hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2363.txt

Episode: 2363
Title: HPR2363: Cancelling my TV licence
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2363/hpr2363.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:44:05

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This in HPR episode 2,363 entitled, Canceling My TV License.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and in about 11 minutes long, and can remain an explicit flag.
The summary is, I don't watch any TV so I don't need a license, but canceling it is unexpectedly difficult.
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Hi everyone, this is Dave Morris. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
I'm doing a quick show, I always think a quick off-not tonight because the HPRQ is quite low.
It's about very low, frighteningly low so I'm going to rattle something off that came to mind today.
So my show is called Canceling My TV License.
It's probably means nothing to a proportion of the audience, but you might learn something about the weirdnesses of British TV.
So I'm just going to read you a bit of a story, tell you a bit of a story. It's in the notes.
The first thing was I got a letter. July this year, 2017, I got a letter from the organisation that calls themselves TV Licensing.
And these are the people that manage the TV License.
It costs £147 a year to be licensed to receive television.
Quite exactly what TV is a little bit vague. It was originally BBC TV, but now it seems to have broadened somewhat.
They said they'd be taking this money on the 1st of August. I set up a direct debit. I assume everybody has that sort of thing on their bank.
Which allows a nominated organisation to take money from that account at some rate.
Then we're going to take this. And of course they've been doing this for years.
And I'd pretty much forgotten that I'd set this up. If you'd asked me I'd have said, well obviously, but I'd forgotten.
We watched a fair bit of TV in this house when my kids were small and as they went, moved on into their teens.
But we watched, we didn't watch cable or anything on that. We watched over the air channels.
And then as digital TV occurred in the UK, I bought a device which set top box style things,
except it was a PVR or DVR, which you could record stuff on.
And it took in the digital signal from FreeView, which is a service in the UK, and turned it into analog output for my old analog TV.
You know, the sort of thing, tibo-ish type of thing.
I retired in 2009, watched some TV then, but was getting really fed up with it.
By 2013, my kids were more or less left home.
One went to university and the other one, literally this girlfriend.
So because the quality of TV was going down and down and down, you'll hear the cat in the background because she's running up and down.
I decided I didn't want to watch TV anymore. So from 2013, I stopped watching television entirely.
So when this letter arrived, I realised that since then, I had been paying this TV licence without using it.
Not been using the service at all. I've been paying for it.
So this galvanised me into action. I don't galvanise very often, but I did this time.
I really fed up with TV licensing and myself for being so slow.
This old analog CRT TV, sitting in the corner of my room, and the PBR, they got chucked.
The TV went to the recycling centre. Just a big heavy thing, my son helped me.
The PBR, I'm going to hack for the disc, maybe, and anything else that's useful in it.
So the next thing I did was to cancel the licence, and the letter that I'd received told me on the back what I could do.
There were certain requirements listed. Never watch or record programmes that they, as they're being shown on TV.
So that's one criterion. I never download or watch BBC programmes on demand, which is another thing. I don't do.
And I don't do this on a TV, or a computer, or a laptop, or a mobile phone, or tablet, or games console, or any of the things they listed.
So I called the number on the back of the letter, which I think was a free phone number, but I'm not sure I need to check that.
And I was able to cancel. I simply gave them my licence number, my details, and they said, okay, fine, cancelled.
And he said there would be a letter of confirmation coming through, and that would prove that it all happened, and that I could show to anybody you needed to know.
I asked if they would cancel the direct debit, which is really for me to do, whether they'd stop taking money from it, whether I should just cancel it, and he said cancel it yourself.
So I did that pretty much after I had hung up the phone.
So a few days later, I got the confirmation letter, which is called, which I think is really odd, and I keep having to reread this.
Your no licence needed confirmation. It's hard to know where, where to put the emphasis in there. Your no licence needed confirmation?
Your no, anyway. The thing that I got was a thing they called the no licence needed. Very strange way.
Anyway, it told me that my no licence was valid from July 2017 until July 2019.
When they want you to confirm and go through the whole process again, it also said in the letter, might get a visit to confirm that a licence isn't needed, which sounds ominous.
There was a friendly leaflet accompanying this letter that said, it had loads of questions and answers, one of which I particularly liked,
can I be prosecuted for watching BBC programs on BBC iPlayer without a licence? That's their online service that lets you watch programs that have been live, I think, or sometimes soon after live.
The answer was yes, you can be prosecuted from the verses September 2016, you risk prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000 plus any legal costs and or compensation you may be ordered to pay.
So, you know, nice and friendly stuff. Then, on the 12th of August, I got a letter from TV licensing,
Ertmarked Urgent Open Immediately, and it said them to ask me to call them urgently because my bank had declined a direct debit payment request, so they had asked the bank for money.
So, I called them on the 14th, being Monday, told them this was a mistake, and they said, okay, you have fine, ignore the letter.
To get there, just this is part of the irritation of this whole thing, I had to go through four menus, listen to five, three to five things before I knew which one just took number to enter,
and then I got a robot that wanted my details, my address, my name, all that sort of stuff, license number, and then it put me through to a person who then asked for these details all over again.
Maybe wonder if the robots there for any purpose other than to be a deterrent to call us, how many people have gone through these bloody menus, and then said, hang it on, and I've thrown the phone down.
Anyway, that's just me being cynical. Then, today, 17th of August, I found a messenger answering machine asking me to call TV licensing.
I did so, and with, through the four menus, and I talked to a robot, it asked me for my license number, but I reckon I don't have a license number, because I don't have a license.
So, I gave it the reference number of my no license, and it didn't like that. Then, I asked for my post code, street name, house number, and payment details,
said it repeated the address information back to me. I think I asked my name as well, actually, I can't remember now. I was writing this stuff down as I was listening to it, I was getting more and more angry with it.
It confirmed the address, but when it answered to the payment details or said, don't pay, it passed me to a human.
So, I spoke to a lady who then asked for my name, address, post code, et cetera, and I said, why? I just given this to your robot, I was trying to be polite.
Apparently, these weren't passed through to her, because I failed, in quotes, to answer the questions, probably.
But that's odd, because the same happened when I went through to the guy who answered my call about the direct debit before.
So, I don't think that's true, I think this is a scam. I really think that this damn robot is really there to make you so angry that you hang up.
Anyway, this time it turned out that the problem was that my no license that I very carefully set up, and it got a letter about, had been cancelled.
I said, why? No reason. I asked why, if such a thing like this, that I carefully set up, and been given the expectation that it was going to stay for two years, why, when it had been cancelled, nobody told me.
I didn't get an answer to that. So, that's the chapter of accident. So, I was so angry about this, not usually a person to get very angry, but it made me really livid that I just ran off and wrote this down.
To share it with the HPR audience, just to give you some idea of the ridiculous bureaucracy that is running this nonsense.
So, it seems that the TV licensing thing has got one of the worst systems for managing its quotes customers.
Because we're not customers, we're victims, I think. It's the worst on the planet, I think. I told the representative, this was my opinion when I was on the phone.
I also said, I hope you're recording this, and it will get passed up to your senior people, so they can do something about this rubbish system.
So, I'm now wondering what's next in the saga. Will I now be greeted by the heavies at the door? The visitors, whatever these guys are.
I'm not obliged to let them in without a warrant, I discovered, though many people do, I think.
I'm going to get a legendary TV detective van outside the house. These things certainly have existed in the past, I'm not sure whether they do anymore.
But if they do, I'd love to see one and take a picture of it. I could send it to the 2,600 guys, they would be very, very happy to see that.
I'm going to get another spurious money demand, or we tried to take money from you, but we couldn't, and you're a very bad person.
I'm going to get another round explained the loss of my details. They pretend that I don't have a no license.
Anyway, although this has been very frustrating and bad, I at least it gave me something to write about and talk about for HDR, so I hope you find it interesting.
There's a bunch of links here that point to some of the things I've mentioned here. Anyway, that's it for now. Bye-bye.
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