Worst of British

[dtaai-maai]

This is a quote from a friend of mine in the UK:

... I received a letter this morning from TV Licensing, with half my name missing accusing me of buying TV signal receiving aparatus from Argos whilst simultaneously failing to purchase a valid license.

Here's the thing, the aforementioned apparatus was a video/dvd player for my Mum, I did not provide Argos with my name or address when purchasing nor did I have the goods delivered, nor am I an Argos account holder; the only ID was the debit card that I used to pay for the item. So when did a dvd/video player become a TV receiving apparatus? How and when did they get the right to invade my bank account to obtain my details? To add insult to injury, having done all that, why can the grubby-ill-educated-smalldi**ed-jobsworth-godIhopetheydon'tbreed-nobodies not even have the common courtesy to address the envelope correctly? Nor, apparantly, do they have the ability to check this address where there is a valid TV license!

So I shall be taking great personal pleasure from returning the envelope as Not Known at this Address and when they sort themselves out and get their distasteful little jobs in order shall take great pleasure in showing them no locked doors (after of course the suitably notarised ID and authority etc etc previously advised) and then tell them that the offending article is actually in Bedforshire not Berkshire and wish them well on the M25. Especially as, if they ever haul their gollumesque little carcasses over there, they'll find out my Mum's over 75 and doesn't have to pay for it anyway

Hell, I knew things had changed, but I didn't know quite how much...

[Big Boy]

You can't escape from Big Brother.

[caller]

I don't the believe the story at all. There seem to be a lot of these sort of things doing the rounds at the moment. I wonder what the purpose is?

[dtaai-maai]

I don't the believe the story at all. There seem to be a lot of these sort of things doing the rounds at the moment. I wonder what the purpose is?

Caller, the person who wrote this is a friend. I don't think she was lying to me.

[caller]

Fair enough, d-m, but if you dismantle it, the inference is the bank automatically notifies TV licensing anytime anyone in the UK ever buys something linked to a TV, presumably this applies to all banks? The TV licensing people, due to the sheer millions of such purchases annually, must have a pretty powerful search tool to match such data against those that do or don't have a TV license.

I cannot believe that there is an automatic link between the banks and TV licensing, so these must be sent by CD or whatever and searched regularly.

Then there is the issue of how the bank knows what the purchase was for? I didn't think they collected such data other than who the retailer is? Then theres the data-protection Act, which would need to be overcome to enable such data to be released, off the top of my head, I can't think of any scenario that covers this, unless there is seperate specific legislation requiring the banks to release this data?

It just seems like an unlikely scenario?

[dtaai-maai]

Agreed, which is why she wrote what she did and why I posted it here.

What makes it even more unlikely is that she has a valid tv licence...