Royal Mail customers attempting to swap their old stamps for the new digital versions are reportedly being told they are fakes.
Customers who bought the old stamps are being encouraged to swap them for the new digital version with a barcode. Anyone who uses the old one faces landing their recipient with a £1.10 fee, reports the Telegraph.
Under Royal Mail’s Swap Out scheme, the old stamps can be exhanged for free. However, scores of customers are reportedly being told their stamps, which have been bought at Post Office branches are “not genuine” or are fraudulent.
Customers have also reportedly raised complaints over the new stamps with barcodes. They claim they are being branded as fraudulent, even if they have been bought from a Post Office.
The issue has sparked calls for Royal Mail to investigate in order to ensure customers are not left out of pocket by the new system. It comes as Royal Mail prepares for the next hearing in the Horizon inquiry, which is looking into why subpostmasters were wrongly accused of taking money, when it was faulty IT equipment that was responsibly for missing funds.
One person in Hartlepool says she sent Royal Mail eight old stamps she had bought from a Post Office counter in WH Smith to be exchanged. A few weeks later, she received a letter saying they could not be swapped as they had “already been used or are not genuine”.
Susan Harrison, 60, told the Telegraph: “I’m gobsmacked. If you can’t buy stamps in a post office without them being counterfeit then where can you buy them?”
Another customers told the paper he sent in £190 worth of old-style stamps, bought from his local Post Office, but was told the majority of them were invalid. If a stamp is deemed fraudulent, the recipient will receive a notice saying they need to pay a surcharge of £2.50 in order to receive their post.
And it's not just customers exchanging old stamps being told they are counterfeit. Some who have purchased the new stamps with barcodes have been told that they are also invalid.
Organisers of the Dodson and Horrell Equine Championships reportedly posted more than 200 competitor packs out to their riders with new stamps with barcodes they claim were purchased from a Post Office in Grantham, Lincolnshire, last month. They were reportedly left red-faced when they had calls from competitors asking why they had allegedly re-used stamps, a practice that is illegal in the UK.
Teresa Stratford, the competition’s general manager, said: “We started getting phone calls from people saying, ‘We’ve had to pay £2.50’. People were phoning up asking if it was a scam, it was a mess.”
Royal Mail made the switch to barcoded stamps as part of its modernisation drive and to boost security. Consumer experts Which? has now called on the company to investigate “as a priority” any issues with its new stamp barcode system.
Lisa Webb, Which? Consumer Law Expert, said: “It’s unacceptable for recipients to be wrongly charged for stamps that have been bought legitimately from reputable retailers. It’s in Royal Mail’s interests to investigate as a priority any issues reported with its new stamp barcode system.
“Anyone who believes they have been wrongly charged for stamps marked as counterfeit should raise it with Royal Mail and the company must ensure that any customers who encounter problems with the new system are not left out of pocket.”
A Post Office spokesman said: “Post Office Ltd receives its stamps direct from Royal Mail’s secure printers and are shared with our experienced Postmasters and operators to sell in their Post Offices.
“We take any allegation of fake stamps at our branches seriously and will always require a receipt as proof of purchase before we can investigate.
“As part of this, any alleged fake stamp needs to be double-checked by Royal Mail to verify the status of the stamp.”
A Royal Mail spokesman added: “We encourage any customer who believes they have been incorrectly surcharged to send the stamps they have remaining to us. It is important that we can investigate and determine whether the stamps are genuine, as well as understand exactly where they were purchased.
“Barcoded stamps have been in use since February 2022 and each barcode is unique. This uniqueness enables our machines to check the validity of stamps and to identify barcodes that have been through the network before.
“If one of these stamps is showing as previously used it may suggest that the stamp has been reproduced by a counterfeiter. If a stamp is identified by our machines as counterfeit, it will also be individually checked by a member of our team before the recipient is asked to pay a surcharge.”