stamps with qr codes, or not

It's because the Chinese were forging the 'ordinary' stamps in huge volume (they could be bought on ebay from China for a few pennies a stamp).

It remains to be seen whether they will next start forging the Christmas

Theo

DIGITAL ruins everything

I said this at the time, as did the media pundits to the chinless Royal Mail Executives put up for interview. What was the answer? Blowed if I know, as with all spokespersons, they basically answered a different question instead. I suspect the answer may well be that there is a detector that if it detects no code, it flies off down another channel where a bloke reads it and sticks a code on it somewhere. I really don't see the need for more than the glow in uv spots they printed on before as they are only there to indicate the stamp value. Brian

Hasnt ruined communications, stupid.

Don't think I've bought a stamp in years. Everything I've posted recently, the people at the post office print a label and stick it directly to the packet.

Yes I suppose if you take all your letters to the post office to post them, rather than putting them in a pillar box near your house, then you can get the post office to produce the stamps.

For things which I knew I'd be posting at the post office, I should probably get into habit of doing them same. What I tend to do is put a standard first (or second) class stamp on and then pay for an extra stamp if the letter happens to be classed as large-letter. Measuring the length and width at home is easy, but determining the thickness is not always easy. Yes. I know I should get one of the length/width/thickness gauges that the post office use.

About the only things I post these days are birthday (etc) cards, and since my sister and two of my nephews all have birthdays within a week of each other, I tend to put all the cards into one envelope (*): it's cheaper to pay one large-letter stamp than three separate ordinary-size stamps.

(*) I once had a post office clerk at a little sub-post office accuse me of diddling the Royal Mail out of postage by sending several letters (to the same address) in one envelope rather than paying for three stamps. I laughed in her face and gave her a "what planet are you on?" look.

I found these to be good value:

I haven't used a stamp for years. I print off my own QR type code and address label at home using Royal Mail's web site. The address label and "digital stamp" are produced as a pdf document for home printing.

One claim they make for the code is that it provides unique tracking information* but I wonder how many decades it will take before RM catches up with some of the better delivery companies.

What about the argument that it reduces forgeries, suggested by Theo?

In the old days, I believe you were only allowed to write five words of conventional greeting on a postcard.

No, that was greetings cards which had a cheaper postage rate than ordinary letters. You had to tuck the flap in rather than seal it so, in theory, the Post Office could check.

You could write as much as you liked on postcards, which had a similar postage rate to greetings cards.

All this stopped when they introduced first and second class post, in

I haven't sent a postcard for a decade or so, but at that point there was a cheaper rate for international postcards compared with letters. There were even dedicated postcard stamps:

In periods when the postcard rate was higher than the basic printed matter rate, it was possible to send an item in postcard format as printed matter if it bore no more than five words of conventional greetings or "formulas of courtesy" only, or if it qualified as printed matter under one of the other exceptions that allowed some writing (e.g. many commercial documents such as invoices).

So, yes, you could write as much as you liked but you might have ended up paying extra for the privilege.