Royal Mail urges ‘all’ UK households with stamps to act now to avoid £5 fine

Royal Mail’s app will let customers detect counterfeit stamps amid a growing scandal over £5 fines. Royal Mail has launched a scanner tool in its app that lets customers check if a stamp is counterfeit after people were fined £5 for carrying “fake stamps”.

Royal Mail has also announced a new independent arbitrator to settle disputes about whether a stamp is genuine or not. Royal Mail suspended the £5 penalty charges in April after a huge backlash – following UK households being fined by bosses.

It said on Tuesday that it would “extend the pause” on the collection of the fee for those receiving letters carrying counterfeit stamps and rolled out a a new scanner which is on its free-to-use app that will enable people to check if a stamp is a known fake.

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The Royal Mail says it will help stop them “inadvertently becoming victims of fraud”. Stamp dealer Stanley Gibbons will make the final decision in cases where a surcharge is disputed by the customer and the complaint has reached deadlock.

The expert will examine the stamp and his or her decision “will be fully independent of Royal Mail and the judgment binding”. Royal Mail chief commercial officer Nick Landon said: “We continue to do all we can to protect our customers from the scourge of counterfeit stamps, and since introducing barcoded stamps we have reduced the number of counterfeit stamps in our network by around 90%.

“The new counterfeit stamp scanner on the Royal Mail app will help prevent customers inadvertently falling victim to stamp fraud. We want our customers to buy stamps with confidence and always recommend that customers only purchase stamps from Post Offices and other reputable retailers or the official Royal Mail shop.”

The Daily Telegraph reported in April that China was allegedly flooding Britain with counterfeit Royal Mail stamps.