Great Expectations?

No matter how lengthy and bitter my experience of TV Licensing, they never fail to come up with new ways of appalling me. And they have managed to do so with this, their latest letter:

First off, it appears that the escalation to the Operations Director occurs when TV Licensing say so, not when I try to escalate. This letter has been responded to by the same person as my first letter of complaint.

Their apparent inability to understand my assertions that I do not require a TV license is explained: they are absolutely determined to visit my house. This represents a considerable escalation in their harassment of me. As it is plainly in response to my attempting to follow the procedure required by the BBC Trust, this represents a considerable risk on their part. Oh, unless of course they are confident of 'proving' I am an evader rather than a non-TV user. There's a tiny voice in my head that says that perhaps TV Licensing are confident because they can fabricate all the evidence they need. After all I have seen, I am beginning to believe that voice

Escalating The Complaint

It cannot be any surprise that I am not satisfied with TVL's response. But never fear: in this event TVL's procedure indicates that I should escalate the complaint to their Operations Director. And so that is what I do with my next letter.

Escalating the Complaint

Its Escalating In Size As Well As Level

As the contents of my letter are there to read I won't go into detail about it. But what I do find baffling is TV Licensing's inability to determine from it that I do not require a TV License.

And The Answer Is...

On their website, TV Licensing state 'We aim to fully respond to 99.9% of complaints within eight working days'. Well, here is the letter that I received within the specified timescale.

A 'Full' Response From TV Licensing

I am not going to detail my criticism of their letter in this post: that will be contained within my letter replying to it. But I can't refrain from saying how unhappy I am. I complained about harassment that took place over a lengthy period of time, not about a single letter. It must be very easy to 'fully respond' to a complaint if you can ignore its contents and, instead, respond to a complaint that is easier to handle.

A Dear John Letter For TV Licensing

Ultimate responsibility for how TV Licensing behave lies with the BBC. You cannot pass the job of collecting money onto another body and turn a blind eye to the way they perform the task. If we go to the BBC Trust's website, we find there the procedure for making a complaint. The first step, they inform us, is to complain directly to TV Licensing. The address to write to is given: it's a familiar one. It's the same address you write to informing TV Licensing that you don't need a TV License. But this is the system required by the BBC Trust and so I will follow it. I will write a letter of complaint to TV Licensing.

Some people can remain calm whatever the provocation. I've never had that ability. I don't cave when I am under pressure, but I can find my anger getting the better of me. I really want to tell TV Licensing the full depth of my contempt, my revulsion, for people like them. So I have to spend days over it, slowly editing out the parts where my feelings have overruled cold logic: trying to replace the emotional bits with something, anything, that might actually give TV Licensing pause for thought.

That'll sort them ....not

The problem is that, knowing they send out hundreds of thousands of letters like those they send me, they must get a lot of letters of complaint back. So they have surely heard it all before; and I am certain they just don't give a damn. The futility of what I am doing simply adds to my anger.