>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?
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 The Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1967 (as amended) has been repealed, meaning that from 25 June 2013 onwards you no longer need to send us customer name and address details when you sell or rent out TV equipment.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.
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.
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.
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.
> ...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).
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?