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Reports suggest a rise in complaints that stamps bought from legitimate stores are being deemed counterfeit. Anyone who receives a letter with a fake stamp is charged £5 by Royal Mail.
Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith told BBC Breakfast: “China is behind it.”
A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We are working hard to remove counterfeit stamps from circulation.”
Consumers are being warned to look out for strange perforations around the edge of a stamp, a shine to the surface or the colour looking off.
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All that effort to roll out barcoded stamps was well worth it then.
I wonder if this might be the beginning of the end for stamps. The privatised Royal Mail already wants to reduce or even drop entirely letter carrying in favour of parcels. I could see an inability to combat stop forgery another argument used to advance that, with phasing out stamps a way to discourage sending lettters.
The universal service obligation obliges them to carry stamps. Getting rid of that would require an act of parliament. Good luck getting that through either house
I would hope that be the case, but I don’t have a lot of faith in it. Royal Mail wants to tear up the USO, because they claim they claim they can only be a viable business without it. The ultimate goal seems to be turning RM into just another commercial parcel courier.
They are being increasingly loud about this, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they eventually bend enough politicians around. The privatised water companies already managed that with the Tories wrapped around their finger.
Or they go close to bust and get renationalised.
If Labour are smart about it they’ll keep the USO in place and when it’s shown the business isn’t profitable take the assets back into public hands at a reasonable price.
The key problem with the new stamps is there’s no way for someone to check the validity themselves.
It’s also just a barcode, so a fake stamp that gets used with that barcode first doesn’t get stopped and the legitimate one does.
There have definitely been some batches where the barcodes have leaked.
Royal Mail wants to tear up the USO, because they claim they claim they can only be a viable business without it. The ultimate goal seems to be turning RM into just another commercial parcel courier.
I mean, that doesn’t sound that unreasonable to me. Electronic communication has done a lot to displace snail mail, and I have a hard time seeing that changing, there being some new use that produces a lot of demand for sending very thin, flat, flexible things. On the other hand, electronic communication doesn’t much replace packages. If anything, it maybe increases demand for package delivery, due to stuff like online shopping.
All that effort to roll out barcoded stamps was well worth it then.
I would assume that the barcodes makes it far easier to find fakes. Unless they’re just simple serials, in which case they’re a bit boned.
Is there a way to actually scan the stamps yourself to see if they’re still valid? Presumably the barcodes on them are unique and one time use.
~~Don’t but them online then. You cannot buy stamps cheaper than their face value.
But stupid people always know better.~~
I stand corrected
Stamps no longer have a face value. They are 1st or second class.
As they put up the price each year it’s becoming common to buy stamps before the price rise and sell them after.
The margin on the last rise was ~13% on 2nd class stamps, 8% on first class stamps.
13% has been roughly the average every year since 2005.
So you can absolutely buy stamps at less than “face value”. Someone who bought them 4 years ago could easily give you a 20% discount and still make a profit.
As stamps are not allowed to expire (or have to be replaced if they do) this is a safe investment.
Royal mail have encouraged this to inflate sales in the short term and are suffering from those valid stamps still being available now with no further revenue.
Taking the face value off stamps is what’s caused this problem.
There was never an investment opportunity in buying a 90p stamp that was still worth 90p postage years later.
But buying 1000 2nd class stamps that are always worth 2nd class postage has been an inflation beating purchase.
Their new barcoding system could allow them to sunset stamps after a certain number of years (though I can imagine the uproar if they did!)
It would also negate the point of the legislation that means they have to accept stamps in the first place.
You should not have to visit a post office in person or online to post a letter.
There are letter boxes in walking distance. If you’ve bought a book of stamps everything you need is in your desk.
That’s the system we have and it would never be designed by a business that way. But it’s a business that’s taken on that system alongside the I infrastructure for it.
If you genuinely depend on the post accessibility to it is important. It could be modernised but it was working before, modernisation and cost saving are not the same thing.
As it says in the article, these are also being purchased by small retailers, so even if you buy from a bricks-and-mortar store, there’s no guarantee that you’re getting the genuine article.
Fake stamps were bound to happen. They’re so expensive now
Stay classy, china.
“China”. Why do they always treat it as a monolith. I have a set of dinner plates… China is behind them.
Because people would lose attention if they tried to use a phrase longer than “China”, and most people on this side of the world wouldn’t know or retain a specific placename in China unless they had specific interest in the country.
The news could throw something like “Malingshu province” and most people wouldn’t bat an eye.
… despite the fact that that province name is fake and is in fact a mangled transliteration of one of the Mandarin words for “potato”.
马铃薯?
Yeah, that looks like what Google Translate gave me. The old horse-bell yam.
Honestly I am learning Chinese and those kind of bizarre mnemonic devices are the only thing that gets it to stick in your head. Horse with bell on neck eating a potato. I will think of that and remember the word, or at least be part of the way there!
