Comment on Royal Mail waives £5 penalty charge for fake stamps

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Right?? You’re telling me I could have been sending JKR letters with fake stamps this whole time and SHE’D have been charged actual money for it? My new greatest regret in life is missing the timeframe where I could have done that.

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  • wiccan2@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They should still be charged if the wrong amount of postage has been paid.

    So if you send what royal mail count as a large letter but with a normal stamp instead of a large letter stamp they will be fined and charged the difference in postage.

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    • palordrolap@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Only if they want the letter. If they don't want it, the postal service will gladly destroy it at no charge.

      Thus, this isn't necessarily a good way to exact punishment on an unsuspecting recipient. Someone who gets a lot of fan (and hate) mail will gladly forego the small handful that don't have postage.

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      • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s how it works or how it should work?

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• palordrolap@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Charging the recipient for insufficient postage has always been the policy of the British postal service. These fraudulent stamps have thus been included in with that policy because as far as they're concerned a fraudulent stamp is as good as no stamp at all.

  Anything with insufficient postage is held at the sorting office closest to the recipient and a note is posted (ironic, no?) to the recipient telling them to come and pay the postage if they want it.

  The reasons they've backed down this time are 1) their newfangled bar code stamps have failed to stop the very forgery they were designed to prevent, and 2) public outcry causing them (the postal service, not the stamps) to reluctantly admit that this whole thing might, maybe, uh, perhaps just a little bit, be their fault.

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I am confused how the QR code was supposed to stop forgery. I have never seen anyone scan the code at any point in the process so I don’t understand how it was supposed to help.

    I’ve scanned the code myself and it’s just a number sequence. Unless you’re checking that against some sort of database, which I assume is the idea, then the existence of the number sequence itself proves nothing. But as I have said I’ve never seen anyone actually scan the damn things. I don’t even understand who’s supposed to do it.

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    • rmuk@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They’re scanned by the sorting equipment. When a stamp is issued with a particular number that number can then be used exactly once, at least in theory.

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      • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They already had a perfectly good method for preventing stamps from being used more than once which was to stamp them. But sometimes they fail to do that too.

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  • Dkarma@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “British postal service has always been this stupid”

    What a reason to maintain status quo

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The only people who like the RM the way it is is the government. Everyone else would be quite happy for it to go back into public ownership. But for once they’re not actually at fault here. Charging the recipient is just how it works.

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      • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah the Australian Post is fucked here too.

        Lose shit can’t do anything and is a bloated government service that can’t do its job.

        Privatisation would fix so much right up until they’re the only carrier and we pay through the nose for post.

        Better yet post as a subscription service would he the way it would go if it went private.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My point is that such a policy is easily weaponized.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How?

      The only thing someone could do is send me a lot of annoying mail. I just never pick it up and it never costs me any money.

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    • Patch@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If they’re doing it the same as unpaid postage, paying them is still optional as a recipient. They’ll just only give you the item of post if you pay what’s owed.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Especially since even the sender has no way to confirm they’re genuine.

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• Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There may be nothing to indicate who the sender is, whereas there is always something to indicate who the recipient is. So they put a charge on the recipient if they wish to receive the letter. I don’t believe you have to pay the fine if you don’t want the letter.

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