This has to be the most backward service I have ever experienced.

I moved into my flat last December and has to get a TV license. I was told it was £12 a month and so I set up a direct debit to pay it.

I checked my account a couple weeks later and saw a payment for £36! I rang up and was told that it was correct, you have to pay £36 a month for 4 months (or something) and then it drops to £12 a month and you're always paying 6 months in advance.

So now I'm moving out of my flat (on Dec 16th) and into a place where the TV license is already paid for by the landlord.

I now have to ring up TV licensing and apply for a refund! What is the f*cking point in that? What other system anywhere in the world do you have to pay in advance for?!

When you get a mobile phone you pay monthly and the amount you pay per month is enough to cover you for ... you guessed it ... that month. At the end of my mobile phone contract I don't owe them anything and they don't owe me anything.

What is the f*cking point in a system that can only ever end with them owing me money back that I have been forced to over pay to them in the first place?! What an absolute joke!

The UK income tax system works the same. If you owe tax one year, they calculate your next year's likely tax bill, and demand half of it up front. Of course, you may well be owed tax in the next return so they have to pay you back.

Telly tax is the same, I think, in that it's the BBC's core revenue. They like to know how much they have in the pot from the start, take it all when they can, and then refund if necessary.

BT make you pay three months in advance (e.g. the bill I just paid covers October-January). Council Tax is another one I can think of (though you can spread the payments).

As Heather says Income Tax works the same way - for PAYE your employer hold back the tax due on your behalf in advance, ready for payment to HMRC. You then get this advance payment back should you overpay (such as for becoming unemployed).

Actually you pay in a month in advance for your mobile, the charges are based on the previous month usage

Rent, you typically have to pay that in advance too....

I realise you pay in advace for a lot of services. Council tax, mobile phone, broadband, etc...

But when you pay a month/year in advance etc... you only pay for that month/year.

i.e. For council tax I pay a year's council tax and every year I pay the next year etc... However, I don't pay three years up front and then carry on paying year on year.

Same with mobile phone, at the beginning of January you pay for the "line rental" for January. However I didn't pay for January, February, March and April in my first payment and then carry on paying month by month.

BT line rental IIRC is paid quarterly (or can be paid quarterly) which is why they bill you for three months at a time. However, you didn't pay for a full year in your first bill and then quartely thereafter.

No other service will tell you its £X and then take £3X amount for 4 payments before moving you down. It sets up the entire system to fail from day one. It can only ever end in a situation where they owe money back to their customers.

Yeah, I found that out when I decided to pay by DD. I still pay by phone once a year as a result.

Speaking of which, I got a £305 cheque from the tax man this morning. It's only taken a year and a half to sort out the money they owed me back from the 09/10 tax year.

Yeah the TVL payment stuff is crap. That's why I paid by quarter and then cancelled when I moved out.

I hate TVL to the point where when I lived alone, I unhooked my TV, detuned every channel and refused to buy a TV license. Only really used it for PS3.

Reminds me - I should do my tax return soon. The “on account” payment as they call is can be a killer, especially if your income has dropped in the last tax year. Thankfully cunning budgeting helps, but even so - this extra payment is bloody annoying, and unnecessary.

I can't argue that TV Licencing isn't a bit odd but it seems to be set up based on the assumption that people don't suddenly stop needing a TV licence once they've started paying for one.

From memory, once it gets going you pay for 6 months of this year and 6 months of next year in each billing period. If you start paying at a time that's out of sync with TVL's system then they'll compress the payments for your first year (or however many months there are left) into however many months it is until the next TVL billing year starts and then you'll be on the same as everyone else.
A bit of an odd system to be sure but it all works out provided you don't do weird things like suddenly not need a TV licence (I mean who could possibly not need one of those ). One of several reasons TVL aren't exactly popular.

Even so, paying just one month ahead rather than three seems much more logical to me.

When I cancelled my TV licence after moving back to my parents several years ago I got the refund for the rest of the year paid minus a £30 "admin" charge because it's really expensive stopping a direct debit innit?

TV licensing - another opportunity to screw us over...

People say Ryanair are bad.

They'd better not try that one on me.

Isnt the licence for that tv and not that address...???