kmc
Crayons
Posts: 5
Looking for Penpals?: Not at this time
Country I live in is: UK
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Post by kmc on Feb 6, 2022 16:00:38 GMT
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Post by Gary S on Feb 6, 2022 16:11:39 GMT
Sounds like very soon you guys won't be able to use your older postage stamps anymore. I hope the US never goes this route or I'll be taking my older stamps to the post office in a wheelbarrow! Seems silly to make folks exchange their old stamps for the new coded ones over a silly video. I've never used a barcode scanner on my phone and probably won't be taking it up as a hobby anytime soon either. My wife has the app installed on her phone and uses it from time to time but I'm just an old curmudgeon. I thought the idea behind personal letters was the letter inside the envelope not some silly video attached to the stamp on the outside. Bah humbug!
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Post by allanorn on Feb 6, 2022 18:25:24 GMT
The Royal Mail Announcement: www.royalmail.com/sending/barcoded-stamps?iid=HP_M2_1_BARCODEDSTAMPSI hope the US never goes this route or I'll be taking my older stamps to the post office in a wheelbarrow! Seems silly to make folks exchange their old stamps for the new coded ones over a silly video. As I thought, there's more to this story. "Operational efficiencies" is an interesting term to use; does it take that long to count up stamps? I'm also wondering how much stamp fraud there really is. Barcodes get Royal Mail ahead of the game until the scheme's broken, if someone has the time and energy to go after that. The Royal Mail article was light on details for international stamps, as they have about a dozen different rates and they are all definitives. I wonder if they're going to introduce a "forever" kind of stamp for international and simplify their rate structure. Looking at their rates it's mildly feasible now. As for USPS - I can't rule out NoJoy implementing this eventually, especially if it's an initial success, but they would have to change sending rules. First rule to change is only letters and flats can get stamps, then USPS would have to simply their fee structure to avoid issuing so many catch-up and definitive stamps. The catch-up stamps are what caused USPS to go to "forever" stamps. USPS would have to do something about postal cards, their already-stamped envelopes, and aerogrammes - both in circulation and stored away. I wonder if just the cost of doing something like this would keep USPS away from it since they're at an operating loss as it is.
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Post by Mia on Feb 6, 2022 18:50:30 GMT
I'm waiting with baited breath.
From what I understand, it will only be the Queen's head stamps that will be affected, becoming de-monetized by the end of next January.
As for the exchange thing, no idea how that will work - will there be an administration fee? Will it be freepost (and then, perhaps the envelope gets lost)? Elsewhere, someone mentioned about the exchange thing for the pre-euro stamps in one of the Eurozone countries... the paperwork...
Some have commented elsewhere... will the barcodes be read by the RM machinery? Will you be able to check the stamp's validity at point of purchase? It'll only be a matter of time that forgeries will make an appearance. And then there's the forged/reused stamp industry selling through "feeBay" - plenty of "washed" stamps on sale there because Royal Mail didn't cancel with a postmark.
There's a letter in a newspaper, The Daily Telegraph:
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Post by Gary S on Feb 6, 2022 20:03:12 GMT
Maybe the British public needs to get a hold of a few lorries and go shut down London for however long it takes until Royal Mail backs off this nonsense or hires several hundred thousand new employees to do nothing but stamp exchanges in person. I really think the whole "stamp fraud" argument that they roll out is a straw man argument they use whenever they want to change the way things are done with the current mail system. How many folks are really going to the trouble to counterfeit postage stamps worth a pound or two when it would be much more lucrative to go after high value bank notes instead. I'd like them to show some record of arrests and convictions over stamp counterfeiting before they use it as a reason to invalidate thousands of stamps held by private citizens.
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Post by ginny on Feb 6, 2022 21:14:03 GMT
The new stamps here in Germany have a barcode / QR code, too. All old stamps still are valid, and so far, I haven't heard about them having to get exchanged. The code is supposed to help with tracking - and prevent people from re-using stamps that apparently aren't franked (stamp fraud). I haven't heard about any other purpose.
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Post by allanorn on Feb 6, 2022 21:24:00 GMT
Stamp fraud's becoming an issue in the US; go check eBay. Nobody will go to the trouble in the USA to forge one-off stamps, but there's a market for rolls of USPS flag stamps being significantly discounted off regular price (listed from Asia). The fraud is that someone pays for those "stamps" because they're at a significant discount, then tries to use them in the postal system. The poor soul who thought they got a discount is instead out $40 a roll for a bunch of worthless pieces of paper.
In San Diego the Feds recently convicted or made a plea deal for someone engaging in postage theft worth $6 million, so postage fraud is not unusual. Postal inspectors will have a friendly chat with you if you send mail with canceled or otherwise invalid stamps.
I imagine RM will read the barcodes and reject the letter if it's an invalid stamp or the barcode isn't on there. (Otherwise why go this far?) Proof of purchase would be easy on the app. Exchanging stamps will be a nightmare since RM doesn't own very many post offices, having spun off most of the counter service to the Post Office franchise. RM won't care about refunds and trades unless it's either done entirely via RM or HM's government forces RM to allow in-person exchanges.
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Post by radellaf on Feb 7, 2022 0:26:05 GMT
IDK if they add barcodes to new stamps, for their own purposes alone, but I have no interest in scanning codes with my phone. It's against my usual values, but if I could outlaw QR codes, I would. Public-facing ones, anyway. They're great for things machines print that are meant for other machines to read (warehouses, etc.)
Well, rarely, I have price-checked an item with an app by scanning the UPC, if something in a store seemed a bit pricey but I really wanted it, and maybe that's what they go for these days.
It seems a little silly, since a post office can easily have a machine-vision system recognize a stamp. Computer-wise, there haven't been that many ever issued. The rare antique stamp could be bounced to manual processing, the way a machine-unreadable address currently is.
But like you say, since DeJoy hasn't been ousted yet (really? seems that should have been done a while ago), absolutely anything anti-customer could happen with the USPS.
I don't know what the UK is typically like with this sort of postal policy. It'd be "unprecedented" in the USA.
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Post by Gary S on Feb 7, 2022 0:39:45 GMT
The US Postal Service's issued warning about fraudulent First Class stamps is chock full of "probably", "may be" and "you're on your own" which again points to a straw man argument with no concrete examples of actual counterfeiting of stamps. If there are sellers from Asia wholesaling fake US Forever stamps then it seems like the Postal Inspectors should be trying to stop it rather than sitting on their behinds issuing scary sounding public announcements to scare the elderly into only buying their stamps for Christmas cards at the local post office.
The only reference to a "$5 Million Postage Fraud Scheme" involved a man who "digitally altered, counterfeited, forged, and tampered with various “postage evidencing systems”—i.e., postage meters" and not First Class Forever stamps being sold at a discount. The guilty party "primarily used the postage evidencing system known as Click-N-Ship® when sending packages of beverages and food products from his businesses in San Diego" to defraud the USPS. The only other news items I saw seemed to involve folks purchasing legitimate stamps from the USPS with bad checks rather than printing up their own stamps in the basement. There were a couple reports of postal employees stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of legitimate stamps as well.
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Post by vertolive on Feb 7, 2022 19:34:50 GMT
Wait. Will this preclude any artwork on the stamps ?!?
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Post by Gary S on Feb 7, 2022 21:02:49 GMT
Wait. Will this preclude any artwork on the stamps ?!? According to the article it just affects the "definitive" stamps with Queen Elizabeth's profile for now. That and some of the Christmas stamps. They still plan to produce special issue commemoratives for now.
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Post by ginny on Feb 16, 2022 17:26:29 GMT
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Post by Mia on Mar 31, 2022 20:32:12 GMT
The details and terms & conditions are up on the Royal Mail website. www.royalmail.com/sending/barcoded-stampsAppears to be no admin fee, no end date. Country definitives affected as well as the Machin stamps and other definitives sold in booklets (there's Olympic stamps but not the gold winner ones).
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Post by Rouge on Apr 11, 2022 10:19:28 GMT
We already have a bar code on the right side of our international Marianne stamps in France, which is why I always buy other stamps, which are usually not with a barcode but with the facial value written in euros - except when a new Marianne stamps is out, maybe ?
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Post by Mia on Apr 13, 2022 18:57:11 GMT
I've heard that the swap-out process has been quite painless so far.
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