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Please do not write below the line

bbctvlicence.com

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Re: Please do not write below the line

#121

Post by margalabargala »

crazygringo wrote: post #71

I was really hoping for an answer at the end! I'm actually totally stumped by the whole thing. OCR doesn't even make sense, because OCR is terrible at handwriting generally. With forms they usually require you to write block letters and numbers inside of a kind of separate grid for each field. And maybe fill in some bubbles too. Anything anywhere on the page outside of the form fields is ignored. I'd find it far more…

I think there's a pretty reasonable explanation here, which is that "Do not write below the line" is a genuine instruction, but not for the recipient of the letter.

Post offices may make notes such as "undeliverable" on a piece of mail. The sending company may make changes to their mailers which must be hand-updated on pre-printed cards. In both cases, writing below the line may obscure which ID had its letter rejected by the Post or which IDs have not had updated mailers sent yet.

By the time the recipient of the letter receives it, they may write below the line as much as they like, as the instructions have already been followed by those they were intended for.

I would not expect first line support to be aware of this.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#122

Post by edm0nd »

jimnotgym wrote: post #78
FL410 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Licensing officer may call at your property not to collect the letters but to check that you are not watching a TV. Just the thought of this is funny. What kind of uniforms do TV Officers wear? Do they get to carry a weapon? What happens if they find you watching a TV? Amazing.

They wear a shirt and tie. No weapon. You don't have to answer the door to them. You don't have to let them in. However they are generally lieing scumbags who suggest that they are allowed in. If they catch you watching TV they will report you for a £1000 fine and a criminal record. Failing to pay it will land you in prison. I spent years without a license, you don't need one for YouTube and Netflix. I unplugged the…

This is such a broken and dystopian situation. The UK is such a nanny state.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#123

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

donatj wrote: post #108
duxup wrote: post #95

I worked for an old company that had a lot of old processes and paperwork. Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the line" type areas. I always wrote something ... nothing ever happened. I once hand delivered some paperwork (I was running late) to HR rather than using the inter office mail service. I asked them about it, they told me "Oh you must be Mathew..." I was HR famous. They didn't actually mind, th…

In a similar vein, I put an ill fitting jacket on a coat rack when I started my current job in 2012. We have moved offices twice, and the coat rack and jacket have followed me across both moves at no effort of my own. We've been working remote now since the beginning of covid, but our office is still open for anyone who wants to use it. I visited earlier this summer and my jacket was gone. I asked our office assistan…

If it helps, I'm entertained

Re: Please do not write below the line

#124

Post by preisschild »

FL410 wrote: post #63
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

> A Licensing officer may call at your property not to collect the letters but to check that you are not watching a TV. Just the thought of this is funny. What kind of uniforms do TV Officers wear? Do they get to carry a weapon? What happens if they find you watching a TV? Amazing.

We had those in Austria (they changed it so everybody is forced to pay for that now...). They basically have no rights themselves, but they pretended to do and even try to force you to allow them to enter so they can check that you have no TV receiver (including the built in ones in the TV) and say that they will come with the police and a search warrant if you deny them. It doesn't even matter if you have no antenna or no coax cable.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#125

Post by frizlab »

jaggederest wrote: post #81
Nition wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have told him that though if it's the case, and the mystery would be solved. But there obviously wasn't any desire (or more charitably - time) on their end to really look into the reasoning or even understand the question. ---- Edit: I will share what I think is a nice a little counterpoint story here, from a business that is clearly still interested in understanding. I sent Lego an email a while ago: I'm…

That is an amazingly competent response. Every company should aspire to that kind of depth, if a toy company can manage it.

I cannot find it, but I once sent an email to johnnie walker to ask for the music for what is arguably the best ad I ever saw (except for think different). They correctly answered, though the answer was the music is original and copyrighted, and thus I could not get it.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#126

Post by Retr0id »

jimnotgym wrote: post #103
hggigg wrote: post #37

Please don't get me started on these guys. I don't own a television and don't want one (it's a waste of life). I get sent letters all the time. Last year I had an "inspector" turn up who was told to "fuck off", managed to gain entry to the apartment block and then came and knocked on my internal door and refused to show ID, clearly because he was an intimidating arsehole and didn't want to be called on it. He was tol…

Just reminded me of how they used to get into University accommodation and try and catch people in every room

I used to live in a shared flat, and they sent individually addressed letters to each numbered room in the building - which, to my amusement, included the room number of the toilet.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#127

Post by dfox »

runjake wrote: post #35

I initially thought this was concerning emails, because for whatever reason, I've very recently noticed an uptick in "Please do not write below the line" a lot more in emails I receive, presumably to encourage top posting or perhaps for AI email ingestion? Anyway, apparently a strange coincidence.

This is done by a lot of customer support and helpdesk systems that one would almost consider “legacy” that are certainly not related to AI in any way.

So I would assume that the uptick is caused by you moving somewhat up in you career so you deal with such BS systems more often.

On the other hand, the approach with explicit markers in the email is reliable. Alternative is some bunch of ad-hoc rules that will extract the actual reply from the reply, which has a lot of edge cases (which for some systems even extend to edge cases that involve the MIME envelope, not the message text itself).

Re: Please do not write below the line

#128

Post by kazinator »

The writer assumes that "you" refers to him or her. It's possible that the request not to write below that line is part of a document template. The instruction is for the template users not to put content below there, not necessarily to document consumers. Though the template could be used as a basis for letters that do have to be returned. Basically nobody in the entire workflow chain should put anything there, so that if that space has to be OCRed, it will reliably work.

> I am still not satisfied. If I send a letter back to TVL/BBC, and they scan the number at the bottom, it will generate the same information as they have already got; so, what's the point?

But that's the happy case, when nobody has written anything there to interfere with the OCR.

If the number cannot be read, then the document cannot be automatically associated with the residential address it pertains to; someone will have to deal with it manually.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#129

Post by sundarurfriend »

duxup wrote: post #95

I worked for an old company that had a lot of old processes and paperwork. Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the line" type areas. I always wrote something ... nothing ever happened. I once hand delivered some paperwork (I was running late) to HR rather than using the inter office mail service. I asked them about it, they told me "Oh you must be Mathew..." I was HR famous. They didn't actually mind, th…

That's a pretty beautiful story to me: what you meant as a joke unintentionally became art because of the way others interacted with it.

It got turned into a commentary on corporate responsibility (everyone likely thought "I don't know why this is here, but it's not my responsibility to check"), workplace communication (between the movers and your company), psychological inertia [1] (at some point, people would've been surprised and bothered if the paper wasn't there anymore), and much more. There's at least a months-long art study project potential in this!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_inertia

Re: Please do not write below the line

#130

Post by davejohnclark »

azornathogron wrote: post #113
busterarm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the UK is the only country with a license ridiculous enough to offer you a 50% discount _if you're blind_.

Although, yes, this sounds absurd, it's worth noting that the TV licence pays for the BBC and the BBC has extensive radio (and web) offerings not only television. Of course, that still doesn't make sense because to the best of my knowledge you don't need a license of any kind to listen to the radio. Anyway, perhaps blind people want to listen to the TV. There are a lot of programs that could make sense even if you ca…

> you don't need a license of any kind to listen to the radio.

I believe you did once upon a time, but I guess they were phased out as TVs became more popular.

>The first supplementary licence fee for colour television was introduced in January 1968. Radio-only licences were abolished in February 1971 (along with the requirement for a separate licence for car radios).

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmcu...

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