The Royal Mail are issuing counterfeit stamps then hitting the recipient with a £5 charge.
Money Mail has been contacted by dozens of frustrated readers who have been stung with the fine, while others who have bought stamps from legitimate sources say they are mortified at sending out mail to friends and family which the Royal Mail then deems ‘counterfeit’.
It’s all a bit puzzling.
It all began two years ago when the Royal Mail introduced stamps with barcodes, enabling mail to be tracked and offering a more efficient, secure service.
Er, what more efficient service? I hadn’t noticed it becoming more efficient at all. Indeed, my observation is that it is the same useless entity that it has always been. Unreliable, late and lost, frankly.
For customers who had a stash of older stamps without a barcode, the Royal Mail launched the Stamp Swap Out scheme, which meant they could be exchanged for barcoded ones.
Again, I hadn’t noticed as I don’t keep a stash of stamps.
Take Tony Marcella, a 54-year-old business strategist from Rugby, Warwickshire. He was charged £5 by the Royal Mail to receive a card from an old friend after a ‘fee to pay’ card came through his letterbox.
Okay…
Had she used enough postage, he wondered. Yes — but the yellow sticker on the envelope had a box ticked with ‘counterfeit stamp’. Stamps are considered a ‘secure print item’ in a similar way to bank notes, which means it is a crime to knowingly reuse or sell used or fake stamps.
Disgruntled, Tony contacted his friend, who explained that this stamp was one of 103 she had received from the Royal Mail after exchanging £95.69 worth of nonbarcoded stamps through the Stamp Swap Out scheme.
How many?
Yet given the provenance of the stamps, it appeared to Tony and his friend that the Royal Mail itself was sending out what it subsequently marked as ‘counterfeit’ stamps.
Am I surprised by this? Reader, I am not. This is the same useless waste of space it has always been. Add a little technology to the mix and the opportunity to fuck it up is logarithmic. Indeed, given the provenance, we can expect more clusterfucks on the horizon.
Would I pay the ‘fine?’ Would I fuck.
Why are people so compliant? Surely they know that all government entities are incompetent, particularly the post office, they have been all over the news for their incompetence recently. At the very least I would do some digging to see if there was a case to answer.
They did and it’s a PO fuck up.
She should just tell them she’s mailed them a cheque.
My business frequently gets these cards but they are usually “insufficient postage” and telling me to pay the extra.
Never have as it involves a 30 minute drive to the sorting office to collect (can probably do it online now stopped looking) not a chance I’m doing that.
Do you know what happens if you don’t, nothing. The post office return the item to the sender FOR FREE and then they repost it with the correct stamps.
Royal Mail and the Post Office are not the same organisation.
Most likely explanation is that the barcode reader is making a mistake or the barcode is badly printed.
Or the software is written by Fujitsu
Tim wins this thread!