Stockpile Stamps Now

Fruittea

Great thread and wondered if I could ask a question. I've been going throug all my old stamps (I collect them for the PDSA) and found that over the Christmas period I received tonnes of unfranked or stamped stamps.

They are completely unmarked and I find I have around £30 work - question is - can I reuse them and if so - what is the best way to unstick them from the envelopes. :cool:

Hope someone can help. Thanks in advance.

KxMx

Wow, a potential rise to £0.55p is alot. I send alot of letters as part of a hobby which I will probably continue to but with base prices at that level I will pretty much stop sending them to the US and trading books in UK through the post. Soon will be cheaper to go out and buy a new book rather than post a second hand one in a swap!

I am making assumptions here I know but everytime the prices go up, it rises on stamps to packet prices so no reason to think right now that will be any different.

bundance

If you buy a heap of stamps now, will there be a time limit that these cheap stamps are valid for.
That's my reservation on stock piling, I don't want a load of worthless stamps somewhere down the line if they become void.

custardy

bundance wrote: »

If you buy a heap of stamps now, will there be a time limit that these cheap stamps are valid for.
That's my reservation on stock piling, I don't want a load of worthless stamps somewhere down the line if they become void.

well I can't say they wont be
who knows whats in RMs future
however it likely they will still be valid
RM dropped the price from 1st/2nd class some years ago
so a 1st class stamp from 5 years ago is still a 1st class stamp today
however like shop vouchers they are only valid while the company exists

patman99

Pre-paid items should have to pay a 10p surcharge to make-up for the money the branch loses.
Since I found-out that P/O branches get a commission on each sale and this goes towards off-setting the running costs, I have stopped doing pre-paid and went back to pay-at-counter.

custardy

patman99 wrote: »

Pre-paid items should have to pay a 10p surcharge to make-up for the money the branch loses.
Since I found-out that P/O branches get a commission on each sale and this goes towards off-setting the running costs, I have stopped doing pre-paid and went back to pay-at-counter.

I believe they used to,however funding POs doesnt fit in with RMs future

Hermia

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 have had very similar experiences. I have lost count of the times I have spent a fair bit of money sending parcels and been treated like a troublemaker whilst the old lady buying one stamp gets treated like royalty. I have never understood why PO staff are allowed to behave in a way that would not be acceptable in a shop. The post offices near me also have such short opening hours and spending most of my lunch hour in the post office is no fun.

Sixer

Hermia wrote: »

I have had very similar experiences. I have lost count of the times I have spent a fair bit of money sending parcels and been treated like a troublemaker whilst the old lady buying one stamp gets treated like royalty. I have never understood why PO staff are allowed to behave in a way that would not be acceptable in a shop. The post offices near me also have such short opening hours and spending most of my lunch hour in the post office is no fun.

The thing is, "people in a shop" don't have to work for free for another shop. Can you imagine asking people in your local convenience store to ring through your huge trolleyful of a week's shopping from Tesco for you and keep all the customers who actually want to buy a pint of milk or a packet of fags FROM THEM waiting? Because that is exactly how it is for a sub-post office. The person behind that counter is paid by the owner of the convenience store, not by Royal Mail. And the big pile of pre-paid parcels doesn't earn them a penny.

CompletelyLost

Sixer wrote: »

The thing is, "people in a shop" don't have to work for free for another shop. Can you imagine asking people in your local convenience store to ring through your huge trolleyful of a week's shopping from Tesco for you and keep all the customers who actually want to buy a pint of milk or a packet of fags FROM THEM waiting? Because that is exactly how it is for a sub-post office. The person behind that counter is paid by the owner of the convenience store, not by Royal Mail. And the big pile of pre-paid parcels doesn't earn them a penny.

I experienced the problems when I was getting the PO cashier to stamp up all of my items individually at the post office.

When I prepay and write/print out my own proof of postings, I get in and out in a matter of minutes as all they have to do is check them off the list and stamp my postage certificate.