! If you are going to pay for a full licence, make sure you do so on the 1st of the month!

I have requested a refund, although they require proof that I no longer need a licence... I will be ringing them tomorrow to ask for a full refund or for my licence to be valid for the FULL 12 months as they promised when I last phoned them.

I am so sick of TV licensing - I refused to pay by direct debit as they wanted to force me to pay for my first years license over 5 months AND pay for a new licence from January (as others have indicated on here). I think there service is shocking - how can they get away with this? How can they charge people for 12 months TV licence but mine is only valid for 11 months?

I will try my best to get a refund but dont hold out much hope - they only other thing I could try is the 7 day cooling off period for online purchases?

Does anyone have any ideas how I can get my money back? Im happy to pay for a TV licence, but only if it covers the full 12 months!

thebigdipper

I was considering jacking in my TV licence and watching everything online (not live) but after reading through just a couple of pages of this topic I'm worried about the harassment I'll get.

What I seem to be reading is a lot of people complaining about harassment, extortion, unclear terms and unfair payment options. If it's the case that the TV Licencing company are incredibly incompetent/greedy/crooked, does anyone know if there have been any attempts to start a petition to get their practices changed for the better?

redlady_1

I dont have a TV nor a licence. The letters go straight into the bin. They are written to be intimidating but if you are innocent then just ignore them.

If I want to watch something I do so online at my time not theirs.