OT - Post Office pricing - driving me up the wall!

[David]

Back in the day postage stamps used to have a value printed on them and you could then check the cost of postage and (if you could do sums) select the correct stamps to make up the required value.

A while back they stopped printing face values so that you could pre-buy loads of stamps and then use them over a period hedged against any price rises.

Then they introduced different charges for different dimensions of letters.

All well and good but the price calculator from the Royal Mail at

gives prices not number and type of stamps so I can't easily work out what stamps to use.

It seems to say that for a Letter, 1st Class stamp, you pay £0.67p. However for a Large Letter 1st Class stamp you pay from £1.01.

If we (naively) assume that the entry level Letter means that a 1st Class stamp is worth 67p and a 2nd Class stamp is worth 58p then how do you pay the £1.01 for a Large Letter up to 100 grams?

So does anyone know of an on line resource which can map the number of 1st and 2nd Class stamps onto the required postage?

There are other probably obvious stupidities, such as can you use a mixture of 1st and 2nd Class stamps to make up the postage for a 1st Class letter?

As you can tell, I don't use the Royal Mail very much.

I do, as it happens, have quite a large number of 1st and 2nd Class stamps from various sources.

Cheers

Dave R

[Bob Eager]

You get a Large first class stamp. Lterally. Same colour, bigger, it costs more, and it has "Large" printed on it.

A firts class stamp is worth whatever the base (up to 100g) postage currently costs. Similar for second class stamps. Other than that, they all have the value printed on them. Royal Mail website tells you the costs for any given weight.

Yes.

[tabbypurr]

So if I bought 'class' stamps years ago they're now worth more?

NT

[Dave W]

Of course. Every time they put the 1st or 2nd class price up, you can still use the ones you already have.

[Bob Eager]

Yes.

[Martin Brown]

Yes. And very shortly they will be even more valuable - above inflation.

[Mike Humphrey]

You can use a "Large Letter" stamp which is worth exactly the right amount.

You can use a combination of smaller stamps - such as the 1p ones here

and yes, 101 1p stamps would be valid postage, if you can get them all on the envelope.

You can use two 2nd class letter stamps and overpay by 15p.

You can pay at the post office, and they'll print a "stamp" of exactly the right amount for whatever you're posting. These are gold coloured and about double the height and width of normal stamps. You can even use a self checkout machine to print one yourself at some post offices.

Yes, it's the amount of postage that counts. A 2nd class stamp is exactly the same as a 58p stamp - except that if the 2nd class postage went up, they would change value. Some people stock up on stamps just before a price rise, as you make an instant profit.

The old system was that the stamps had the current postage rate (in pence) on them, and when the rate went up they issued new stamps for 1p or 2p more - and everyone with old stamps left had to stick extra 1p or

2p stamps on or their letter would be returned for insufficient postage.

Mike

[F]

Yes. Every time they are about to go up I buy in a stock. Usually beats inflation, for certain if you use a 0% credit card...

[Brian Gaff]

Its going up next month though I gather. Brian

[AnthonyL]

I bought shedloads just before the big price hike, what, 10yrs ago, mainly 1st Class, and am still using them without problem.

I also occasionally send an Xmas card to Australia end end up with a couple of the 1st (treating them as current value) without problem.

In fact I ought to sell a couple of books - tidy profit, otherwise I'll leave them to someone in my Will.

[Peter Johnson]

Yes, you can.

For convemience I save one of these and keep it on my desktop:

For larger amounts you can get low value (1p, 2p, 5p, 10, 20p do for me) stamps to make up the value between your 1st/2nd class stamps and the amount you want from the Post Office, but that confuses them because they are not used to people doing that.

[Rob Morley]

But the post office has had your money for all that time and not had to do anything for it.

[Chris J Dixon]

Probably a better rate of return than many other schemes right now.

Chris

[David]

Just returned to this very useful information.

One thing that strikes me is that it is counter intuitive that a letter (large or otherwise) with two 2nd Class stamps should be treated as a 1st Class item.

Not that it seems to make much difference these days.

Thanks for all the information.

Cheers

Dave R

[Peter Johnson]

I'm not up to speed with RM automation but they used to put a machine detectable phosphor line on 2nd class stamps and two lines on the rest, so two second class stamps on an envelope or packet will be detected as a first class item. (Some of the first class stamps that I have here have two lines on them but they are several years old.)

[Dave Liquorice]

Never looked at stamp under UV light...

2nd Class NVI (Blue): Center vertical stripe about 1/3 the width of the stamp. 1st Class NVI (Red): Vertical stripes on each edge gap between about 2/3 the width of the stamp. 1p (Purple): no stripes. 19p (dark green): single stripe. 1st Class NVI (Gold): two stripes. HG Wells "Time Travel" 25p: Two stripes.

[Bob Eager]

You can see them in daylight if you hold them at the right angle.