TV Licence scams

[swill453]

Many over 75s will be expecting the TV licensing people to get in touch to ask them to pay for licences, having been free up to now. So they are of course ripe fodder for scammers.

My parents received one recently which looked to the untrained eye pretty genuine, full of reference numbers and was well written.

The links on it went off to some dodgy site though.

The licensing people say a genuine email from them will have the customer's name in it, and part of their postcode. This one only had an email address.

I advised them to ignore any email from TV licensing, and wait until they get some kind of real letter through the post. The authorities aren't going to be a hurry to prosecute and jail a whole bunch of OAPs, so they can relax a bit and wait for the bill to arrive.

Worth warning any older relatives (or TLF subscribers!) of the scam possibilities.

Scott.

[Garless]

It is not just over 75s, I have had several “your payment had a problem” type emails. Looks fairly genuine at first glance except it says I pay by credit card which I do not and the link to follow is not even made to look genuine.

[tjh290633]

They tell you to do nothing until you get a letter from them. I have had the letter and done what is needed online. The letter has "TV Licensing" in a prominent place of the front. A couple of elderly widows of my acquaintance are fretting about not having received the letter yet. I've told them to be patient and to ignore any other approaches.

TJH

[Mike4]

It is not just over 75s, I have had several “your payment had a problem” type emails. .

Me too. Thing is, not ever watching the telly I utterly refuse to engage with them in any way as I don't need a licence to not watch the telly, nor do I need to log onto their website and tell them stuff about me and how I don't watch the telly.

Sooner or later I'm expecting a doorstep interlude.

Edit to add forgot my point, which was all those emails must by definition be fakes, as I have not paid for my payment to have a problem in the first place!