Stockpile Stamps Now

50Twuncle

2nd Class postage is due to increase dramatically in April - up to 55p (up 53%) - that will KILL the Post 0ffice service completely - ie) The end to daily home delivery
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-mail/9027910/Stock-pile-stamps-now-Royal-Mail-customers-told.html
Time to spend a few £100's on stockpiling stamps now ?

custardy

oh,now people are interested?
too late now

verydeeppockets

What's interesting about the 'kill the post offices' bit is whatever you do now, it's too late.
Post Office Counters are now a separate company from Royal Mail.
They are seen as a thorn in the side of the 'new dynamic' Royal Mail, and are treated as such, with zero investment and support.

All those prepaid Paypal postage packages you see people dropping off make the shopowner no money at all, the throughput of prepaid packages or letters isn't even recorded on their systems, even though they have to deal with it and sometimes print off receipts!
When the PO is closed due to supposed low customer levels, where will people go then?

I'm digressing away from the horror of the 55p stamp that is the subject of this thread, but my view is if you need to post something - use the Post Office properly - queue, weigh and pay. Or there'll come a time when it's gone!

Sixer

verydeeppockets wrote: »

What's interesting about the 'kill the post offices' bit is whatever you do now, it's too late.
Post Office Counters are now a separate company from Royal Mail.
They are seen as a thorn in the side of the 'new dynamic' Royal Mail, and are treated as such, with zero investment and support.

All those prepaid Paypal postage packages you see people dropping off make the shopowner no money at all, the throughput of prepaid packages or letters isn't even recorded on their systems, even though they have to deal with it and sometimes print off receipts!
When the PO is closed due to supposed low customer levels, where will people go then?

I'm digressing away from the horror of the 55p stamp that is the subject of this thread, but my view is if you need to post something - use the Post Office properly - queue, weigh and pay. Or there'll come a time when it's gone!

I heartily agree with this! A friend of mine owns a convenience store with a Post Office. It's quite a big shop for a village shop and the Post Office is well-used, needing a dedicated member of staff to run it. There's a permanent queue but half the people in it are doing it prepaid. It doesn't even make enough money to cover staffing at minimum wage. My friend keeps it open at a loss; the only benefit in it is footfall to the shop generally. But since the next nearest convenience shop is 6 miles away, I doubt the extra footfall is worth a bean. And to add insult to injury, they won't let her issue car tax!

scrabbles_2

Well,I sympathise with struggling post offices and would love to support my local one more, but I don't, I'm one of those terrible people who prepays. It seems my local have already instituted their own 50% price increase; every time I try to pay over the counter they try to charge me £3.05 parcel rate instead of £2.07 large letter even when I tell them it's large letter. I should not have to spend half an hour convincing them of the fact every time I go in there.

Anyway, back to the point - it's got to be worth stocking up. You won't get an investment return like that many places!

jhp

WH SMITH Cheaper stamps online offer still available till 31/1/2012

See here http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/superdrug-stamps

CompletelyLost

verydeeppockets wrote: »

What's interesting about the 'kill the post offices' bit is whatever you do now, it's too late.
Post Office Counters are now a separate company from Royal Mail.
They are seen as a thorn in the side of the 'new dynamic' Royal Mail, and are treated as such, with zero investment and support.

All those prepaid Paypal postage packages you see people dropping off make the shopowner no money at all, the throughput of prepaid packages or letters isn't even recorded on their systems, even though they have to deal with it and sometimes print off receipts!
When the PO is closed due to supposed low customer levels, where will people go then?

I'm digressing away from the horror of the 55p stamp that is the subject of this thread, but my view is if you need to post something - use the Post Office properly - queue, weigh and pay. Or there'll come a time when it's gone!

To be honest, the reason I use prepaid is because everytime I used to queue up with my bag of parcel, I would get tuts, moans, groans and rolled eyes from both the cashier and the people behind me in the queue. The cashier would only do my parcels in batches of three even though I had queued like everyone else and then they'd let someone behind me in the queue in to do what they wanted, before doing another three of my parcels... and so on and so forth, until they were all done (and I'd wasted about an hour).

I'm not saying all post offices are like mine, but that's my experience. I personally don't have time to wait around for an hour while they do this.

little_sweetie

I do so agree that with small village post offices it's either 'use it or lose it' but I have a great deal of sympathy for CompletelyLost I've encountered the rolling eyes and sighs from the queue behind me when I've had my eBay parcels to weigh too. The postmaster is a lovely chap and I'm determined to support him all I can so now I try to pick a time when it's a bit quieter. I weigh my packages at home first (I have a size guide to determine the rate) and pencil on the postage cost I think it will be. That way the postmaster doesn't have to keep checking that the cost is ok with me and speeds things up a bit. I also make a point of buying my stamps from him whenever possible (although the cheaper books on offer do lure me away sometimes ) Large letter stamps are never on offer so I buy those from him. Whenever I'm in his shop I always buy something else too even if it's only a pint of milk or some of his delicious freshly sliced ham I know that not everyone has time to do all this and I do sypathise....

clearingout

my local post office (tiny one) offers a fab service to ebayers - they can open an 'account' and drop off their parcels and the staff will deal with them when there's no one else around. They charge to the account and the ebayer comes back when they're ready and pays. Obviously, there is a risk involved for the Post Office owner but they are always saying to people with a couple of parcels 'do you do ebay? here, have this leaflet' so I presume it works for them. It takes the ebayer no time at all - just a need to queue to pay when they come in a second time (assuming there is a queue, of course) and the PO gets the business as it's no harder for the ebayer than doing it themselves at home.

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

CompletelyLost wrote: »

To be honest, the reason I use prepaid is because everytime I used to queue up with my bag of parcel, I would get tuts, moans, groans and rolled eyes from both the cashier and the people behind me in the queue. The cashier would only do my parcels in batches of three even though I had queued like everyone else and then they'd let someone behind me in the queue in to do what they wanted, before doing another three of my parcels... and so on and so forth, until they were all done (and I'd wasted about an hour).

I'm not saying all post offices are like mine, but that's my experience. I personally don't have time to wait around for an hour while they do this.

I agree, I get terrible service from my local post office and only go in there is I absolutely have to. The guy behind the counter is dreadfully rude and scares some of the old people out of their wits, I have seen people reduced to tears. I reported him once as he was so rude and the head office never did anything despite him having a go at the woman in head office! She told me he had been swearing at her over the phone when she rang him to sort out my complaint and she ended up complaining about him!

[Deleted User]

I stockpiled 5 years ago Turned out to be a brilliant tax free investment. They should last me several more years as I spent 2k.:D

I shall simply hand them over to our children when we get too old to post letters