Replacing stamps with bar coded ones

[Michael Chare]

Some time ago when I knew about an increase in the price of 1st and 2nd class stamps I bought several hundred stamps. I know that I won't want to use these before 31/1/23 so I sent off 100 1st and 100 2nd class stamps for replacement with bar coded ones.

As the total value of these stamps is £163 I thought it would be nice to have proof of posting so I went to the post offcie. Unfortunately the queue there stretched out of the door so I just put the letter in the box.

The replacement stamps arrived today and the postman rang the bell and handed me the envelope saying that he had to do this. The sheets of 100 bar coded stamps are much larger than than the previous ones.

[Andrew]

Should've bought Christmas stamps, they will still be valid after the deadline.

[Andy Burns]

I rounded-up all my "old" stamps and sent them off last week, got the replacements back yesterday, they replaced all 1st, 2nd and large-letter stamps with barcoded equivalents, then totalled the value of all other stamps (I had quite a lot of 1p, 19p and 20p for some reason) and converted those into to 1st class plus a few 20p and a single 1p ones to make up the value.

Yes even normal 1st/2nd class stamps are now larger than the old large-letter stamps.

[Mark Carver]

Yes, and the 'books' are not physically larger, so they contain fewer stamps

[Andy Burns]

That's just so that people can afford them ...

[Andy Bennet]

(yawn) Oh!

[Clive Page]

That will be really annoying if they total up the small value stamps. We have a fair collection of stamps of values 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p precisely so that we can use old stamps with specific values up to the new values when we need to send "large" letters or things abroad, especially before Christmas. Although we have a fair collection of commemorative stamps gathered over the years, there never seems to be one that is quite right for the current large/overseas rates. I suppose I'll have to send them off to be replaced some time, but will put that off as long as possible.