TV detector van
I lived in a flat in England in the early 2000s which kept getting letters from the BBC saying we didn&#x27;t have a TV licence. The letters were sometimes more threatening for a period, then sometimes more reconciliatory.<p>They were also running TV adverts at the time claiming they had detector vans about, and if you didn&#x27;t have a licence you&#x27;d be caught. I did some research at the time, and it seemed that evidence from a detector van had never been submitted as evidence in court cases for those without a licence.<p>It didn&#x27;t take long to realise in the age of databases, it&#x27;s easier just to send out scary letters to all address without a registered licence and hope there will be some &#x27;conversion rate&#x27;. The effort required to actually chase on this seemed disproportional to the benefits.<p>And for those wondering, I did have a licence, it&#x27;s just the address the BBC had for the flat was subtly different to the one on the bit of paper. I had hoped that they would follow up with a more detailed investigation, so I could see how it worked and ask about the vans, but they never did.