“Don’t do it. There are fraudsters at work,” the company’s customer service department told reporter Saskia Van Gestel of De Standaard, who received one such letter. “A company is trying to get their hands on smartcards to be able to download films at your expense,” Telenet explained. “We are putting together a file of the complaints of everyone who’s experienced this.”

There was indeed a company that was trying to get hold of customers’ smartcards – Telenet. This was confirmed by the two men who turned up at Van Gistel’s home after she had volunteered, in the interest of investigative journalism, to take part in the “experiment”. “Apparently our customer service department is not up to date on the TV experiment, which is part of our new marketing campaign,” said

Telenet spokesperson Evelyne Nieuwland. “I can put everyone’s mind at rest: This has nothing to do with fraud. All that has happened is a problem of internal communication.”