A woman is at the end of her tether after getting a swathe of letters threatening her with court action for not having a TV licence – even though she has one.
Ann Boseley, 64, said she has received nine Threat O’Grams from BBC TV Licensing since she moved into her flat three years ago.
She said each one claimed she would be taken to court or that her home was under investigation because she has not paid for her licence.
This is despite her having one, which she pays for in weekly instalments.
Ann said she had made six phone calls to the company and, each time, she had been told the matter was “being sorted”.
But the letters continued to arrive.
“I’m so angry and fed up,” said Ann. “At first, I thought something wrong, but it wasn’t me at all. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall.
“Not only that, but it’s costing me a lot to ring them. Sometimes I’m on the phone to them for more than half-an-hour, and I’ve only got a mobile phone, so it’s costing a fortune.”
Ann, a part-time shop assistant, moved into the ground floor flat of a two-storey property in December 2012. She said she changed her licence to her new address, and received a letter acknowledging the move, so is at a loss to understand why she is being sent warnings.
“It’s scary when you get the letters,” she said. “In one they even said they had opened an investigation into my house
“I live on my own and some of the letters have got big, bold, red writing on telling me that I have received an official warning – it’s quite threatening.”
When contacted the BBC TV licence company, they said that it appeared they had a duplicate address on their database for that of Mrs Boseley’s, which is why she had been receiving letters through the post.
A spokesperson said: “We’ve spoken to Mrs Boseley and apologised for the unnecessary letters sent to her address, which was due to a duplicate address issue on our database.
“We have a database of 30m addresses and mistakes can happen.
“We always aim to resolve problems as soon as we can and have also apologised for not correctly updating our database when Mrs Boseley contacted us.”