Post Office customers’ fury after being told their old stamps are FAKE

Some Royal Mail customers attempting to swap old stamps bought from the Post Office for new digital versions are allegedly being told their purchases are fakes.

Old stamps became invalid on Tuesday, with anyone using them now facing a £1.10 surcharge – meaning new stamps with barcodes are now the only ones allowed.

The Royal Mail launched a free ‘Swap Out’ scheme meaning old stamps can be exchanged for their new equivalents by posting them to ‘Freepost Swap Out’.

Officials confirmed that Special Stamps featuring pictures and Christmas stamps without a barcode will continue to be valid and do not need to be swapped out.

But some Britons are said to have been informed that their old stamps – which they bought from branches of the Post Office – are fraudulent or ‘not genuine’.

The Post Office said it receives its postage stamps direct from Royal Mail’s ‘secure printers’

Other customers have claimed that even the new stamps – also bought from Post Office branches – have also been labelled fake, reported the Daily Telegraph.

What Royal Mail stamps are no longer valid? 

Royal Mail has now added barcodes to all of its regular postage stamps.

Old-style regular stamps without a barcode are no longer valid for postage, as of Tuesday (July 31).

The stamps that have changed feature the profile of the late Queen Elizabeth II on a plain-coloured background.

However, Special Stamps with pictures on and Christmas stamps without a barcode will continue to be valid and don’t need to be swapped out.

Old stamps can be exchanged for new barcoded versions through the ‘Stamp Swap Out’ scheme. To swap out stamps, people can complete a form, include their stamps and send it free of charge to ‘Freepost Swap Out’. The form can be accessed by clicking here

The newspaper revealed it had seen 40 examples of customers claiming that old or new stamps bought from Post Offices or the Royal Mail website were ‘invalid’.

It cited an example of customer Susan Harrison, 60, in Hartlepool, County Durham, who sent off eight old stamps bought from a Post Office counter in a WH Smith store to be swapped.

However, a few weeks later Royal Mail sent her a letter claiming the stamps could not be switched because they had ‘already been used or are not genuine’.

She told the Telegraph: ‘I’m gobsmacked. If you can’t buy stamps in a post office without them being counterfeit then where can you buy them?’

Now, Which? consumer law expert Lisa Webb has urged Royal Mail to investigate, saying it is ‘unacceptable for recipients to be wrongly charged for stamps that have been bought legitimately from reputable retailers’.

The new stamps were introduced with barcodes so they can be used with the Royal Mail app. Officials also hope they will improve efficiency and security.

The new stamps were first introduced in February last year and the deadline to use old stamps was originally January 31, 2023 – but an extra six-month grace period was then added until July 31.

A Post Office spokesman said today: ‘Post Office Ltd receives its stamps direct from Royal Mail’s secure printers and are shared with our experienced Postmasters and operators to sell in their Post Offices.

‘We take any allegation of fake stamps at our branches seriously and will always require a receipt as proof of purchase before we can investigate.

‘As part of this, any alleged fake stamp needs to be double-checked by Royal Mail to verify the status of the stamp.’

The Royal Mail’s website shows what postage stamps are now invalid – and others that are not

The Royal Mail launched a free ‘Swap Out’ scheme meaning old stamps can be exchanged 

And a Royal Mail spokesman added: ‘We encourage any customer who believes they have been incorrectly surcharged to send the stamps they have remaining to us. 

‘It is important that we can investigate and determine whether the stamps are genuine, as well as understand exactly where they were purchased.

‘Barcoded stamps have been in use since February 2022 and each barcode is unique. 

‘This uniqueness enables our machines to check the validity of stamps and to identify barcodes that have been through the network before.

Former Post Office workers celebrate outside the High Court in London in April 2021 after having their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal following the Horizon IT scandal

‘If one of these stamps is showing as previously used it may suggest that the stamp has been reproduced by a counterfeiter. 

‘If a stamp is identified by our machines as counterfeit, it will also be individually checked by a member of our team before the recipient is asked to pay a surcharge.’

It follows the Post Office Horizon IT scandal from 2000 until 2014 which saw more than 700 subpostmasters prosecuted based on information from the accounting system, which saw workers wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.

In 2019 a judge ruled the system contained a number of ‘bugs, errors and defects’ and there was a ‘material risk’ that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were in fact caused by it. Many subpostmasters have since had convictions overturned.