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United Kingdom News

Why Britain's New Stamps Are Causing Outrage and Upset (theguardian.com) 73

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Royal Mail's stamps are finally entering the digital world, with printed codes that can be used to track letters or linked to videos. Collectors, traditionalists and royalists are not amused. From a report: In February, Royal Mail introduced a new design for its standard stamps, which have changed so little since the launch of the Penny Black in 1840 that they are officially known as "definitives." The new stamps -- "plum purple" for first class, "holly green" for second -- still feature the same regal profile introduced more than 50 years ago. But what is most bothering purists -- and leading Johnson to the brink of direct action -- is the addition next to the Queen of a digital barcode. The rectangular codes -- which look like QR codes but are apparently not QR codes, which are a particular, and trademarked, kind of code -- are designed to stop counterfeiting and to enable the tracking of all letters to improve efficiency. Correspondents will soon be able to share photo or video messages by linking digital content to their coded stamps. Recipients will view it via the Royal Mail app (currently the codes link to a short film featuring Shaun the Sheep and a plasticine postwoman).

[...] David Gold, the head of public affairs and policy at Royal Mail Group, knew the coded stamps would create a stir. "Collectors, traditionalists and royalists feel a sense of ownership over stamps," he says. It's why the new stamps, the designs for which had to be approved by Buckingham Palace, include a fake perforation as a kind of dignity screen between code and Queen (who is also, notably, facing the other way). Gold says the codes mean Royal Mail can track all letters, allowing it to better monitor, predict and respond to regional changes in demand, for example. He is also confident the unique codes will stop the fraudulent washing of postmark ink and resale of used stamps -- a crime that he claims costs Royal Mail "tens of millions" of pounds a year.
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Why Britain's New Stamps Are Causing Outrage and Upset More

Why Britain's New Stamps Are Causing Outrage and Upset

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  • Hope they thought this through (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:20PM (#62675418)

    Correspondents will soon be able to share photo or video messages by linking digital content to their coded stamps

    Oh boy, here we go, I wonder if they considered all of the kinds of video/photo content that might be attached... will this be a new avenue for child porn? Might people send stamps linked to Goatse images to people they dislike? Or heck you could even just Rick Roll someone with this system via physical mail.

    • The cost of those Rick Rolls is going to add up. But anyone can make something like an NFT on the cheap.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Will anyone scan these things? I wouldn't. If you want to send me goatse you will have to print it out.

      • The one last untracked form of communication. You used to be able to just pop an aninmous letter in a post box.

        Now each stamp will have an individual bar code. You will, in time, need id to purchase stamps. Every letter sent will be recorded, source and destination.

  • How many "washed" stamps is that? Is there a hidden stamp washing factory somewhere in the UK? And if they can already count the washed stamps, why aren't they detecting them in transit?
    • They know how many stamps are sold, and they know how many letters are posted. So it's just a case of subtracting one from the other. It's probably an underestimate since some stamps are going to be lost or damaged.

      • Re:Tens of millions of pounds a year? (Score:4)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:35PM (#62675478)
        I don't see how you can possibly account for stamps that are purchased and not used. You have no way of knowing their number.

        • Re:Tens of millions of pounds a year? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by genixia ( 220387 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @03:12PM (#62675592)

          If the sent items exceeds the total stamps sold, it doesn't matter how many sold stamps went unused. Older stamps that had been hoarded can be be addressed by looking at the sales of the small denomination stamps used to make up their value to the current price. (e.g, current 2p stamp sales will tell you how many older 66p second-class stamps are still out there, and 10p stamp sales the same for older first-class 85p stamps)

          Here's the thing though. tens of millions of pounds is tens of millions of stamps. There are 70M people in the UK, about 28M households. The reported number would be attained if 1 in 7 people - about 1 in 2.5 households reuse a stamp each year. On the face of it, that seems ridiculously high - cleanly removing stamps, cleaning the postmark, and gluing them to a clean envelope must be a hassle to save 95p at a time. Maybe there's a secret method of doing so easily that somehow the Royal Mail haven't been able to defeat.

          The next challenge is that greeting cards are about the only stamped mail that most people receive now. Most commercial mail is franked or metered. I suppose that 1 in 75 households could collect every stamped envelope throughout the year, and sit down in November and clean them in one batch, before using them to mail an average of 30 Christmas cards each. Thirty quid for a couple of hours of effort seems much more reasonable. I could accept that 1.4% of households contain enough financial constraint and/or criminal intent to overcome any moral concerns that would otherwise prevent them.

          I can't imagine that anyone is doing that on a commercial scale though - sourcing thousands of used stamps to clean and reuse would seem difficult. I'd think that straight-up forgery of new stamps would be easier.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • They've also got the mechanism completely wrong, if you try and wash the stamps you just get a damaged stamp. What the sender has to do is rub candle wax over the stamp so the ink can be wiped off by the recipient and the stamp reused. Tip from my aunt, who's been using the same stamp for years to write to her sister.

              Come to think of it, Royal Mail should reward her for her recycling work, think of how many single-use stamps she's saved over the years.

          • If the sent items exceeds the total stamps sold, it doesn't matter how many sold stamps went unused

            How does it "not matter"? If 1000 stamps were sold and 1050 items were sent, wouldn't you want to know if 0 stamps were unused and 50 stamps were reused, or whether 100 stamps were unused and 150 stamps were reused, or whether 200 stamps were unused and 250 stamps were reused? The margin of error is potentially very substantial here.

            • Very true. But it's easy to determine that "best case" scenario.

              If there's millions more stamps being used than sold, then there are *at least* millions of stamps being reused. The problem may actually be much worse than that, but if the "best case" problem is worth solving, then any additional undetected problems that also get solved are just icing on the cake.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            I have to think it's forgery vs washing. As you say, that would be a lot of effort for little reward. In the US counterfeit stamps are easy to find from online sellers or in small corner shops like bodegas in NYC. They get produced in china and sold in bulk to resellers. Most are good enough the buyer would have no idea. And for some reason the USPS doesn't seem to really care all that much about it. I'm sure their equipment kicks out some during sorting but I can't imagine it's catching them all, or even a

          • If the sent items exceeds the total stamps sold

            You have no way of knowing the number sold. Stamps are stored in post offices, private shops and news agents all over the country. For sent items to exceed the accounted for stamps there would literally need to be several times higher mail volume than stamps in circulation.

        • I don't see how you can possibly account for stamps that are purchased and not used. You have no way of knowing their number.

          What? Of course you do. You scan each mailpiece sent and recognize the stamps. I don't know how the royal mail works at all, I haven't looked into it even a little bit, but the USPS scans every piece, OCRs the addresses (to and from) and also scans any bar codes, some of which they put on some pieces for various tracking purposes. This information was supposedly just thrown away after use, but it came out that it was being handed to the feds, shock amazement.

          • The original text:

            I don't see how you can possibly account for stamps that are purchased and not used.

            You said in response

            You scan each mailpiece sent and recognize the stamps.

            Do you see where you missed the point entirely? He's talking about the millions of stamps out there purchased, but not yet used. They are not scanned yet because they have yet to be put on mail.

            I know we personally have at least 100 unmailed U.S. forever stamps for example - if someone washed five used ones, how would they tell fro

            • Do you see where you missed the point entirely? He's talking about the millions of stamps out there purchased, but not yet used. They are not scanned yet because they have yet to be put on mail.

              Right. So if they haven't been put on mail yet, then you know they're not used. You don't know where each one is, but you know you haven't received it back, so you know where they are in a general sense: in reserve, lost, or destroyed. And you know how many you've taken in, although that's confused by counterfeiting. Hence the unique bar codes...

              • Hence the unique bar codes...

                Under discussion are current stamps with no barcode, and how many may be washed currently and put back into circulation. Nothing to do with the new ones.

                I do agree that is one reason why they may want bar codes, but how much of a problem is it really... that's the one that's hard to answer.

                The main reason of course is they want no more anonymous letters at all, every letter has a nice bar code and you know who bought that stamp.

                • >but how much of a problem is it really... that's the one that's hard to answer.

                  Well, an accurate answer is hard, but a best-case answer is easy.

                  If millions more stamps are being used than are being sold, then you know there are *at least* millions of stamps being reused (or counterfeited). The reality might be much higher (e.g. if lots of stamps are saved, lost, or otherwise go unused), but it can't be any lower.

                  As for tracking - I'm dubious. Here in the US stamps are sold primarily by anonymous vendi

        • A purchased but not used stamp is in the Royal Mail's favor, so it doesn't count towards the loss from washed stamps.

          • Re-read my comment again and think about it this time. What I'm commenting on is not the loss but the ability to *estimate* this loss. The loss and its estimate are obviously not the same thing (just like any other objective quantitative property and its inaccurate measurements). Your inability to count unused stamps makes the "just subtract sold stamps from letters processed" method generate random numbers.

        • "I don't see how you can possibly account for stamps that are purchased and not used."

          If more pieces of mail are delivered than stamps are bought, there *must* be fraud going on. Not accounting for stamps that are purchased and not used makes your estimates of the fraud occurring smaller, not larger.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )

      And if they can already count the washed stamps, why aren't they detecting them in transit?

      If the stamps are being washed and sold in the quantities implied, then I can only imagine there are a lot of innocent people being duped. They might well be detected in transit, but that wouldn't solve the problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        I got delayed due to actual work, but also meant to include what 91degrees said.
        • What 91degrees wrote is rubbish, though, because that way you're at best detecting a sum of two independent variables, so you're not finding out a lot about either of them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            Except, it's not rubbish and the general concept is used quite often to estimate things when you don't have complete data to work with. You don't end up with an exact answer, but a reasonable estimate.
            • I don't see how one can even argue that the estimate is "reasonable" without some error bars. It could be completely off without you knowing it.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Xenx ( 2211586 )
                I never claimed the 10mil estimate was reasonable, though I don't have any evidence to indicate it isn't reasonable. I merely defended what 91degrees wrote, saying that you can get a reasonable estimate with those methods. If you have evidence showing their estimate is inaccurate, good for you. It just has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
    • Technically it says that it costs the Royal Mail tens of millions of pounds a year - not that there are tens of millions of pounds worth of fraudulent stamps sold. If there is £100,000 of washed stamps and the Royal Mail spends £10,000,000 + investigating it, then it costs them tens of millions. With that said, one couple got up to about 400k themselves. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]

    • " And if they can already count the washed stamps, why aren't they detecting them in transit?"

      Because it is quite easy to count washed stamps without being able to detect them. "We sold seven million stamps but delivered ten million pieces of mail. Therefore there must have been three million washed stamps."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebcdic ( 39948 )
      "And if they can already count the washed stamps, why aren't they detecting them in transit?" Maybe it's an expensive procedure that they perform on a small sample of stamps to assess the rate.

    • It's not too hard to come to a reasonable estimate. I worked in a Royal Mail Sorting Office for 7 years until last year. For a start, the sorting machines are programmed to spot fake or re-used stamps and spit them out. They are not actually too hard to spot.

      I worked on hand-stamping (not just cancelling stamps, you check them for correct postage as well) and you can usually spot the fakes and the re-used fairly easily if you are paying attention. We are specifically dealing with the letters the machines ha

  • Could we have instead... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:23PM (#62675438)
    ...on the stamp a portrait of Shaun the Sheep, and a QR code linking to a movie about Queen Elizabeth ?

    • I'm going to need that Shaun the Sheep link.

      For science.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Or better still, let me buy a code instead of a stamp. In Germany you can buy a code and write it on the envelope. Costs the same as a stamp but you can buy it online. No need for a printer either.

  • Didn't think this through (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:42PM (#62675510)

    Over here you can already buy "stamps" that are really just a code you write down (by hand, if you like) on the letter, and it'll serve to get the mail delivered.

    I don't really mind except that I can't pay for it in cash and that the codes are not valid for very long. You really have to buy'em and use'em right away. But then if I'm buying for the longer term, might as well buy stamps, eh.

    So why royal mail is so desperate to link "the digital" with stamps? I think they haven't really thought through what they're trying to do. Britain has its share of deeply conservative people so better make sure they can continue using the mail without all that "digital" folderol attached.

    On the other hand, they're at least trying something. The postal service here seems mostly bent on committing suicide.

    Personally, I used to like email a lot, back when top-posting wasn't the norm. Now, I told the government that if they want to talk to me, they better write a letter. I'm really not inclined to read their html-laden "notification" inviting me to log in to their "messaging portal" website to read some bureaucratic missive or other, or get blamed should I miss such an announcement in the spambox and not read the missive in time. Instead, they can stick to paper, and they had better answer my letters too.

    Given the enormous number of "messaging" systems, I think it's time people re-evaluated how they talk to each other, or don't, as the case may be, and then some of us may well prefer to write letters again. Better hope there's still a mail service left come that time.

  • "The rectangular codes – which look like QR codes but are apparently not QR codes, which are a particular, and trademarked, kind of code – are designed to stop counterfeiting and to enable the tracking of all letters to improve efficiency. Correspondents will soon be able to share photo or video messages by linking digital content to their coded stamps. Recipients will view it via the Royal Mail app (currently the codes link to a short film featuring Shaun the Sheep and a plasticine postwoman)."

    • "From 1 February 2023, only the new stamps will be accepted. Any old stamps must be used before then or traded in."

      Wow! Bury the vastly more important portion? Previously purchased normal stamps will no longer be accepted?
      Hope UK doesn't have the USA's 'Forever' stamp

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Eh? Says right there in your quote you can trade in your old stamps for the new ones.

    • ...tracking of all letters...

      What could possibly go wrong...

      • Don't they already do that? I mean from a paranoia perspective "letter from X address to Y address" is presumably in the database after the first time a letter is sorted. I suppose false labels designed to fall off in transit can misdirect things, but it shouldn't be any more difficult to make a stamp fall off. I suppose it would cost you an extra "decoy" stamp in that case, but if you're going to such lengths to disguise the true origin/destination of a letter, that probably doesn't matter so much.

        Seem

  • Not as much outrage as Britain's old stamps [wikipedia.org].

  • > The rectangular codes -- which look like QR codes but are apparently not QR codes, which are a particular, and trademarked, kind of code

    Since when are QR codes trademarked?

  • maybe the UK is different (Score:3)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @03:57PM (#62675704) Journal

    ....but as far as I can tell here in the US, basically all mail is now:
    - commercial (ie invoices) - usually metered
    - junkmail - metered or contracted
    - catalogs - a beefier junkmail, metered
    - magazines - metered or contracted ...with nearly none of it being hand-stamped.

    This would make the claim "...fraudulent washing of postmark ink and resale of used stamps -- a crime that he claims costs Royal Mail "tens of millions" of pounds a year." fairly dubious. Is there REALLY an industrial scale level of fraud out there in 'resale of used stamps' worth MILLIONS of pounds every year?

  • Another idiot installed a worm by scanning a stamp.

  • It's just a damned stamp, but we're talking about collectors, and the value of stamps, and how people don't like losing the traditional look of the world's first stamp. Outrage and upset. Over a stamp.

    People. Don't. Like. Change.

    Especially older people. It takes something known and stable and comforting from their world, and replaces it with something new and different, which causes worry and anxiety. "it's worked fine for 180 years... why would you need to change it?" And sometimes there's some tru

    • No, I think you're missing the point. It's not that the stamps are different than they used to be. It's that, unlike before, each stamp is now uniquely coded, so it can be individually tracked. That is actually a fundamental difference.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      People. Don't. Like. Change.

      People don't give a fuck. The outrage and upset is fictional outside of a few stamp nerds that could vanish 5 minutes from now and no one would notice. You're brilliant treatise on old people is a consequence of your gullibility for clickbait headlines.

  • "But are apparently not QR codes" (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The rectangular codes -- which look like QR codes but are apparently not QR codes, which are a particular, and trademarked, kind of code -- are designed to stop counterfeiting and to enable the tracking of all letters to improve efficiency.

    There's no "apparently" about it. They don't look anything like QR codes except that they're 2D. They're actually Type 29 Mailmark 2D barcodes.

  • We have so many other things to worry about than stamps. FFS! The world is in a real commotion, I don't want to know about stamps! I haven't used one in like 20 years at least anyway. How's this even news on Slashdot?

    • Yeah but Bo-Jo needs a distraction from his latest gaffe so time to rage against the stamps.

      Actually this is good. Maybe if the UK government focused all their energy on pointless shit like this they'd not have as much time to ruin the country in every possible way.

    • "Stamp collection? HAHA!"

  • What I don't understand is, given that when they sold the old stamps, they were making a contract with the buyer to convey one piece of mail it was stuck to at any point in the future without time limit, if someone attaches an old stamp to a letter and posts it, on what basis they can possibly refuse to convey it without breaking that contract.

    • Presumably because they gave you the option to continue that contract by trading in your old stamps for new ones. If you choose not to do so, that's your business.

      • Think of all the ways you could abuse any legal notion that one party in a contract which has already been agreed can unilaterally impose extra conditions.

        • Perhaps, but there is no actual contract here.

          Did you sign anything? Did they? No. There's no contract.

          You bought a product. They're doing a recall.

  • What kid went up to those running the postal service happily barking out his 'great' idea like first season/first few episodes Wesley Crusher and what very likely klewless P.S. bureaucrat approved it?

  • They made a commemorative one of Margaret Thatcher and people complained it doesn't stick.

    Turned out, people spit on the wrong side.

  • Royal Mail introduced a new design for its standard stamps, which have changed so little since the launch of the Penny Black in 1840 that they are officially known as "definitives."

    First, they are known as "definitives" because the definition of a "definitive" stamp is, essentially, a "standard" stamp. They aren't called that because they are particularly boring, they're called that because we picked a word for basic stamp issues and "definitive" won.

    Second, postal services worldwide, including the UK, solved this whole "definitives are boring" problem around a century ago by issuing commemorative stamps. There are an ungodly variety issued every year. The spread of personalized

  • ...are the codes linked to a distributed ledger with no central authority?

    'Cause that could be the new jolt of enthusiasm that gets the whole blockchain/crypto/NFT ball rolling again.

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