UK stamps faff

[ffutures]

For anyone who wasn't aware (such as me up to an hour ago!), some UK stamps (the ones that have the Queen's head on a plain background) will no longer be usable after April next year, they're being replaced with stamps that add a bar code. Really find it difficult to see the point of this, unless it's to make it easier for the Illuminati to target the orbital mind control lasers or something, but never mind. Pictorial stamps etc. will still be OK for some reason.

Stamps can only be replaced by sending them in to Royal Mail; you can't swap them at the post office, which would seem the logical way to do it. Fortunately most of the stamps I have are pictorial for various reasons, I use them for most things other than official documents etc., but I'm currently using stamps very slowly due to covid (so no parties etc.) and a lot more on-line documents so I'm getting rid of the relevant stamps now - it's only 20-odd first class stamps, I have another 60 or so that are exempt from this nonsense.

There's apparently already a huge backlog (no surprise) so it'll be interesting to see how long mine take when I send them in next week.

If anyone else needs to worry about this the details are here

https://www.royalmail.com/sending/barcoded-stamps?iid=HP_M1_BARCODEDSTAMPS

Sorry - JANUARY 31st is the last day for using them, not sure where April came from. Currently there is no end date for changing them.

Comments

[eledonecirrhosa]

Willing to bet money that the reason for the change to barcodes will be some variant of "So that we can cut staff costs". Get rid of those pesky human beings! So it is WOTAN/Skynet behind this, not the Illuminati :-)

[ffutures]

At a guess, it's so that if anyone asks for proof of posting they can use the scan code as well as the address, in line with the the postage labels the post office sells on line or when you take a letter or package in and want postage for it.