Beat Stamp Price Rise: First Class Rise (Not) (Merged)

Fortunecooky

I thought you said they go up on the Friday and went on Thursday and paid the new price, never mind ! But what I did find was a bargain at £2-50, the special first day cover of Charles and Camilla stamps with the wrong wedding date, 8 April, on it ! Apparently these will be worth something a few years later. Grab them while you can !!! :rotfl:

Steel_2

I thought I'd better add a bit of info that I have just been told by my partner who is a postman. As blackadder said in an earlier post, machines do the sorting of first and second automatically. Apparently, if you turn a stamp side ways on, you should be able to see two shiny strips on the edges of the stamp and a dull strip in the middle. First and second class stamps have different sized dull strips hence the machine is able to distinguish between them. When I mentioned buying some stamps of ebay he pointed out that generally fake stamps don't have these strips on them so to be careful that I'm buying the genuine thing otherwise my business post could be pulled and surcharges slapped on.I have no idea how they are doing this though.....my partner doesn't work in the site with the machines anymore...could hand sorters have been told to check for strips or other security features that we don't know about?

However, a little more worrying is that he came in today with two of my letters that I asked him to post when he got to work saying that they had not been accepted for postage and needed 2p extra on each one. I had put on there some stamps that were left over from before the price increase, both of which simply had '1st' on them, and they had been spotted by 'Revenue Protection' when he tried to post them. Apparently, a new directive has been issued that all post coming through in an old colour or style are to be pulled and a surcharge added, even those with simply 1st or 2nd written on them, in an effort to crack down on postage fraud.

So be careful - if you want to get stamps cheaper, make sure they are a) genuine and b) new style. If they fit both of those criteria and are discounted buy up. Unfortunately, I'm back to buying genuine ones as I can't afford any of my letters being sent to clients with a surcharge slapped on them.

Steel

jo_b_2

snaggle wrote:

But in the true good will of this Money Saving Tips, And to pay back for all the cash I have saved since reading these tips, Here is how to save money.

First of all DONT threw away your toilet roll centers, But put your letter INSIDE the roll and push into an envelope, Put the address on the enverlope and seal it. Then put SECOND CLASS STAMP on packet. ( It Is No Longer A Letter, It's A PACKET and go's for the same price)
This when posted gets thrown OUT of the Machine and has to be sorted by hand.
THE POINT OF THIS IS.....Most sorting offices DONT segrigate 1st from 2nd class packets, EVERYTHING GO'S FIRST CLASS.

Won't this make the letter too heavy to go by standard second class post?

blackadder

Steel wrote:

anymore...could hand sorters have been told to check for strips or other security features that we don't know about?

i very much doubt it, as long as the stamps aren't counterfeit or under 21p then they shouldn't be rejected

Steel wrote:

However, a little more worrying is that he came in today with two of my letters that I asked him to post when he got to work saying that they had not been accepted for postage and needed 2p extra on each one. I had put on there some stamps that were left over from before the price increase, both of which simply had '1st' on them, and they had been spotted by 'Revenue Protection' when he tried to post them. Apparently, a new directive has been issued that all post coming through in an old colour or style are to be pulled and a surcharge added, even those with simply 1st or 2nd written on them, in an effort to crack down on postage fraud.

this is very strange, revenue protection rarely get involved with stamped mail as it represents very little loss of revenue compared to the bulk postings from firms who regularly under declare the quantity and weight of the mail they send as only a fraction of it is checked.
what is also strange is that he would have placed your letters in such a place that they are likely to be checked instead of putting them directly into the pidgeon holes that correspond to the destinations of your letters, they would definately not have been checked and should not have been surcharged anyway.

Steel wrote:

So be careful - if you want to get stamps cheaper, make sure they are a) genuine and b) new style. If they fit both of those criteria and are discounted buy up. Unfortunately, I'm back to buying genuine ones as I can't afford any of my letters being sent to clients with a surcharge slapped on them.

Steel

fraudulent stamps are becoming more of a problem but still represent a relatively small financial loss to the business in comparison to other frauds.

a few 'tips'

machine checked mail is more likely to spot underpaid items, to avoid machine checking and thus rely on lazy / incompetent manual checks you can (a) make the item an irregular shape/ size but keep under 60 grammes
(b) place the stamp away from the corner / on the back / at an angle bascially anywhere it isn;t expected to be but still visible and not defaced, this reduces the chance that the machine can identify the stamp and it will then be passed for manual sorting
(c) make your 21p or 30p up from small denomination stamps such that the machine can not identify 1st or 2nd and it will then be sent to manual sorting

or you can use all of the above although it is probably more effort than it is worth to save 9 pence.

blackadder

jo_b wrote:

Won't this make the letter too heavy to go by standard second class post?

how big are your loo rolls ?

here are the tarriffs from the RM web site
What it costs

Maximum weight Second class cost
60g 21p
100g 35p
150g 47p
200g 58p
250g 71p
300g 83p
350g 94p
400g £1.14
450g £1.30
500g £1.48
600g £1.75
700g £2.00
750g £2.12

unless you excede 60g you will get your second class for 21p

btw this is the very cheap postage compared to the rest of Europe

there is a pdf showing the tariffs in 2003 at http://www.freefairpost.com/pdf/stamps03.pdf

the important stuff is on page 6

Steel_2

Hi blackadder

I agree it is all very strange.

My partner had to check one of the letters to make sure it wasn't overweight and the stamps were spotted while he was doing it. However, I took those two letters to a post office yesterday to get the extra postage stamps and the cashier catergorically insisted that, as long as they have first or second on them and not the actual price, they are fine. When I explained what the Revenue Protection guy had said she looked very confused and said "I bloody well hope not. I've stocked up on stamps before the price rise - I'm not paying full price". Then she leaned back and said to the clerks either side what I'd just told her and they looked just as confused about it as she did and said the revenue protection guy was wrong. She took my letters, put them in a sack and and said not to worry about it.

Now, the non-cynical part of me says that all of this is simply a case or !!!!!!-elbow syndrome. The cynical part asks how much money would a brief but concerted effort to surcharge after a price rise generate in revenue for Royal Mail? Mind you, I am a cynical !!!!!! and think everything is a conspiracy to part me from my money!!

[/QUOTE]fraudulent stamps are becoming more of a problem but still represent a relatively small financial loss to the business in comparison to other frauds

I do agree that fraudulent stamps represent a small financial loss, but if you take it togther with all the other little things that contibute to business losses they probably add up to reasonably significant percentage. I'm not saying huge percentages but still what statisticians would class significant. And I can't get away from the fact that the Revenue Protection officer said he had been 'told' to do it. I wouldn't be suprised if there was rumblings from on high to start plugging more financial gaps in addition to finding new ways of increasing revenue.

After all, there's only so many staff they can 'rationalise' to save money.

blackadder

i think perhaps the Rev Protection was a 'jobsworth' rather than acting under instruction
the rev prot at my office have no time for stamped items as it is typically only one person trying to get one item through cheaply, their concern is with a company declaring say 18000 first class when they have sent 20000 or have declared 50000 items at less than 60 grammes when they are over 60 grammes and so should pay more.

houseofpat

It took me a while to find it but on the Royal Mail site under Stick and Send it says this:
You can also get non-value indicator (NVI) stamps, which just show 1st or 2nd Class and can be used in the UK for anything weighing up to 60g, or the International OneStop stamps, for sending letters and postcards up to 40g by Airmail to anywhere around the World These stay valid even if the postage rate changes after you buy them.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2?mediaId=600025&catId=400043

rattla

houseofpat wrote:

It took me a while to find it but on the Royal Mail site under Stick and Send it says this:
You can also get non-value indicator (NVI) stamps, which just show 1st or 2nd Class and can be used in the UK for anything weighing up to 60g, or the International OneStop stamps, for sending letters and postcards up to 40g by Airmail to anywhere around the World These stay valid even if the postage rate changes after you buy them.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2?mediaId=600025&catId=400043

Glad someone found this as I was going to look for something on their site myself. Not sure about the Rev Protection story (sounds more like an urban myth to me) and it has allways been stated that NVI stamps will be valid irrispective of when they are used. N.B. I thought 1st marked stamps were always gold - even before the prices went up last year - anyone know what colour the post 7th april stamps are??

blackadder

rattla wrote:

Not sure about the Rev Protection story (sounds more like an urban myth to me)

please clarify