Moving: The TV Licence
The British have a quaint custom known as the "TV licence". Back in the day, before Sky and digital and telly being beamed into your house, back when the BBC made large strides to appear to be something run by the government for the benefit of the people you had to licence your TV in order to generate revenue in order to continue creating BBC programming. Now, with the BBC beaming its fare all over the world (and collecting ad revenue from it) and with cable companies providing people with crazy numbers of channels, I really wonder if the licencing is still necessary. But necessary or not, it is still in place, which means that we need a TV licence in our new place.
During a study break, because it has fallen on my lists of tasks to accomplish, I did a Google search for tv licences. The first site returned just happened to be the one I was looking for, namely www.tvlicensing.co.uk. I clicked on it and skimmed through the menus to find the one that I wanted: Buy or Renew Your Licence. Then, I clicked on it to discover that you can renew online. Sorted, I thought. I filled in the first page of the form, clicked for the second page, filled that out, clicked for the third only to come to the realization that filling it out on the web was not an option for me. You see, They require a post code for the billing information. Now, you'd think that considering that the island is part of the EU that its forms (and, the BBC being run by the government would mean that the TV licensing people are also run by the government) would be open enough to accept credit cards and billing addresses that aren't necessarily from this country. Especially when part of the form I filled out had to do with me being a student (I mean, just consider the number of World Class academic institutions in this country. Come on!) Disappointed and a little frustrated, I went back to the "ways to pay" page and looked for my other options.
My other options included the post office (although that page informed me that this isn't an option anymore), a pay point, by mail or by phone. So, I figured, why not. Phone. I wrote down the number, took the materials I thought I'd need and gave them a bell. After spending about five minutes in an automated loop that was absolutely useless, I spent another ten minutes on hold waiting for an advisor. The advisor I got was quite possibly the slowest monkey in the zoo. I spelled my last name for him six times. And, every time he somehow added an extra letter where that hadn't been a letter before. The entire process of me respelling my name for him was an atttempt to get him to remove letters that didn't belong. I understand that my last name has an atypical spelling, but not that strange. Halfway through this arduous process he said, "There are so many letters." Finally, my advisor got it right and we went on to other things, like where I live.
Now, I try to speak very clearly on the phone here, especially when I'm talking to any sort of customer service advisor because communication is hindered by both accents and the phone. You see, spoken communication has a number of back up systems, one of them being visual. Well, you lose that backup when you're on the phone. Now, top that with having to listen to something that you're not accustomed to listening to and really you've got the makings of comedy. Or you would if you were in any sort of mood for it. So, I told him where I lived. I gave him the post code. Then, as he was typing it in, he read it out loud. "54..."
"No," I said, "64."
"Oh, that's good because I wasn't finding you." Thanking god for the lack of a visual, I rolled my eyes. Then, he got to the postcode. "So, that last bit was 5 echo lemur."
"Yes, that's right."
Then, for the first time in ages (as I thank god that the internet company isn't in charge of the tv licence.) they are able to process my payment on the first try.
"Okay, you're license starts today. We'll mail it out to you in the next ten business days." Hooray! Although knowing the post here, September will be half gone by the time the paper copy of the TV license turns up.
