Good value but it does have its problems (TV Licence)

Member Name: defiler

Product:	TV Licence
Date:	03/03/01 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly cheap, good choice of programs

Disadvantages: No choice over whether to purchase or not even if you only want to watch free channels, poor relations when checking on people with/without licences

I personally feel that tv licences are well worth the money, where I am currently living I can share the cost with 7 other people making it only around 13 pounds for a full year. This is great value for all the programs I watch on bbc 1 and 2 (though recently mainly on bbc 2) and I will be willing to pay the full price when I have to. However programs that seem to take the most money to produce often seem to be ones that I will watch the least.

One problem however with tv licences is that you have no choice over whether to buy one or not, the licence is only needed for bbc 1 and bbc 2 (although it also goes towards paying for other things such as radio stations) but anyone who only wants to watch other tv stations has no option but to pay for the licence. I do realise however that this is fair enough at the present time seeing as it would be nearly impossible to check that people were only using their tv ariel to receive other channels.

My major problem however is the waste of money that is occured in checking up that people have tv licences. Since I started living here in september I have had at least 3 letters asking whether I had a tv licence or not along with 2 checks into whether anyone was using a tv here or not. When this cost is multiplied through the 8 people in the flat and then the people in all the other flats in this area this is quite a lot of money to just be wasted and seems as though a lot of it could quite easily be saved. I really do fail to see how 3 letters are needed just for me to tell them that I don't have a tv licence, the same number of letters were sent to someone who does have a tv licence and it really does start to get annoying after a while. Funnily enough, the only person who didn't bother to let them know whether they have a tv or not when the first letter was sent is the only person not to receive another letter since. When things such as adverts on the tv, billboards and various other places are a
dded on, this seems to imply quite a lot of money wasted just to tell people to do something that everyone knows they should do anyway.

Summary: