[HN Gopher] Please do not write below the line
___________________________________________________________________
Please do not write below the line
Author : dcminter
Score : 196 points
Date : 2024-10-21 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbctvlicence.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbctvlicence.com)
| ChilledTonic wrote:
| Truly a perfect mystery. Perhaps at one point letters were
| expected to be returned, and this feature of the letterhead has
| been copied over the years without thinking?
|
| The OCR statement is confusing. It speaks of a customer manager
| trying to pass the buck down the line as quickly as possible
| technothrasher wrote:
| my thought was that they perhaps have to accept returned
| letters informing them of the lack of a TV at the address, but
| in a sort of dark pattern they don't specifically say that in
| the hope that you use one of the other, less administratively
| expensive options listed in the letter.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| The best thing to do with these is to write "OK" below the line
| and move on with your life.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| But then the government has a copy of your handwriting and may
| be able to use it in the future to incriminate you in some
| other setting.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Write it with your non dominant hand. Or your foot.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that they use this OCR system to track sent
| letters that don't expect a reply as well as forms you return and
| they've just used the same template in both cases.
| almostnormal wrote:
| Scanning the ones returned as undeliverable. Those would of
| course not have been opened and therefore nothing written on
| them.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Because a returned letter must be associated with an account /
| account holder to be processed.
|
| Though they knew this information when they sent it to the
| author, presumably it would be laborious to manually associate
| the same information with each returned letter (one would have to
| look it up anyway), so they probably print the data on the letter
| that may someday be returned, to allow quick lookup in the event
| it is returned.
|
| It's equivalent to a conversation ID and interface crafted to
| avoid lookups, making this letter exchange idempotent, which I
| very much appreciate.
|
| Why it was not requested to be returned is beyond me, but likely
| all such letters contain this.
| stavros wrote:
| > Because a returned letter must be associated with an account
| / account holder to be processed.
|
| But _they didn 't ask for the letter to be returned at all_.
| froddd wrote:
| Undelivered letters could be returned to sender.
|
| In which case... there would definitely be no need to
| instruct to not write anything below the line, as nobody
| would have opened the letter.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| If only they knew the fate of the letter before sending,
| then
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Of course not, but they could have and that explains the use
| of data to associate a returned letter.
|
| It's a form letter. In the event it's returned you want the
| data, regardless.
| efitz wrote:
| Please do not write below this line.
|
| ------------------------------
| yawnxyz wrote:
| hey wait, what would happen if I wr
| qingcharles wrote:
| RIP yawnxyz
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| ------------------------------
|
| Please have not written above this line.
|
| Remember, temporal paradoxes are not covered by your insurer.
| moritzruth wrote:
| This sounds like something the Announcer voice from Portal 2
| would say.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| OK
| Oarch wrote:
| below this line.
| Terr_ wrote:
| This text is above the line. Please fix your orientation and
| cease writing below the line.
| dijit wrote:
| Likeliest situation is all their stationary destined for send
| outs have the line; and in situations where the line serves no
| purpose it does no harm to leave it: so there is little use in
| having additional process around completely blank stock.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Careful, this is what I suggested below and I'm already being
| punished for it.
|
| It seems the most likely explanation to me!
| Nition wrote:
| They could have told him that though if it's the case, and the
| mystery would be solved. But there obviously wasn't any desire
| (or more charitably - time) on their end to really look into
| the reasoning or even understand the question.
|
| ----
|
| Edit: I will share what I think is a nice a little counterpoint
| story here, from a business that is clearly still interested in
| understanding. I sent Lego an email a while ago:
| I'm just wondering if you're able to tell me what the
| tune is that the Lego Primo musical camel plays in set
| number 2007. It's a set from 1998. We have the camel and
| it plays a nice tune, but no-one seems to know what it is!
|
| They replied a day later: Thanks for getting in
| touch with us. This is a really really really and I
| mean really interesting question you got there for us. I
| have checked with all the resources I have and come to a
| possible conclusion. The Musical Camel - which in
| Denmark actually is called 'PRIMO Dromedar'. 1st theory
| is that, One DUPLO-designer says that the melody was
| composed by the designer that created the camel but no
| one remembers the name who created the Musical Camel.
| Another thing is, one of the engineer once had a musical
| box that had the same melody but he is no longer with us
| anymore and cannot provide us the answer. I am so
| sorry that, at the end of the day I cannot provide you
| with any name to the title. But I hope the facts can make
| a good story for you to tell your friends.
| jaggederest wrote:
| That is an amazingly competent response. Every company should
| aspire to that kind of depth, if a toy company can manage it.
| frizlab wrote:
| I cannot find it, but I once sent an email to johnnie
| walker to ask for the music for what is arguably the best
| ad I ever saw (except for think different). They correctly
| answered, though the answer was the music is original and
| copyrighted, and thus I could not get it.
| axiolite wrote:
| I humbly suggest: 3M Thermo-Fax
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVYRMu6Q9k
| madeofpalk wrote:
| The problem is there's no "they". Just an underpaid
| government contractor manning the email inbox, asking around
| "hey why do the letters say this?" and responding with the
| bare minimum.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I have a wonderful memory of eating a snickers bar with my
| Dad as a kid, and deciding to call the comment line (1-800
| number) on the wrapper. I was probably about 6 and just
| wanted to say that I liked their candy bars. The woman was
| very nice and took our address so they could mail us some
| coupons for free snickers bars.
| Nition wrote:
| While we're here, does anyone happen to recognize the camel's
| tune?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKpD-KkaBHc
|
| We never worked it out.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I assume none of the Shazam-alikes can make any sense of
| it?
| Nition wrote:
| Yeah, they don't recognise it - or at least Shazam
| doesn't.
| qingcharles wrote:
| That's wild to get a real response like that. Bravo to Lego.
|
| I offered to provide some expert help on a set they were
| designing once and they immediately put me in direct contact
| with the designer in Billund. No bureaucracy.
|
| Why can't more companies be this good? I've been trying for
| years to get into one Google account of mine :(
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The thing is, Lego is a "nice" company, and they care about
| their image. Answering obscure question the best they can
| goes a long way, people will be more than willing to share
| their anecdote. That's great publicity, and all you need are
| a few guys answering emails, most of them are likely to be
| copy-pasted for the most part, people are not that original.
| And if you get a truly original question, it may take a bit
| more time, but the impact will be greater, and I am sure
| employees have great fun finding these bits of trivia.
|
| TV licensing on the other hand is "evil". They are in the
| business of collecting a tax that many people see as unfair,
| and prosecute those who don't pay. Even if their actions are
| fully justified, they won't make your life better, it is
| simply not their job. Even if they are genuinely nice in
| their communication, it won't change the fact that their are
| after your money and have to be forceful sometimes, and
| everything will be seen through these lens, so they might
| just as well assume their evilness.
| Nition wrote:
| The only thing I would say against this is that sometimes
| that kind of curiosity can help the business itself as
| well. For example imagine a situation similar to the post
| except that it's someone's job to _manually_ write the
| equivalent of "Please do not write below the line" on
| every letter. Sometimes little tasks like that can waste
| time for years before someone finally asks 'do we actually
| need to be doing this?'
|
| I do realise that is not the case in the post, where it's
| probably even simpler to print the same message on every
| letter vs. only on some. And your point is of course well
| made in general.
| miki123211 wrote:
| More importantly, they don't _need_ to be nice and /or care
| to be successful.
|
| Businesses are nice because they have to compete for
| customers, and that is easier if you're viewed as nice.
|
| TV Licensing is a monopoly, they can have the worst
| customer service on earth, and that won't affect their
| revenue by much. There's just nowhere else to switch to.
|
| This is also the reason why many government / publicly-run
| systems are so unfriendly and have such terrible UX. It's
| not like you can apply for benefits somewhere else (and the
| government would actually be very happy if you could!) , so
| nobody cares if the application is fifty pages and requires
| you to put in the same personal details 5 times.
|
| To add insult to injury, there are no shareholders that
| demand the metrics to go up, so nobody has any incentive to
| optimize anything.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Something that goes to show how unnecessary much of it is
| is how I've found a staggering difference in paperwork
| between various US states. Registering a car in New York
| is equivalent to securing a mortgage with pages and pages
| of forms and a bill of sale and verification of insurance
| etc., while in New Hampshire you just show up with the
| title signed over to you and that's literally it, that's
| literally all you need to walk out with plates.
|
| It fits the states' identities, New York is (somewhat
| exaggerating) a kafkaesque dystopia that wants to be in
| all of your business and have fine control over
| everything you do, while New Hampshire's state motto is
| "Live Free or Die".
| authorfly wrote:
| "Please do not park next to our nondescript White Van" would
| suite just as much.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| They don't use non-descript vans. They want you to know who
| they are. Now, whether the vans can actually detect anything is
| a different matter. Some believe they are just a visual
| deterrent, and don't actually do anything beyond looking scary.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| That is my understanding. They certainly had a demonstration
| device that could deduct a local oscillator, but it is
| suggested it was just PR.
|
| There is some kind of 'detector' mentioned online that can
| apparently look at a window and see the light of a TV
| flickering on the glass! Judges buy this bs and issue
| warrants to search.
| redundantly wrote:
| I love silly, pedantic, obstinate stuff like this. This was a
| very funny read!
| dcminter wrote:
| I used to be a TV-free non-license-holding resident and found
| the constant accusations of criminality from "TV Licensing"
| (the BBC) infuriating. So I'm pre-disposed to be sympathetic to
| his crusade. Nice to see others enjoy it too.
| Nition wrote:
| Sometimes silly stuff stays around for years because there
| isn't anyone obstinate enough to question it. Good to have a
| little check on reality every now and then.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were
| making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy
| in the UK.
|
| Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.
| TillE wrote:
| It's basically a whole parallel tax collection system, which is
| truly nuts. Like the administrative overhead alone surely
| outweighs any abstract concerns about independence from
| government, which doesn't really exist in the UK anyway.
| Guthur wrote:
| What's when more mental is that they are essentially all
| funding state propaganda agencies and so you're literally
| paying to be propagandised.
|
| Not that much of none state media is really that much better
| to be honest.
| coliveira wrote:
| We all pay to receive propaganda, be it governmental or
| not. A private TV channel will spread the ideology of their
| owners, and it is usually an ideology that is useful to
| them.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| The lines that really got me in this post were:
|
| > A Licensing officer may call at your property not to
| collect the letters but to check that you are not watching a
| TV.
|
| and
|
| >...Cas Scott has said that the letters are not sought by
| TVL/BBC agents who make street visits.
|
| Like, they show up at your home and ask to physically view
| your TV to make sure you aren't watching TV! It's so
| incredibly bonkers to me, I'm laughing out loud at work at
| the mental image!
|
| Never change, UK, never change.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's weird. They don't have any actual authority, so if
| they turn up you can just say "No".
|
| In my seven years of living in the UK, I've paid the TV
| licence for two years, and had one visit (who I shut the
| door on).
| bpfrh wrote:
| depends on the system, austria for example used to say if you
| don't have a radio or tv you do not need to pay.
|
| As of 2024 you pay even if you have no tv, which means the
| overhead is probably near zero, as you already have lists of
| where people live.
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| Same here in Norway.
| owisd wrote:
| This gets raised every charter renewal and they always find
| the administrative overhead of e.g. collecting Netflix
| subscriptions, etc. is pro rata higher than the overhead for
| the licence fee.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I interpreted the parent as suggesting "just pay for it out
| of general tax revenue", which makes a lot of sense to me.
| No additional administration and enforcement required.
| satori99 wrote:
| This is how Australia's public broadcaster is funded. But
| it means politicians directly decide its budget, which
| makes it a political football.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The purpose is psychological to attach a monetary value to
| the government TV channels, which makes the viewer consider
| them valuable and therefore trustable.
| andybak wrote:
| No. It really isn't.
| Zak wrote:
| Many European countries are worse about it than the UK; even
| people who do not own a television are required by law to pay.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| In Sweden there was this whole thing where you apparently had
| to pay even if you only owned a laptop.
| eastbound wrote:
| In France you pay the copyright infringement tax on every
| hard drive / SSD / storage you purchase. But it's still
| forbidden to pirate movies.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| It is not "copyright infringement" tax. It's called a
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy and
| it's a rather common thing, at least in all of Europe.
| praptak wrote:
| I remember that in Poland electronic repair shops offered
| companies removal of the TV demodulator from TV sets used as
| monitors. That was necessary for the TV not to count as a TV
| receiver and thus not to generate the fee liability.
|
| I think there also were some large cases where a company who
| owned a car fleet had to pay for the car radios.
| notatoad wrote:
| that seems fine to me. whatever they want to call it, if it
| applies to everybody it's just a tax and they're using tax
| dollars to fund some TV content and/or infrastrcture. that's
| all totally normal.
|
| the absurd part is restricting that tax to only people who
| watch TV, and trying to do surveillance and enforcement to
| determine whether or not somebody is eligible for a TV tax.
| immibis wrote:
| Well, first they wanted to tax everyone a bit to pay for
| the BBC. And then someone said that would let the
| government easily pressure the BBC by withholding funds.
| And then someone said let's let the BBC collect it's own
| tax then. And someone else said that would be illegal to
| make people pay for the BBC if they aren't actually
| receiving any services from the BBC. And so here we are. So
| they wrote in this provision that in practice exempts
| precisely zero people but everyone tries to chase after
| anyway, contorting themselves through hoops to make it
| apply.
|
| "Any services from the BBC" means any. TV broadcast, radio
| broadcast, or internet streaming. And because the actual
| intention was to make everyone pay, the law is written so
| you have to pay if you _could_ receive one. If you have a
| computer and the Internet, you could receive internet
| streaming.
|
| And then you have more stupid rules, like even though
| they're collecting a tax, they're not tax collectors so
| they don't have any authority to come into your house, so
| they invent weird ways to detect if you have a TV or not.
|
| Presumably a left wing government would remove all this
| stuff and just make it a tax.
| Retr0id wrote:
| This isn't accurate, that's just what they want people to
| think. In practice it exempts most people below the age
| of about 30, most of whom do not consume any media within
| the scope of the TV license.
|
| > the law is written so you have to pay if you could
| receive one.
|
| That's not true. You're allowed to own equipment
| _capable_ of receiving licensed broadcasts, all that
| matters is that you don 't.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _the law is written so you have to pay if you_ could
| _receive one. If you have a computer and the Internet,
| you could receive internet streaming._
|
| That's not true, according to https://www.gov.uk/find-
| licences/tv-licence.
|
| > You do not need a TV Licence to watch:
|
| > * streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus
|
| > * on-demand TV through services like All 4 and Amazon
| Prime Video
|
| > * videos on websites like YouTube
|
| > * videos or DVDs
| frankus wrote:
| The whole scheme seems like something an American would
| come up with: paying for public services with regressive
| user fees instead of broad-based progressive taxation.
|
| But it's unheard of (for media[1]) in the US and common in
| Europe.
|
| [1]The closest thing we have here might be parking passes
| for state parks, even unpopular ones where free parking
| would remain mostly empty.
| ho_schi wrote:
| This fee is hot topic in Germany. Our French friends also
| enjoy ARTE[1] but seem not to suffer anymore from this
| ridiculous fee. Actually I'm surprised that the Swiss fee is
| even higher, despite everything in the Swiss is expensive.
|
| [1] Big parts of our public television suck. But ARTE is
| _awesome_! * Borgen * Occupied
| * Mit offenen Karten * Karambolage * ...
|
| PS: ARTE is watchable outside of France and Germany in a lot
| of countries in Europe. Poland, Spain, Austria, Netherlands,
| Czech and so on.
| metabagel wrote:
| Occupied is outstanding, and available in the U.S. on
| Netflix.
| FragenAntworten wrote:
| I didn't find it on Netflix, but it seems to be available
| on Amazon Prime Video.
| 9dev wrote:
| While the public television may suck, it still pays for the
| only real Independent news coverage in Germany. No matter
| what you think of the ARD or ZDF and their management
| boards, the work of the Deutschlandfunk and regional
| broadcasters is outstanding and a pillar of a free
| democracy.
|
| I hate having to pay for distribution licenses for soccer
| games, but if that ensures continued support for high-
| quality journalism, so be it.
| sva_ wrote:
| > I hate having to pay for distribution licenses for
| soccer games, but if that ensures continued support for
| high-quality journalism, so be it.
|
| You sound like you're in an abusive relationship. Get
| help while you still can.
| codetrotter wrote:
| When I was studying at the university, I shared a privately
| owned house with some other people. We did not have a TV
| license, but I wanted to buy a big screen TV to use as
| computer monitor in my room.
|
| I found out that in my country you can have a third-party,
| approved technician come to your house to disable the tuner
| portion of your TV so that you would not have to pay any
| television license. Around this time analog broadcasting was
| already being phased out or had already completely shut down
| in my country. And although some kind of digital broadcasting
| over air-waves exists to replace it, most people do not use
| that. Instead, you'll typically buy a subscribtion via cable
| or via IPTV or via sattelite, all of which come with a
| separate box that plugs into your TV via HDMI instead of
| relying on the tuner in your TV, even if that tuner can
| decode digitally broadcast radio signals. So the tuner in the
| TV was not serving much of a purpose anyway, even if I'd ever
| want to use the TV as a TV.
|
| I paid a technician a bit of money to come disable the tuner
| for me in my newly bought 55" LED TV. I was imagining that
| he'd be opening the TV and carefully removing some essential
| part. What he actually did was take a plier and break the
| input for the tuner and then put a small piece of tape over
| it. Simple solutions, I guess. Then, I think I also got them
| to write a letter for me confirming that the tuner had been
| disabled.
|
| It cost me a little bit of money, but not too much. Less than
| paying the TV license fee for that and subsequent years I was
| staying in that house anyway.
|
| These days, I still have the TV. I put it in my grandfather's
| house a few years ago so he could use it. He already pays TV
| license fee and has a digital receiver. It has HDMI out which
| goes in to the TV. So he is not inconvenienced by the broken
| tuner input of the TV either, just like I expected back then
| that this disabling of the tuner would never be a problem
| even if I ever wanted to use it as a TV.
|
| It does seem kind of silly now, that I paid someone to come
| break the input for a portion of the TV that was never going
| to be needed even if you wanted to use it as a TV. But I
| still think it was worth it, and that it saved me from
| worrying about inspections. Even though no inspection ever
| happened at the house either back in the days where I was
| using it as a monitor for my computer.
| Retr0id wrote:
| As a UK resident and TV owner (who does not need a license),
| I wouldn't even mind that much if I was required to pay just
| for TV ownership. It's the "enforcement" system that's
| utterly broken (although I have no idea how it compares to
| other countries).
|
| We have this ridiculous situation where I'm not required to
| pay (so I don't), yet the TV licensing people are allowed
| (required?) to send me junk mail week after week trying to
| trick me into thinking I _do_ need to pay them.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| What is the reason that you don't have to pay?
| Retr0id wrote:
| I don't watch broadcast TV or other such TV-license-
| related services. My TV is a glorified computer monitor
| slash media player.
| preisschild wrote:
| Yeah, Austria had the british system for a while, but after
| everyone started streaming (because the content is better and
| prices are actually cheaper) they changed it so every
| household needs to pay.
|
| Now I'm forced to pay for old sitcoms, astrology shows,
| soccer stuff and other useless things I don't watch
| anyways...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| So, basically "how tax works"? You pay into a common good,
| whether you use it or not.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| The absurdity in the UK is that it's a License fee and that
| there is this whole absurd enforcement system. In other
| countries it's a tax if you don't pay it, you are essentially
| not paying your taxes. I am OK with a universal tax for a
| universal service even if I don't use that service. What I am
| not okay with is fraudulent threatening letters, weirdos
| creeping in the bushes trying to see if I am watching TV and
| goons showing up at my front door to collect what they think
| I owe them.
| kleiba wrote:
| In Germany, you cannot even legally listen to the radio without
| such a license (GEZ). It's also slightly more expensive than
| the UK TV License, coming in just under Netflix' premium plan
| (while offering mostly shite in return).
| echoangle wrote:
| To clarify: currently, it doesn't matter what you actually do
| (listen to radio, own a radio, own a TV...), everyone has to
| pay, unless they are exempt (due to low income, other social
| security, or being deaf and blind at the same time). So it
| doesn't matter if you listen to radio or not. You (or the
| household you live in to be exact) has to pay.
| kamaitachi wrote:
| It's not just a U.K. thing. Many European countries have
| something similar, although it might be called something else.
|
| It's a form of tax that pays for public service broadcasting,
| including radio stations.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#
| busterarm wrote:
| Yes, but the UK is the only country with a license ridiculous
| enough to offer you a 50% discount _if you're blind_.
| gs17 wrote:
| It sounds weirder than that to me:
|
| > colour TV: PS169.50 per year; monochrome TV: PS57.00 per
| year; blind people: 50% discount
|
| People who can't see their color TV at all pay more than
| people who can but have an old black-and-white one?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Do the discounts stack? If you're blind should you just
| buy a monochrome tv and pay PS28?
| Ellipsis753 wrote:
| Weirder still, the discounts stack! So blind people can
| benefit from buying a black-and-white TV for an
| additional discount.
|
| I've given this a lot of thought in the past. The best I
| could come up with is that "legally blind" could still
| allow for someone with _very poor_ (colour) vision...
| dom96 wrote:
| this is making me want to buy a black and white TV (or
| grab a monitor and set it to always show in black and
| white) just so I can buy the monochrome TV license for
| giggles
| soneil wrote:
| People who can't see their colour TV pay more than people
| who can't see their B&W TV.
|
| Oh to be a a fly on the wall when the inspector has to
| explain the difference to a blind person.
|
| I think it made a lot more sense in the past. The license
| is set up so it's a consumption based tax rather than
| taxing everyone. So only people with TVs paid TV tax. If
| colour increased the costs, only people consuming colour
| paid those increases. I imagine it made much more sense
| before consumption was ubiquitous
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| That's... not what https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-
| licence says at all.
|
| If you're blind, you almost certainly qualify for a free
| license.
| labster wrote:
| That makes sense, a blind man only uses half of the signal.
| azornathogron wrote:
| Although, yes, this sounds absurd, it's worth noting that
| the TV licence pays for the BBC and the BBC has extensive
| radio (and web) offerings not only television.
|
| Of course, that still doesn't make sense because to the
| best of my knowledge you don't need a license of any kind
| to listen to the radio.
|
| Anyway, perhaps blind people want to listen to the TV.
| There are a lot of programs that could make sense even if
| you can hear but not see them.
| davejohnclark wrote:
| > you don't need a license of any kind to listen to the
| radio.
|
| I believe you did once upon a time, but I guess they were
| phased out as TVs became more popular.
|
| >The first supplementary licence fee for colour
| television was introduced in January 1968. Radio-only
| licences were abolished in February 1971 (along with the
| requirement for a separate licence for car radios).
|
| https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/c
| mcu...
| miki123211 wrote:
| and audio description[1]!
|
| I'm no fan of national broadcasters as a concept, but I
| have to say, the UK is excellent when it comes to audio
| description, much more so than any (English speaking)
| country I'm aware of. It's not just the BBC either, Sky
| and other private broadcasters also have relatively high
| standards.
|
| For years, the only English AD you could get for
| extremely popular HBO shows, like Game of Thrones for
| example, were pirated British rips from Sky, as HBO
| famously refused to provide the service.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_description
| bearbin wrote:
| The TV license is certainly bit ridiculous, but being
| legally blind doesn't necessarily mean you can't see at
| all, just you fall below the legal threshold where it's
| judged that poor sight will interfere with your day-to-day
| life. Lots of people registered as blind can still watch
| the TV just fine even if they won't be able to see the
| detail.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Don't want to pay the full amount? Simply get a black and
| white television, now it's 70% off.
| Rendello wrote:
| In Japan there was an infamous political party focused on
| getting rid of the hated TV licence system:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZG95grO-vc
| busterarm wrote:
| In Japan the vast majority of people stopped paying their
| TV license after a string of NHK scandals and there's no
| penalty for failing to pay either.
|
| It's just not enforced. Also the party platform wasn't to
| get rid of the license system but to encrypt the broadcast
| signal so that only willing NHK viewers would pay for the
| license.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| The penalty for not paying the TV license is dealing with
| their harassment specialists (aka fee collectors)
| squidsoup wrote:
| There's a great, and somewhat terrifying character relating
| to this, the "NHK Fee Collector" in Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.
| bigmadden wrote:
| Some people actually voted them into office as a joke and
| they turned out to be a bunch of racists with some really
| awful views and were overall absolute shite politicians.
| Who could have imagined?
| bowsamic wrote:
| At least it's optional in the uk if you don't have a tv. In
| Germany you have to pay it no matter what
| egeozcan wrote:
| Oh it gets weirder in Germany! See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitragsservice_von_ARD,_ZDF_u...
|
| The tv license collection agency employs more than a 1000
| people.
|
| And this is in spite of the fact that nearly every household
| has to pay that EUR18.36 per month.
| StayTrue wrote:
| I learned about it when they knocked on my door (UK). Said I
| didn't have a TV to which they replied they'd like to look
| around inside to confirm. LOL no.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty annoying.
|
| Publicly funded media is a great thing to have, and the
| intention of TV License is to fund it independently from
| interference from the government of the day. In Australia
| there's frequently stories about governments cutting ABC
| funding, which TV License is supposed to avoid entirely.
|
| But the implementation in practice just sucks. It's baffling to
| think of how much money is wasted on administering this
| additional tax program, sending out all these pretty aggressive
| letters, maintaining the website, and paying the real
| "inspectors" to knock on peoples doors.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Oi! Ave you got a loicense fer dat TV there mate?!
| jraph wrote:
| > loicense
|
| Should obviously be spelt loicence.
| FL410 wrote:
| > A Licensing officer may call at your property not to collect
| the letters but to check that you are not watching a TV.
|
| Just the thought of this is funny. What kind of uniforms do TV
| Officers wear? Do they get to carry a weapon? What happens if
| they find you watching a TV?
|
| Amazing.
| Kudos wrote:
| They wear the same uniforms that police detectives usually
| wear.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| They wear a shirt and tie. No weapon. You don't have to
| answer the door to them. You don't have to let them in.
| However they are generally lieing scumbags who suggest that
| they are allowed in.
|
| If they catch you watching TV they will report you for a
| PS1000 fine and a criminal record. Failing to pay it will
| land you in prison.
|
| I spent years without a license, you don't need one for
| YouTube and Netflix. I unplugged the aerial wire. You do need
| it for any live TV or BBC catch up TV. I got visited once
| during that time and he kept asking to come in, I kept
| telling him I didn't need to let him. He kept asking what I
| watch on TV, I told him politely, that was none of his
| concern.
|
| If they suspect you are harboring an illegal TV then they
| will come back with a warrant and the police!
| edm0nd wrote:
| This is such a broken and dystopian situation. The UK is
| such a nanny state.
| n4r9 wrote:
| It's a horrible situation which I am convinced preys on the
| vulnerable.
|
| We've been sent letters on an almost monthly basis claiming
| that an officer is "scheduled" to make a visit, that we
| have a "ten day window" to respond before they take action,
| etc... . Nothing ever happens and no one ever visits.
|
| I know that you don't have to let the enforcement folk in,
| and if they turn up I'll politely ask to see their search
| warrant or for them to mind their own business. But lots of
| people don't know this and are conditioned to be passive.
| Prosecutions include the mentally vulnerable and people
| whose finances are handled by the council. There are
| thousands every year. Three quarters of the prosecutions
| are against women, and it makes up more than a quarter of
| prosecutions against women.
| adammarples wrote:
| You can be sent to jail if you do not have a licence,
| although it is rare
| preisschild wrote:
| We had those in Austria (they changed it so everybody is
| forced to pay for that now...). They basically have no rights
| themselves, but they pretended to do and even try to force
| you to allow them to enter so they can check that you have no
| TV receiver (including the built in ones in the TV) and say
| that they will come with the police and a search warrant if
| you deny them. It doesn't even matter if you have no antenna
| or no coax cable.
| immibis wrote:
| It's a tax but for some reason making it separate from the
| normal tax system makes it harder for the government to force
| political views on it... even though the government could
| easily pass a law saying "the board of directors of the BBC
| shall go to jail unless all reporting favours the Tories"
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The BBC is prized in the UK, and rightly so. Most national
| broadcasters have strong public interest provisions but the
| Beeb has a history and culture of strong independent
| journalism, incredible childrens and family output and acts as
| a mainstay anchor to support a creative industry.
|
| There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that
| we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web,
| journalism for the price of Netflix
| urbandw311er wrote:
| This a thousand times over. And don't forget the 8 entirely
| advert-free radio stations featuring music, live sport and
| current affairs too.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| How much taxpayer money is wasted on the accounting, the
| enforcement, and the scary-sounding letters? Wouldn't it be
| better if the government just gave taxpayer money to the BBC
| directly?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| You mean "how much money is given to people to do those
| things"? Because the money doesn't magically disappear in
| the pockets of "big beeb", all those tasks are performed by
| people who get paid for that, drawing an income and then
| spending the money they earned by economically
| participating in society.
|
| There is no money being wasted. Although it might certainly
| be a case of _paper_ being wasted.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| I appreciate state TV content and watch it regularly. But
| this argument just doesn't hold water. The service is so
| wonderful that they had to make it a criminal offence to not
| be a subscriber? And surely an "independent" TV station would
| have to be one which is not completely controlled by the
| state.
| sva_ wrote:
| In Germany, many people went to jail for not paying it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You've never had the misfortune of discovering a Cat Detector
| Van camped outside your flat.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5MnyRZLd8A
| miki123211 wrote:
| It's not just the UK, many countries have a government-run TV
| network, and they want that network to be subsidized only by
| the people actually watching TV, not random taxpayers who don't
| benefit from it.
|
| If you were to design such a system in the 2020's, you could
| just put a DRM scheme on your broadcast and demand payment only
| from the people who actually want to watch that network
| specifically, but that technology wasn't yet available when
| such systems were designed.
|
| Another claimed benefit of this way of doing things is the
| government's ability to produce programs that aren't
| commercially viable, e.g. targetting specific populations,
| minorities who speak a niche language, distributing important
| public information in a non-sensational way etc.
|
| Most of these points are moot with the advent of the internet,
| though, hence why many countries want to or have abolished
| these licensing systems.
| netsharc wrote:
| > they want that network to be subsidized only by the people
| actually watching TV, not random taxpayers who don't benefit
| from it.
|
| Eh, the 2 countries I know charge people if they have a
| device capable of viewing the TV/radio/the TV/radio stations'
| online offer, so anyone with a smartphone (and who doesn't
| have a smartphone?) are also require to pay the license fee,
| even if they don't have a TV or radio at home.
|
| There's a joke that since the license fee is charged if you
| have equipment theoretically capable of viewing TV, then
| maybe people should apply for government child allowance,
| since they have equipment theoretically able to make them
| parents.
| glaucon wrote:
| It may be funny but it's one way of funding public broadcasting
| which is, at least to a minor degree, independent of government
| interference.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Would be nice if the article had an example of the entire letter.
| The tiny sliver of image at the top of the article leaves very
| little context.
| ajb wrote:
| If you go to the home page, you will see they have collected
| scans of these letters for every year since 2006. Most likely
| they didn't expect anyone to go direct to this page
| dcminter wrote:
| Yes, I submitted this sub-page as I thought the puzzle might
| interest (and amuse) the HN crowd. I'm sure the vast majority
| of people arrive at the site owner's main page though.
| pjsg wrote:
| My guess is that they scan the letters that are returned by the
| post office and hence they don't want _anybody_ writing below the
| line. I guess that they used to have a problem with squirrels
| opening up the letters and scribbling below the line. However,
| they seem to ignore the fact that squirrels can 't read.
|
| More likely is that whenever they print OCR'able numbers /
| barcode/ whatever, they assume that a person is going to return
| it -- and the special case of 'we only get returned letters when
| the delivery has failed and nobody has opened the envelope'
| escaped the testing.
| billforsternz wrote:
| Sometimes archaic things persist indefinitely in formal
| communication. Multiple organisations remind me I will need to
| install Adobe Acrobat in order to read linked PDF documents in
| their electronic communications.
| davedx wrote:
| There's a fantastic film about TV Licensing called The Duke, I
| highly recommend it: https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/the-duke-
| review-jim-broadbe...
|
| > When the film opens, [Kempton Bunton] is refusing to pay his TV
| licence fee on a technicality, since he can only get ITV because
| he's removed "the BBC coil" from inside the set. It's all part of
| his "Free TV for the OAPs" campaign, but despite his well-meaning
| demeanour, he serves time at Her Majesty's expense for refusing
| to pay up to Auntie Beeb.
| runjake wrote:
| I initially thought this was concerning emails, because for
| whatever reason, I've very recently noticed an uptick in "Please
| do not write below the line" a lot more in emails I receive,
| presumably to encourage top posting or perhaps for AI email
| ingestion? Anyway, apparently a strange coincidence.
| dfox wrote:
| This is done by a lot of customer support and helpdesk systems
| that one would almost consider "legacy" that are certainly not
| related to AI in any way.
|
| So I would assume that the uptick is caused by you moving
| somewhat up in you career so you deal with such BS systems more
| often.
|
| On the other hand, the approach with explicit markers in the
| email is reliable. Alternative is some bunch of ad-hoc rules
| that will extract the actual reply from the reply, which has a
| lot of edge cases (which for some systems even extend to edge
| cases that involve the MIME envelope, not the message text
| itself).
| hggigg wrote:
| Please don't get me started on these guys.
|
| I don't own a television and don't want one (it's a waste of
| life). I get sent letters all the time. Last year I had an
| "inspector" turn up who was told to "fuck off", managed to gain
| entry to the apartment block and then came and knocked on my
| internal door and refused to show ID, clearly because he was an
| intimidating arsehole and didn't want to be called on it. He was
| told to "fuck off" again and told me he'd come back with the
| police if I didn't let him in. I told him I'd ram the bike handle
| up his arse if he came back.
|
| Put a complaint in and they replied asking for my license number.
| Just like the stuff in that article - didn't even read it
| properly. Absolute clowns.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Just reminded me of how they used to get into University
| accommodation and try and catch people in every room
| Retr0id wrote:
| I used to live in a shared flat, and they sent individually
| addressed letters to each numbered room in the building -
| which, to my amusement, included the room number of the
| toilet.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| That might be a comment on the quality of modern TV,
| perhaps?
| ajb wrote:
| The explanation is that this contracted out to Capita, which is
| the go to outsourcing company for UK government for tasks where a
| capacity for self reflection would be a disadvantage.
| advisedwang wrote:
| As this website showcases there's a huge variety of these letters
| and they are clearly thrown together cheaply by people trying to
| make things official looking and scary. I wonder whether the line
| is simply an easy way to make things official looking. Or perhaps
| even they once did have something to return but the designers
| have continued to copy and paste it forward with not connection
| to any actual process.
| joemi wrote:
| On the main page of the site, there's a scanned letter shown for
| every month, but it ends on April 2024. Does anyone know what
| happened to the author? If it weren't just tv licensing, I'd say
| it were worrying that there's been silence for the past several
| months after receiving such threatening letters.
| retSava wrote:
| Looked at the main site and, oh my goodness, they are very, very
| intimidating and threatening to get one to buy a license.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| The most baffling thing here is _how the hell did the author get
| the organisation to respond_ , on topic, multiple times? In my
| experience conversing with various entities that are supposed to
| provide customer support, _absolutely anything_ outside of an
| extremely narrow set of vetted topics with prepared answers and
| especially anything technical gets ignored and receives an
| irrelevant response at best.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's from 2006, before organizations realized that there were
| lots of trolls willing to dedicate themselves to wasting other
| people's time over bullshit.
| mkl wrote:
| Might be to do with when this happened, 2006-2007. He did have
| trouble getting them to respond on topic though.
| cal85 wrote:
| On-topic? Every reply seemed evasive to me.
|
| (Regarding how he got them to reply at all, this is required by
| law of public authorities.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was
| technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual
| questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's
| question, then mindlessly recited a random form response
| associated with that word.
| masfuerte wrote:
| I saw another example the other day of how things used to work.
| If you wrote to the UK government in the 1980s to ask (or
| complain) about their policy towards apartheid South Africa you
| received a personal reply addressing your points in the context
| of the government's policy [1]. Presumably, letters to other
| departments were handled similarly.
|
| I've corresponded with the civil service a few times recently
| and the service now is shite.
|
| [1]: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/who-are-
| the-...
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Because it's government. People in government jobs often sit
| around half the day doing nothing because they have so much
| spare time. Case in point: me, right now.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Whoever runs this website is my personal hero. TV licensing
| enforcement practices are utterly ridiculous.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I was really hoping for an answer at the end!
|
| I'm actually totally stumped by the whole thing. OCR doesn't even
| make sense, because OCR is terrible at handwriting generally.
| With forms they usually require you to write block letters and
| numbers inside of a kind of separate grid for each field. And
| maybe fill in some bubbles too. Anything _anywhere_ on the page
| outside of the form fields is ignored.
|
| I'd find it far more plausible that they print all letters, those
| including forms and not, on the same template, and that returned
| forms get some kind of bar code or status stamped on the bottom
| upon being received, so they need to keep it empty for that. Kind
| of like how US envelopes get a little bar code printed on them by
| post office sorting. I have no earthly idea whether that's closer
| to the real reason though.
| zerocrates wrote:
| If you look up some of these letters you'll see they have the
| quasi-official-looking things you'd otherwise see on scam
| letters, like a stamp that says "Enforcement Visit Approved"
| with a signature on it.
|
| I think "do not write below this line" is just another one of
| those things, it makes the letter seem like its part of
| Official Serious Bureaucracy.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That would be _really_ funny if true. You 're totally right
| about the stamp part.
| coliveira wrote:
| > OCR is terrible at handwriting generally
|
| That is true, but OCR is nonetheless used in many situations
| like this, for example at the postal office (the US postal
| office started doing this in 1965). Even if they can recognize
| only a fraction of the letters, it is a huge savings in terms
| of processing costs. The remaining will be handled manually
| anyway.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I think there's a pretty reasonable explanation here, which is
| that "Do not write below the line" is a genuine instruction,
| but not for the recipient of the letter.
|
| Post offices may make notes such as "undeliverable" on a piece
| of mail. The sending company may make changes to their mailers
| which must be hand-updated on pre-printed cards. In both cases,
| writing below the line may obscure which ID had its letter
| rejected by the Post or which IDs have not had updated mailers
| sent yet.
|
| By the time the recipient of the letter receives it, they may
| write below the line as much as they like, as the instructions
| have already been followed by those they were intended for.
|
| I would not expect first line support to be aware of this.
| dekhn wrote:
| You'd think the government would make its propaganda free to
| watch.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The people who you contacted don't understand any part of what
| the customer facing interface to their own job which is entirely
| usual. Its entirely possible that there was at one time
| instructions for return of the letter on an envelope that the
| party responding hasn't actually seen in years. They like a lot
| of people exist in a tiny silo with limited information outside
| of a tiny scope.
|
| They kept asking you to essentially call a function on the actual
| public api and you kept on ignoring the error messages.
|
| If you are tempted to feel smugly superior remember they were
| paid for their responses whereas you wasted your own time.
| dcminter wrote:
| The author of the page is not the submitter (me). Not sure who
| you're addressing here.
| duxup wrote:
| I worked for an old company that had a lot of old processes and
| paperwork. Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the
| line" type areas. I always wrote something ... nothing ever
| happened.
|
| I once hand delivered some paperwork (I was running late) to HR
| rather than using the inter office mail service. I asked them
| about it, they told me "Oh you must be Mathew..." I was HR
| famous. They didn't actually mind, the company was so process
| driven that having to visually double check my paperwork was just
| how things were.
|
| Later on they decided to repaint the entire office because we had
| slightly changed the colors of our logo.
|
| Not long after painting I jokingly put up a piece of paper on a
| huge white wall that read "This space intentionally left blank."
| The movers who took down the art put up the art on that wall
| again, and spaced it evenly ... around my note.
|
| It stayed there for at least 4 years before we left for a new
| building.
|
| Process...
| donatj wrote:
| In a similar vein, I put an ill fitting jacket on a coat rack
| when I started my current job in 2012. We have moved offices
| twice, and the coat rack and jacket have followed me across
| both moves at no effort of my own.
|
| We've been working remote now since the beginning of covid, but
| our office is still open for anyone who wants to use it. I
| visited earlier this summer and my jacket was gone. I asked our
| office assistant about it and she had apparently just recently
| moved it to a lost and found box, noting that it had been there
| as long as she had.
|
| I told her the story about how the coat had followed me across
| two offices and twelve years. She seemed unentertained and
| asked me not to put it back. It's been moved to my desk for the
| time being.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| If it helps, I'm entertained
| noncoml wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. Made my day a bit brighter
| ihaveajob wrote:
| I left a pair of sandals in the shower room at work (a shared
| space) way before the pandemic. We stopped having a desk
| there, and I stopped coming in other than for a few social
| events. Then the office closed, and reopened. I came back for
| a coffee and went in just out of curiosity. The sandals were
| there, still in the same corner. Now they're home with me.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| That's a pretty beautiful story to me: what you meant as a joke
| unintentionally became art because of the way others interacted
| with it.
|
| It got turned into a commentary on corporate responsibility
| (everyone likely thought "I don't know why this is here, but
| it's not my responsibility to check"), workplace communication
| (between the movers and your company), psychological inertia
| [1] (at some point, people would've been surprised and bothered
| if the paper _wasn 't_ there anymore), and much more. There's
| at least a months-long art study project potential in this!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_inertia
| HPsquared wrote:
| Chesterton's menace
| schlauerfox wrote:
| Clever. Chesterton's fence, for the non-Tamarians among us.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton
|
| (Tamarians is a Star Trek reference.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok)
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| I mean, it is similar in spirit to a LOTO (lockout / tagout)
| lock, no? Except without the who to contact bits, perhaps.
|
| "Don't turn this knob. But if you really need to, talk to this
| person first."
|
| And that little bit of process is perhaps what keeps many
| industries safe.
| grogenaut wrote:
| My favorite thing when moving at the big co that owns my co is
| that they give you these stickers for desk items to show up...
| whatever you put the sticker on comes along to be by the desk.
| WHATEVER YOU PUT IT ON. The movers just do what the stickers
| said.
|
| One coworker got every white board in the area. Another got a
| sandwich and some empty coke cans. Another got a sofa and an
| empty trash bag.
|
| The Machine Works.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The movers just do what the stickers said.
|
| I'd be pretty pissed if movers ignored instructions and
| tossed any of my stuff away of their own volition. I keep
| some non-functional belongings that may appear worthless to
| others, and _my_ judgement should be what matters when moving
| of discarding my stuff.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the line"
| type areas. I always wrote something_
|
| My favorite is those company get-to-know-you questions written
| or oral that ask you to yourself in one word.
|
| "Does not follow directions."
| deskr wrote:
| He also collects and displays all the previous letters he's got
| from the BBC: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/
|
| They get increasingly threatening and aggressive. I'd guess that
| the OCR code scanning is to confirm that he's read the letter and
| adjust the hostility in the next letter appropriately.
| dekhn wrote:
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page
| kazinator wrote:
| The writer assumes that "you" refers to him or her. It's possible
| that the request not to write below that line is part of a
| document template. The instruction is for the template users not
| to put content below there, not necessarily to document
| consumers. Though the template could be used as a basis for
| letters that _do_ have to be returned. Basically nobody in the
| entire workflow chain should put anything there, so that if that
| space has to be OCRed, it will reliably work.
|
| > _I am still not satisfied. If I send a letter back to TVL /BBC,
| and they scan the number at the bottom, it will generate the same
| information as they have already got; so, what's the point?_
|
| But that's the happy case, when nobody has written anything there
| to interfere with the OCR.
|
| If the number cannot be read, then the document cannot be
| automatically associated with the residential address it pertains
| to; someone will have to deal with it manually.
| dash2 wrote:
| I love this country so much...
| jaydenmilne wrote:
| Good news everyone - I was able to follow the link in the letter,
| successfully fill their form, and confirm with the TVL that I do
| not need a TV license.
|
| We'll see if they send mail or jackbooted inspectors across the
| pond to confirm.
| ano-ther wrote:
| From their main page, it looks like all of the letters with this
| line have something below it which is redacted.
|
| Could it be that they print the letter (perhaps sign in person as
| it is a legal document) and then scan/OCR it prior to sending?
| The redacted thing would then be an identifier for the recipient
| to be automatically filed.
|
| The email convo is from 2006 and this could be a realistic tech
| setup for this kind of organisation.
| bigmadden wrote:
| Wasn't there a Simpson episode when Lisa was a cigarette sponsor
| and used her position to tell people not to smoke? They were able
| to fire her because Homer wrote "ok" in the 'do not write below
| this line' section of the application form. I do wonder if in
| theory a form could be invalidated for that reason if they
| really, really wanted to.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| I've never felt so much like I'm reading a passage from The Trial
| aside from while reading the novel itself.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| My guess is that undelivered letters are returned to the sender
| and scanned in. Below the line will be a barcode or similar UID
| that identifies where the returned letters came from.
| textninja wrote:
| The purpose seems clear to me from the explanation provided.
| Here's what I read between the lines.
|
| 1. Send out thousands of letters expecting some to be returned.
| They may be returned due to deliverability issues, or they may be
| returned with a reply attached or (probably less commonly)
| scrawled on the pages of the letter itself. Replies to letters
| are of course common whether they're expressly requested or not.
|
| 2. Give each letter a unique number in your database so you can
| cross reference the letter to the recipient information
| (including but not limited to the address) you have stored in
| your system. The letter may be returned with something else (e.g.
| another letter) attached so it's important to keep that
| information correlated.
|
| 3. Scanning the original letter is a low cost way to maintain
| this correlation. When the letters are returned you scan them
| then send them through a program you have set up to update the
| system accordingly. The program uses some primitive OCR and
| probably a checksum to automatically recognize the codes in the
| original letters. I can imagine this being used to automatically
| mark bad addresses if a letter is returned without additional
| context, but its main purpose is probably to route the letter -
| and any attachments, like other letters - to the appropriate
| agent.
|
| To support a workflow not unlike the one described above, it is
| requested that the unique number that identifies the letter be
| left unobscured. This way OCR can do its job, deliverability
| issues can be flagged with minimal human involvement, and replies
| to letters can be put in front of the right person without
| creating too much organizational overhead.
| ryandrake wrote:
| But OP was not planning on returning the letter, so it would
| never be scanned.
|
| I think the BBC could have solved this preemptively, by simply
| making the letter say "Please do not write below this line, _if
| you are returning the letter_. "
| elcomet wrote:
| Why would they waste ink to print this ? If he doesn't return
| the letter, then it doesn't matter...
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