TV licence con?

It was a real letter, Adrian.

Have you tried to connect, Andy?

All I get is an immediate "Connection timed out"

AFAIK there is no onus upon me to renew any "No Licence Needed status"

While my searches produced loads of "finds", I couldn't locate tvl.co.uk within them.

Here's a quote from the kosher website:

"How do I update my No Licence Needed declaration?

"Let us know if you need to update your name, address or email on your No Licence Needed declaration.

"Please have your No Licence Needed reference number to hand, you'll find this on any letter or email we've sent you."

Which, to me, implies that no renewal for renewal's sake is required.

Incidentally on the kosher site it suggests that you may identify a scam from the grammar used in the letter. Good luck doing that in 2025! All I can immediately spot is a sentence beginning with the word "And" !

In message <10dfvv4$2k5km$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Peter Able snipped-for-privacy@home.com writes

What are the "From" and "Reply to" addresses ? If at least one of them bears no resemblance to the TV Licensing bods, then almost certainly a con.

Mine appear to come from :

donotreply @ tvlicensing.co.uk

(spaces added around the @)

Adrian

Did for me.

The tvl.co.uk and tvlicensing.co.uk domains both use the same registrar, and the BBC's DNS server, and redirect to the same web page, so I doubt it's a con ...

There's a post on moneysavingexpert which sounds like it might in the pas have been a scam site, so presumably BBC were allowed to seize the domain?

Yes, it redirects to tvlicensing.co.uk

However they do have a notice saying "Due to planned maintenance, our website will be unavailable from 1am until around 6am on Saturday 25 October. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause." maybe something started early?

Is what it says (about 'No License Needed' expiring) true?

How come, if you take their little survey at <https://

And answer "no" to all questions, it still says "Based on your answers, you need to be covered by a TV Licence."?

I can't make that link work - but if it leads to the application for exemption, the last two questions have to be "YES"

I juts received an email purporting to be from HM gov about my details being needed, But the email came from japan and the contact web-link was in Czech republic...

whois tvl.co.uk

Domain name: tvl.co.uk

Data validation: Nominet was able to match the registrant's name and address against a 3rd party data source on 10-Mar-2016

Registrar: Nom-IQ Limited t/a Com Laude [Tag = NOMIQ] URL:

Registration status: Registered until expiry date.

Name servers: ns0.bbcdns.net ns0.bbcdns.net.uk 198.51.45.73 ns1.bbcdns.net ns1.bbcdns.net.uk 198.51.44.73

WHOIS lookup made at 17:26:53 24-Oct-2025

On 24/10/2025 16:39, Andy Burns wrote: > Andy Burns wrote: >

I can't make that link work - but if it leads to the application for exemption, the last two questions have to be YES"

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, jkn <jkn+ snipped-for-privacy@nicorp.co.uk> writes

Unfortunately I have to pay for mine. It was intended as an example of what a legitimate email from the licencing bods uses.

Adrian

-- To Reply : replace "diy" with "news" and reverse the domain

If you are reading this from a web interface e.g. DIY Banter or DIY Forum, please be aware this is NOT a forum, and you are merely using a web portal to a USENET group. Many people block posters coming from web portals due to perceieved SPAM or inaneness. For a better method of access, please see:

I assume they are trying to flush out households where Granny died 5 years ago but they are still using her exemption.

AIUI, you only qualify for exemption if you are: a) over 75 and b) receiving Pension Credit. It's unlikely that you would stop being 'over 75', but a change in circumstances might mean you are no longer eligable for Pension Credit, and hence need to restart paying for your licence.

p.s. I looked into this since I will shortly be 'over 75' - but fall at the final hurdle) no pension credit).

Once again, off at a tangent, SAM.

This is a "No Licence Needed" case - as you'll read, three times over, in the above.

-- . PA

I did a trace route to tvl.co.uk and that gave me a destination IP address of 212.58.249.91. Searching for that address it is an allocation on the RIPE register, and the register shows: RIPE NCC managed values

inetnum: 212.58.224.0 - 212.58.255.255 org: ORG-BA34-RIPE netname: UK-BBC-991005 country: GB admin-c: BBC-RIPE tech-c: BBC-RIPE

Looks vaguely pukkah to me too.

However that doesn't necessarily mean that the message itself isn't bogus. Was there anywhere in the message a link to renew? If so, it is probably a well crafted con. Don't use any provided link.

That might be an explanation, because don't the Beeb farm out the administration of TVL to C(r)apita ?

I can't get it to open, but I used it a year ago, and there's a pseudo trick question in there, basically to capture people that blindly answer 'No' to all questions