TV Licensing

Beware of TV Licensing!

I'm so annoyed at this that I just have to say something. First off you go to http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/ and discover that the license costs £145.50 which you can pay in monthly instalments of £12.13... or so they say. When you actually start paying the license you discover that for the first 6 months they take double this amount so you actually pay for the full license in just half a year. It does tell you this but only if you read the information on the website very carefully! If you don't realise this is going to happen it can be quite a shock but once the first 6 months are over they go down to charging you the ~£12 every month so in one year you have paid for 18 months of service.

I have moved since getting the license and no longer require it so I am due a refund as I've paid for TV time that I am not going to use but, as you would expect, getting a refund is not easy. First you have to fill out an online form https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/update/refund/applyForRefund.aspx which will then tell you to print it but I don't own a printer! So I needed to contact them which you can only do online https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/contact-us/index.aspx but that tries to divert you from actually getting any answers and lands you in just the FAQ section. You have to click through another step to send the question off to their support department but I've done that several times already and tried calling their call centre. That's the best part... When you dial their help line 0300 790 6131 you get about five levels of an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) each saying "Press 5 for other options" but none of these mention refunds so you finally get to "Press 2 for everything else" which then says "All of our operators are busy, please try again later" THEN HANGS UP!! What a terribly run business! It is standard for companies to make cancelling and getting refunds difficult but it shouldn't be and there should be legislation against it.

For anyone that has reached this article trying to find out about TV Licensing here is some information (copied directly from their contact form):

By phone

Call centre number: 0300 790 6131
Minicom number: 0300 790 6050

Opening hours: 
08:30 – 18:00 Mon-Fri 
08:30 – 13:00 Sat 
Closed Sundays & Bank Holidays.

By post

TV Licensing, Bristol, BS98 1TL

If/when you need to get a little more serious with the TV Licensing issue here is all of the complaint information (copied from their complaint's section):

See http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/viewcontent.aspx?id=AB7&iqdocumentid=AB7 for more info and addresses to write to if you need to take your complaint up even further.