TV licensing...

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[XAP]Bob
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Well - that's it. Cancelled the DD.

Then tried to tell the TV licensing authority.

"To cancel please use the contact form"
On the contact form it tries to force use of the FAQ - I enter cancel and it says.....
"To cancel please use the contact form". yes with a link to the start of the contact form, which tries to force the use of the FAQ...


Oh dear.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

I emailed them direct when I wanted to go from DD to annual payment, and they told me how to do it and how much I owed.
DD means you pay for half a year in advance and the next half year in debt. Strange system!

I'd have been happier to pay monthly ie have a month's TVL at a time.
Trouble is, TVLs are annual licences and they can't issue one for a whole year with only a single month of payment.

We went to a single annual payment, then never renewed for the second year.
Mick F. Cornwall
blackbike
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by blackbike »

[XAP]Bob wrote:Well - that's it. Cancelled the DD.

Then tried to tell the TV licensing authority.

"To cancel please use the contact form"
On the contact form it tries to force use of the FAQ - I enter cancel and it says.....
"To cancel please use the contact form". yes with a link to the start of the contact form, which tries to force the use of the FAQ...


Oh dear.


There's no need or obligation to inform the BBC or its revenue collection staff of your decision to cancel your payments.

They'll notice very soon, and then the nasty letters start, virtually accusing you of committing a criminal offence and warning you of the consequences of committing it - all without a shred of evidence that you have committed it.

The letters can be stopped by a letter to the Director General. Don't waste your time writing to any of his lackeys. in your letter tell the him that you have decided to ban BBC staff from your property. They have to abide by this, and so if you have a garden or a drive to your house those staff can never knock on your door again.
thirdcrank
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by thirdcrank »

blackbike wrote: ... The letters can be stopped by a letter to the Director General. Don't waste your time writing to any of his lackeys. in your letter tell the him that you have decided to ban BBC staff from your property. They have to abide by this, and so if you have a garden or a drive to your house those staff can never knock on your door again.


The BBC even has a name and acronym for this: Withdrawal of the implied right of access (WOIRA) and furthermore, they collate the number of these they receive. I mention this because, for a public service news gathering and publication / broadcasting agency, the BBC seems surprisingly partial in the information it does keep on the entire subject of TV licence enforcement if wiki is correct.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television ... nforcement

It seems they are particularly coy about things like the number of search warrants obtained. It probably ruffles some liberal consciences at the BBC: it's hard to admit where all that dosh comes from. :evil:
apkent
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by apkent »

Slightly different, but their website is infuriating.

Situation. Moved house in April. Had a license in the new place, needed to change its address. Also wanted to change DD from my personal account to our joint account.

Change of address, easy peasy.

Direct debit not so much.
Between erroneously telling me its too close to the collection date, their call centre accidently deleting the direct debit entirely, and being subsequently asked to confirm my bank details in order to supply new ones (I can't, you deleted them), I'm beginning to think they don't want my money at all.
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

I've been thinking about the TVL over the last few days and trying to put into words why we don't have a telly.

Maybe it's because I object to paying nearly £150 a year to not watch much telly. I suppose if I was a telly addict and it was on from breakfast time to going to bed after midnight, and we had a family of four or five - or even six people - I may think it was worthwhile, but because we don't view like that, it seems quite a poor deal.

I'm not saying I don't want to watch ANY telly at all, but not enough to warrant £150 a year. If I do want to watch something, it's usually on iPlayer etc.

Maybe I'd rather Pay per View than pay a TVL, but why should I when I can watch iPlayer for free?
Mick F. Cornwall
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mjr
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mjr »

Mick F wrote:Maybe I'd rather Pay per View than pay a TVL, but why should I when I can watch iPlayer for free?

Because iPlayer, itvPlayer, 4OverDose, Demand5 and so on have some of the most evil, control-freaky, privacy-invading and inconsistent software requirements of any services. Thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded, the gutting of BBC Engineering, hiring an ex-Microsoftie and pressure from the copyright special interests, the BBC completely ignored open standards when deploying that service and delivered the equivalent of a broadcast that could only be watched on one brand of TV. :evil:

Things have improved slightly thanks to complaints about early iPlayer running up huge data transfer bills (you couldn't control it easily and BBC didn't make a big thing of how much data it would download if uncontrolled) and the rise of mobile devices (it's now more like four brands of TV), but still heaven help you if you use an computer operating system that started in Europe! ;-) It can be done, but the BBC changes things regularly to break it. The other broadcasters are as bad, but I feel the TV licence means the BBC has a moral duty to do better.

The other major problem is that the broadcasters are slow to put programs online and advertisers sometimes break the programmes by failing to put adverts on at low enough bitrates for those of us on minimum-standard broadband connections in small market towns, as I found out when trying to follow the Tour de France 2012 nightly highlights on itvPlayer - where I was living didn't get itv4 either.

But I've moved again, have the satellite dish and motor connected again, plus Freeview HD. After about a year, the letters from TV Licensing stopped. All is well with the TV world. Almost.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by [XAP]Bob »

get-iplayer

Best bit of software ever. Simply downloads stuff from iPlayer, dumps it as an MP4 onto the hard disk. Then you move it to storage, or to a another device to watch it.

This by the simple act of claiming to be an iPhone when it talks to the servers.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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mjr
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mjr »

Thanks. I couldn't remember if it is currently a criminal offence to tell people how to circumvent the control-freakery so didn't risk it ;-)
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

Lost me there ......

Is there a difference between iplayer and iPlayer?
Mick F. Cornwall
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

Sorry, you mean "get-iplayer".

I Googled it, but it seems it's for Linux.

Any link for Macs?
Mick F. Cornwall
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mjr
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mjr »

It runs on Macs too according to http://squarepenguin.co.uk/guides/mac-o ... all-guide/ which I found with http://ddg.gg
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

Ta! :D

Food for thought.

BTW, just updated our iMac to 10.9.3 Mavericks. We have two MacBooks as well but they are too old to run Mavericks.
Mick F. Cornwall
Psamathe
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Psamathe »

Mick F wrote:BTW, just updated our iMac to 10.9.3 Mavericks.

So you now have the "joys" of Apple Maps ... with all those roads that don't exist (and no way to notify Apple about them).

Can you imagine the extra budgets Highways would suddenly need if they switched to Apple Maps (with their roads going from e.g. 6000 miles to 7000 miles overnight !!).

Ian
kwackers
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by kwackers »

Psamathe wrote:So you now have the "joys" of Apple Maps ... with all those roads that don't exist (and no way to notify Apple about them).

Can you imagine the extra budgets Highways would suddenly need if they switched to Apple Maps (with their roads going from e.g. 6000 miles to 7000 miles overnight !!).

Ian

Apple maps is the fiasco that just keeps on giving.

Tried to use it the other day on Ms Kwackers iPhone, only to find it had never heard of the place and then the software defeated my attempts to get it to 'navigate' to somewhere nearby.
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