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Comment by arprocter | Hacker News Reader

I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address

I bought one once and evidently they managed to typo the house number, so our neighbour down the street who didn't have a TV kept getting the 'we know you have a TV but no license threatening letters

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You are absolutely correct, I worked in a well known UK electrical retailer in the 90s and we were indeed obligated to provide the names and addresses of everyone who bought a new TV to the TV Licencing Authority. (Last time I called it an "Authority" I was criticized for using "overly dystopian" language to describe it, but that's exactly what the legislation calls it too).

I researched this the last time TV detector vans came up (it seems to be on repeat on HackerNews a lot...), the legislation was repealed in 2013 so it's not done anymore. It was for sure this that was the real enforcement tool I imagine prior to 2013, rather than the mythical van. Much easier to just check the address against the TV sales database than randomly drive a fleet of vans around the entire country!

> https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/business...

>I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address

Is this for real? I remember thinking "dystopian as hell" when I heard about all the CCTVs in England, but this one takes the cake. I can at least see the points made by the other side of the CCTV argument, even though I very much disagree with them.

Why cannot one just buy a TV in England without giving out their personal info?

It used to be true, the law changed a while ago.

The law wasn't "you must hand over your details when buying a tv", it was "you must ask for details when selling a tv". Customers were free to supply false information.

I did, I just change the first two letters of my postcode to another town over for all that crap.

In Israel you were used to be required to provide your equivalent of ssn upon purchase of a tv setm, so the gov would be able to charge you public tv fee. the fee was finally abolished couple years ago.

It is actually worse than this. They send out the letters (it often seems randomly) AND they will send someone to come to your house who will "inspect" your TV/demand entry/make threats...

...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this has proved to be controversial in practice.

I have actually heard of people who called the police because they were being harassed by these people. All so some chinless wonder from Oxbridge can get paid £200k/year commissioning dogshit documentaries about Ethiopian trance music (the BBC massively underpays for talent but employs an unfathomably large number of middle managers).

I would love to see how this kind of system would work in Texas.

As a foreigner, I could one-up your complaint with this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/outsideuk

  I live outside the UK. Can I use BBC iPlayer?
  BBC iPlayer is funded by the UK TV Licence
   and its use is restricted to UK residents only.

> ...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this has proved to be controversial in practice.

This actually happened to me! I (Mexican living in the UK) was at my rented flat with my father visiting. We were watching a movie in a TV I had (which I mainly used to watch DVDs or things from my computer) when suddenly someone knocked at the door. I usually never opened (I did not have many friends while living there) but given that my father was there, it would have been weird to leave the person ringing the bell while we were watching the movie.

Turned out to be one of those license guys. As an expat without knowledge of my rights, I did not know what to do and the bastard kept pushing... until I let him in. He "inspected" the TV where we were watching the movie, and I told him that yeah I had a TV but did only use it for watching DVDs. At the end, he "saw" that it did not have an antenna and he basically said that because of that, we were OK (it kind of felt as if he just wanted to get out of the awkward situation).

After he left, my father and I talked about how crazy was that system were they send mafiosos to check if you had a TV... first world problems.

Yep, they actually have no power to search your premises (obv). They are, literally, just some guys herded off the street by a dodgy company that get paid a commission to squeeze money out/scare people.

Nonetheless, I have heard of them: forcing entry into people's homes, claiming to have powers of search, claiming to have power to issue fines, claiming to work on behalf of the police and that they can request arrest...it is kind of incredible.

Britain is a very odd place (I say this as a Brit).

The law was abolished in 2013. You were also free to give false information - I know a couple of people who gave their postcode as SW1A 2AA (they had a TV licence, they just didn't want to give their address to the retailer).

> The Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1967 (as amended) has been repealed, meaning that from 25 June 2013 onwards you no longer need to send us customer name and address details when you sell or rent out TV equipment. This also means your business no longer has to keep sales records to comply with the law on TV Licensing. If you don’t need these records for anything else you can destroy them from 25 June.

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/business...

Good to know - this was before '13

The silly thing was our house had a license, plus the TV in question was only ever used for a games console so never received TV signals

For context, SW1A 2AA is the postcode for 10 Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lives. So it would be like giving "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" as your postal address.

Ah, I meant to mention that. Thanks for adding.

Not just TVs but the did this when you bought a VCR. I remember being required to give my name and address when buying a VCR back in the 90s from Comet. Otherwise I wasn’t allowed to buy it.

That seems to be true.

I once received a letter from TV licensing after I bought a TV USB dongle off Amazon...

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