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Off topic - NHK and tv licences


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Can someone here tell me what the deal is please with NHK? I came home one day last year to find a strange character lurking at my door (my neighbours said afterwards that he had been there a while).

 

Not a burglar, not a homicidial axe wielding maniac but the NHK TV licence guy. Demanding a king's ransom for my teev.

 

I said I didn't have one. He said I did. I said it didn't work. He says they know it does. I said I only use it for the video and don't actually watch any TV at all (by this time my credibility was in negative status). He said, doesn't matter. Everyone has to pay the licence fee if they have a TV.

 

Is this right? I have asked my J friends who have told me that it is legally payable but most people don't pay it.

 

On this basis, I have refused to open my door to them. As a result, I get daily reminders in my letter box demanding payment. I have received a summons through the post. The NHK people now come round 3 times a week at all kinds of hours demanding their yen from me.

 

Grrrr. Is it a possible to say, sorry mate, but your TV is simply CRAP and I do not watch it at all and therefore refuse to pay? How do I get rid of these b**stards from ringing my doorbell at 11pm at night?

 

HELP please - I am going insane... and its not just the heat! I wouldn't mind if they had gnarly snowboarding programmes....! BUT THEY DON'T.

 

Thanks fellow forumers

Belle

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That's tough if they're exercising some kind of a targeted effort at you. My wife used to say that she was her sister and that her sister was away and she didn't know anything about it. She had received wopping bills from them but just ignored it. I have heard that there is actually no way they can make you pay if you just refuse-somehow I don't see the police ever getting involved. I have CCTV if anyone buzzes my house and the only people I ever answer are the postie,delivery co.s and friends-anyone else is either annoying or trying to get something. It's funny watching the ones who keep pressing the buzzer-I'm damn sure they're NHK goons. Try not to be intimidated by them-good luck.

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Time to start speaking English to them I should think. It doesn't matter that you've spoken Japanese to them in the past. Put the onus on them to communicate.

 

Come to the door wearing rubber gloves, holding a washing up liquid bottle filled with urine and old milk. As you make your excuses loudly in a broad Australian accent, gesture extravagantly with the bottle, and just sort of squirt it about absent-mindedly. The people they send are all freaks and you just have to outfreak them.

 

C'mon hell's belles, you're a 'criminal lawyer' for crying out loud, you must have some tricks.

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Like Davo says it seems to be a legal requirement, but I have never heard of anyone actually being arrested for not paying and I would think if they were going to arrest you for not paying they would've done it by now.

 

I got rid of them once and for all by finally answering the door (after having spent two weeks prisoner in my own home beacuse of the NHK obasan) and telling them that all my expenses were paid by my company and I would have to run this by them first. I convinced them to leave the documents with me and let me check up.

 

They never came back, no post threats, abosolutely nothing. They just disappeared.

 

I guess it also helps that I live in an apartment complex that has auto locking and you need to be buzzed in to get in. But as I never buzzed them in on past occasions and they just seemed to appear at my door I guess this one doesn't really hold up much in the way of a reason why they haven't come of late.

 

FYI I told them all of the above in Japanese cause I have heard from friends that the NHK peoples are fully prepared with explanation cards etc in English, French, German, Swahili etc. You name the language they have got it. (Guess this just goes to show who the ones whe refuse to pay the most are!)

 

It would appear that NHK prey in the weak so be strong! If that don't work just put up with it until they stop coming.

 

As far as I am concerned it is NHK's problem for braodcasting to every house their programs! Don't expect me to pay for something that you are doing on your accord and expect me to pay for it!!!

 

 

[This message has been edited by mogski (edited 23 July 2002).]

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I wondered at the "just pay some creepy, rude people for something that you didn't ask for and don't particularly like" attitude. Then I wondered if this way of thinking extended to turning down 'stolen intellectual property'.

 

I'm trying to find out if there's a pattern there, although file sharing and paying NHK obviously have only a tenuous connection.

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Pay some creepy rude people????? they are doing their job and I think when we but a tv, in Britain the same as in japan, we have to respect that they want us to pay a bbc tv license or in japan, the nhk bill. The creepy, rude people must have a hell of a time with everyone hating them, lying to them, refusing to open the door, abusing them etc........noone does that to the gas man, the leccie guy, the newspaper person. Yes, we may not like all or much of what nhk has to offer but its what we essentially are agreeing to when we purchase a tv in japan. I'm not a goody 2 shoes that doesnt break any rules..........I just think that hiding from and lying to perfectly innocent people just doing their job isnt worth the bother....we're obliged to pay it.

 

As to file sharing on internet.......am logged onto Kazaa all the time but if they wanted to charge me I'd make the decision to continue or not, but I wouldnt be evading the payment.

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Sharon, I think 'agreements' have to be explicit to be binding. In the UK, I believe the 'agreement' is explicit in the form of a rigorous licensing system. I never owned a TV in England, so I never bought a license. In Japan though, it's totally different.

 

NHK came to me exactly once in the 11 years I've been here. In my first week here, a greasy fellow came to the door and said 'Terebi terebi' and stuck out his paw. So I invited him in and showed him my red plastic terebi sitting at the very back of the closet, and he went away and never came back (whether in Osaka, Shiga, Yamanashi, or Nagano).

 

If there is a system, it should be applied fairly and regularly. As it is, it's just a crude ad hoc scam to fleece the weak-minded. And the people who come to the door know that, and that's why they behave like Mafioso when they do show up. Contrast that with the gas company who regularly send a polite young man in a clean boiler suit who doesn't bother you and just a leaves a chit stuck in the door with the full confidence that it will be paid, otherwise the service will be cut off.

 

(BTW, I downloaded Bryce 5 from Kazaa last night - that's cool.)

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Brainstormer!

 

You know if NHK really wanted people to pay they would employ scantly clad sexy young voluptous girls or obviously gym gear wearing muscle bulging well hung studs, not flakey obasan and greasy oyaji!

 

Come on no-one would turn them down if they moved to these tactics surely?!

 

Just like the music companies need to move with the times and embrace them instead of fighting against it, so too does NHK!

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A bunch of NHK guys kept on coming round to my place last year. I just told them i didn't understand enough Japanese to watch TV so i only used it for watching videos. They persisted and showed me an English information pamphlet. I read it and in the tiny small print at the back there is a section that outlines that NHK's service does NOT require a compulsory payment but that once you start payment it becomes legally binding and you have to pay. The NHK guy saw me reading the small print section and chuckling to myself -He knew he'd lost straight away and from that moment on they haven't bothered me.

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I think the only significant difference between the UK and Japan is in enforcement. It's much harder to get away without paying in the UK. They'll have you in court and give you a big fine. The rationale about why you should pay is the same.

 

I don't pay, but I don't think it's anything to be proud of. Same goes for downloading copyrighted material without paying. Lots of wrongs don't make a right.

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hey Sharon i don't know why you're defending NHK so vemently. UK is UK and Japan is Japan and the NHK guy is basically lieing to you to get you to sign up for something you don't want by not telling you that you don't need to sign up for it.

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The great thing about NHK fees is that whether or not you are legally bound to pay, there is no legal or other procedure by which NHK can force you to pay. Thus payment is in some sense "voluntary".

 

This is unlike other taxes which, if unpaid, could be levied against future income with penalty and interest and so forth.

 

My position is that taxation is theft. When you add up the national, state, municipal, sales, luxury, utility and other taxes that I must pay, over 50% of my income is gone.

 

I'm not going to pay any of this tax money if I don't absolutely have to.

 

Now, putting that principle of tax avoidance aside, let's look closer at this NHK tax. It's neither a progressive tax nor a pay-as-you-go tax. It is a flat fee charged not to each person, each TV owner, each TV watcher, or even each NHK watcher, but to people who have front doors that can be ding-donged.

 

The people who pay it have zero input into where the money goes, what it is used for, the NHK program lineup or business practices.

 

Do a little Net research and you'll see that NHK is like so many other government institutions, and this one with the Japanese flavor: alongside the productive workers are lots of vested office drone employees doing useless apple-polishing work and taking smoke breaks. It's like the old Soviet post office or something.

 

Sheesh.

 

If somebody asked me to pay out of civic pride, my civic pride would dictate picketing NHK and lobbying for reform, before mindlessly surrendering even more of my hard-earned cash without so much as a peep.

 

A final note: most of the NHK collectors who come round outside of regular business hours are students and fussbudget obatarian who work not for NHK but on commission.

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"I don't pay, but I don't think it's anything to be proud of. Same goes for downloading copyrighted material without paying. Lots of wrongs don't make a right."

 

That's right, but until those who stand to lose most consider all elements of their marketing mix (product, distribution, price, and promotion), I don't think they can complain. With the Bryce software I got, I had the choice between paying more than 30,000 yen for it, faking some academic credentials and paying 20,000 yen (I bought a Mac version years ago when I was working in education for that price), or getting it for absolutely nothing and passing it along.

 

Actually, I would prefer to pay them, but not that much. If they distributed it cheaper to more people, they might profit more. I don't know, I haven't done the research, but I'll bet Corel haven't either.

 

But whereas I like Corel's product and would like to contribute, I don't much like NHK's, and haven't actively chosen it.

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