old stamps

The rules have changed slightly. You now have until (I believe) June to use the old stamps or to send them off to exchange them for bar-coded stamps. It is the use-by date that has been extended - it was previously the end of January. The exchange-by date has always been June.

so people say but I think it is still tomorrww or today?

With usual legacy GPO mealy mouthed attitude, AIUI the cut off date is still tomorrow, but they will not penalise you (or rather your recipient ) for any old stamps used before July 31st 2023

The use-by date is now 31 July (technically stamps not valid after tomorrow but they'll offer a 6 month grace period where they will still accept them), however when I looked yesterday I couldn't find anything stating the exchange-by date.

Do you have a reference for the exchange-by date?

Theo

When I asked at a post office I was told that the cut-off date had been moved from end of January to end of July. That makes it sound as if it is more official than "officially January but unofficially July".

My post office also said that in their opinion the way that it was handled was very bad: they said post offices should have been allowed to issue new stamps in exchange for old ones, to save people having to send off old stamps and receive new ones through the post.

If only the same regulator looked after the Post Office and Royal Mail, and could have banged their bloody heads together. Oh, err, hang on !

Royal Mail is a private company. The regulator couldn't possibly tell them how to run their private business. If they don't wish to subcontract handling to Post Office Ltd, that's their commercial decision.

Anyway, management are too busy trying to be Hermes with red vans.

Theo

In the same way the regulator couldn't possibly tell Vodafone, BT, ITV, etc how to run their businesses ?

Well I was being sarcastic, but AIUI the regulator can only tell them what to do as regards their licence conditions. They can't tell RM to paint their vans pink unless the colour of the vans is part of the licence. The regulator does not have arbitrary powers to make them do whatever the regulator feels like.

Theo

No, I suppose not.

Mind you, there is a pink RM van around here. It's a '..58 plate, and the paint has done what all non metallic red vehicle paint eventually does, goes pink !

WTF are they running a 15 year old van still ?

I'm sure that there was a good reason that they didn't do it that way.

Probably because they are two separate companies.

Maybe counter staff don’t have the time or ability to spot counterfeits?

Tim

Is it still a RM van? Perhaps someone bought it at auction and left it 'as is'?

They don't know what to do if they encounter a counterfeit as it crosses the counter?

The pink vans around my way are City Link Fibre.

I used the address Freepost Swapout (or similar). It took 4 weeks for the new stamps to turn up, but this did include the Xmas period.