I am executor for the estate of my father who died last year, aged 93. He left 1,661 unused non-barcoded postage stamps with a face value of £1,442.19.
I contacted Royal Mail to ask if they could be cashed in as we are never going to use so many stamps.
I was advised to post them with a Swap Out form because they were not bar-coded, include a Grant of Probate certificate, and request a cash value rather than replacement stamps.
I added a note to the form indicating I did not wish to ‘swap out’ but wished the cash value instead.
Royal Mail simply replaced them with newer bar-coded stamps and will not budge.
K.W., Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire.
Sally Hamilton replies: You were furious when Royal Mail delivered the response that it would not let you cash in the stamps.
You have no use for so many stamps and could do with the money to meet bills owed by your father’s estate.
As stamps are not legal tender, they cannot be used to pay official bills – though some individuals might accept them if you owe them money.
In an age of email and WhatsApp, I can appreciate your frustration at sitting on a pile of postage stamps, ranging from 152 x 1p stamps and 114 x 2p stamps, to the handier 1st and 2nd class items.
I suggested it might be easiest to share them between beneficiaries or relatives and friends. But you said the two beneficiaries of the estate are pensioners, including yourself, who send just a couple of Christmas cards a year.
Although I use post quite often, when I purchased a pack each of first and second class stamps last week, the teller even exclaimed at the extortionate £13.46 price tag.
Anyway, your complaint to Royal Mail customer services was essentially returned to sender with confirmation it could not exchange your stamps for cash.
You felt particularly sore as the £19.55 you paid to send the stash of outdated postage by secure delivery to the swap out service was refunded in the form of stamps (aargh).
When you escalated matters to the Postal Review Panel, which oversees gripes the Royal Mail doesn’t resolve itself, it simply referred unhelpfully to the fact it could not ‘make changes to the terms and conditions of any Royal Mail product or service’.
Since the message wasn’t getting through to customer service, you came to me. You had read, in December 2023, about a reader who had purchased too many stamps in error from her local post office but on my intervention was permitted to return half of them to Royal Mail for cash.
Although your position was not the same (in that case the customer had receipts to show for her barcoded stamps), I thought Royal Mail might show some leniency. But I’m afraid I could not persuade Royal Mail to budge.
It said your position with the older stamps was different to the previous case and responded with a firm ‘no’, stating ‘the swap out scheme is designed to offer replacements for invalid stamps, but it does not include a monetary refund option’.
A Royal Mail spokesman said: ‘We are very sorry to hear about the passing of her father. While we appreciate this has been a challenging period, we would like to clarify that our policy does not allow for cash refunds on unused, non-barcoded stamps.
'Based on this, she was directed to our swap out scheme, which enables customers to exchange old stamps for valid replacements.’
Options for your stamps are to either sell or give them away. Selling is legal, though sellers should expect to offer a discount.
There are also specialist traders. One I found online was offering 99p for a £1.70 first class stamp.
Giving away unused stamps to charity is useful for estates wanting to reduce an inheritance tax liability, as charitable gifts of assets, including stamps, are tax-free.
Specialist firm Xchange Master works with charities, including the RNIB, to convert stamps into funds for use by the charities, and says the organisations usually receive most of the stamps’ face value.
