Do you have any current stamps sitting around waiting to be used? If you do then you better use them quickly before they become null and void.
Royal Mail has announced that current stamps – bearing Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s head – are to become invalid at the end of January next year (31st) to be completely replaced by ones exactly the same – but with a barcode to the right.
Customers are being told to use them or swap them – by filling out an online form and rather ironically, sending them off.
Barcoded stamps were introduced in February in an attempt to make deliveries and drop-offs easier and more efficient. They also hoped the change would improve security.
The new barcodes will provide customers with exclusive access to video content, all accessible via the Royal Mail app.
Anyone who is unable to use older stamps by 31st January will be able to exchange them for newer barcoded ones free of charge. You will still be able to use special themed and commemorative non-barcode stamps after the deadline.
Just another rip off by Royal Mail. People have paid for postage but because the stamps don’t have a barcode they have to stop using them. What bloody difference does it make – none. They will tell you that you can’t use stamps that you have paid for with the queen’s head on next.
You just need to send them off to a freepost address and they’ll exchange them for you, for free! Not really a rip off!
And they are probably banking on people not going to the bother so that they can just pocket the cash they have paid. Why not just let people use the stamps that they have bought until they eventually run out? It hardly makes any difference to them does it. And don’t think that having a barcode on a stamp will make any difference to the woeful service of Royal Mail, it will not.
Quite right. When the stamps were purchased, no one said they had a ‘sell-by’ date. And who wants to waste time filling in forms. And is it even legal for the Royal Mail to move the goalposts like this.
Will the deadline be extended by the amount of days they go on strike??
Thought not.
Let’s be realistic shall we, its Christmas soon & I’m sure plenty of people post cards. Just use them up then, no problem.
If not, next time your in town just pop to a post office & they change them for you, no charge.
It’s not rocket science!
They don’t exchange them any more at Post Offices. The article quite clearly states they now need to be sent off for exchange.