Post office - Counterfeit Stamps

[citizenB]

Not sure if this is in the right place, please move if not. 

Yesterday  I received a 'Sorry there's a fee to be paid card' put through the letter box.  I paid the fee of £5.00  online and received the item today. 

It was a Card from a friend.  It had been posted using a 2nd class stamp.  I was confused that it had attracted a not sufficient postage fee so without opening it I took it to my local post office had it weighed and put through the slot they use to test for thickness - clerk said that it should not have attracted the fee. 

Neither of us noticed at the time that the box ticked was for a 'Counterfeit' stamp.  

I googled how to tell a counterfeit and the stamp attached does not meet the criteria on the Royal Mail website.  My friend has said she purchased the book of stamps from her post office, so are they selling counterfeit stamps ?  How can I tell for sure as I object to paying £5.00 if this was the sorting office on a bad day or a PO money making exercise !

[dx100uk]

its probably not a fake however its an old book of stamps prior to the new barcoded ones and is probably out of  date. they mark them as fakes.

dx

 

[honeybee13]

dx, have things changed in the digital age? I thought stamps didn't go out of date.

HB

[FTMDave]

They're all barcoded now, I exchanged all my old unused stamps for the barcoded ones last year.

[Ethel Street]

Another possibility that I've read about on another site is that the stamp had been used before and, because it didn't have a franking mark on it, the sender had tried to reuse it. Before the barcodes came in that would have worked because if there were no franking marks on the stamp there was no way Royal Mail could tell it had already been used once. However, it seems that Royal Mail now track every stamp used through its barcode and can tell if it has already been used. The system then rejects it as "counterfeit".

HB, the changeover to barcoded stamps that made all the old ones 'expired' was a one-off event. Stamps don't generally have an expiry date.  Know where your old stamps are? | Royal Mail Group Ltd

 

[citizenB]

It was one of the newer barcoded stamps.  I think your thoughts could be on the money, Ethel Street.  I am going to the Sorting Office tomorrow to see if they can provide further information. 

[whitelist]

You will be better going to the Mail Centre as they issue the surcharges rather than the local sorting office. They will also be able to tell you why the stamp is Counterfeit as the machines are there that would have rejected the letter.

[citizenB]

2 hours ago, whitelist said:

You will be better going to the Mail Centre as they issue the surcharges rather than the local sorting office. They will also be able to tell you why the stamp is Counterfeit as the machines are there that would have rejected the letter.

Thank you 

[citizenB]

I have further information regarding this stamp.  It was part of a 'sheet' of stamps provided by the Royal Mail as part of the swap system.  The old stamps for the new barcoded stamps.  So if they are counterfeit and not a faulty scanner, then the Royal Mail definitely supplied them !. 

Apparently out of the 25 stamps, 18 have been used and this was the 2nd stamp (posted on the same day) that has been rejected as being counterfeit. 

 

[Ethel Street]

It seems the issue is now being publically acknowledged...

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/royal-mail-investigating-barcoded-stamps-after-gb-news-exposed-counterfeit-charge-scandal/ar-BB1kY4BJ

 

[AndyOrch]

Also here:-

Royal Mail investigating barcode stamps after customers hit with £5 fines

UK.FINANCE.YAHOO.COM

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Royal Mail is investigating problems with new barcoded stamps amid fears customers are wrongly being fined to receive letters, The Telegraph can...

 

[citizenB]

“This is why we insist that any customer who thinks they may have purchased a fake stamp from a Post Office must produce an itemised receipt so that this can be looked into further.”

So how do you prove that stamps are / were part of a swap sent directly from the Post office ? 

[Ethel Street]

The plot thickens ... China may be producing the counterfeit stamps. Seems there's a lot of them about

Royal Mail urged to investigate claims of Chinese-made fake stamps | Postal service | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

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Minister says he will work with business to investigate, while China dismisses suggestion of state role as ‘absurd’

Although that wouldn't have explained what happened to citizenB's friend who apparently received the stamp from the Royal Mail. 

The fake stamps are (allegedly) only distributed through non-Post Office shops and the ones from the Post Office are legit and made under strict controls in the UK.

Post Offices aren't permitted to go out and buy their stamps from other sources. (For clarity it was Royal Mail who provided the stamps to citizenB's friend, not the Post Office, which is a separate company.

But I assume Royal Mail got its stamps for the 'swaps' from the legit UK manufacturer and didn't buy them on Amazon!).

Still, I will make sure I buy stamps from a Post Office in future, not from my corner shop.

Did you friend ever get anywhere with his complaints @citizenB ?