Stamp chaos as Royal Mail tells customers trying to swap old for new they are fakes

Royal Mail customers trying to swap old stamps bought from the Post Office for their new digital replacements have been told that they are fakes.

As of Tuesday, old stamps issued by Royal Mail were no longer valid and using them means the recipient incurs a £1.10 surcharge. They have been replaced by new stamps with barcodes.

Under Royal Mail’s Swap Out scheme, old stamps can be exchanged for their new replacements for free.

But scores of customers have been told that their old stamps, which they purchased from Post Office branches, are “not genuine” or are fraudulent.

Customers have also raised complaints over the new stamps with barcodes, claiming that they are being branded fraudulent even when they were bought from a Post Office.

The Telegraph has seen 40 instances of customers claiming that stamps – both old and new – they bought from Post Offices or the Royal Mail website were flagged as invalid.

In one example, Labour councillors said they had discovered a problem with the new barcode stamps after using them to send leaflets to constituents.

Royal Mail refused to confirm or deny that there was an issue with their new barcode scanning system when asked by The Telegraph.

The chaos fuelled calls for Royal Mail to investigate and ensure customers are not left out of pocket by the new system.

It comes as the Post Office is mired in scandal over the Horizon inquiry, which is examining why subpostmasters were wrongly accused of stealing money when faulty IT equipment was responsible for missing funds.

One customer in Hartlepool sent Royal Mail eight old stamps she had bought from a Post Office counter in WH Smith to be exchanged.

‘Not genuine’

A few weeks later, she received a letter saying they could not be swapped as they had “already been used or are not genuine”.

Susan Harrison, 60, said: “I’m gobsmacked. If you can’t buy stamps in a post office without them being counterfeit then where can you buy them?”

One Telegraph reader wrote to this newspaper saying he sent £190 worth of old-style stamps, bought from his local Post Office, to be swapped for new ones only to be told that the majority of them were invalid.

If Royal Mail flags a stamp as fraudulent, the recipient will receive a notice saying they need to pay a surcharge of £2.50 in order to receive their post.

It is not just customers trying to exchange old stamps who have been affected. Some who have purchased the new stamps with barcodes have been told that they are also invalid.

Organisers of the Dodson and Horrell Equine Championships posted more than 200 competitor packs out to their riders with new stamps with barcodes they claim were purchased from a Post Office in Grantham, Lincolnshire, last month.

But they were left humiliated when they started to receive phone calls from competitors asking why they had re-used stamps – a practice that is illegal in the UK.

Teresa Stratford, the competition’s general manager, said: “We started getting phone calls from people saying, ‘We’ve had to pay £2.50’. People were phoning up asking if it was a scam, it was a mess.”

‘We got a lot of bad press’

She continued: “It was embarrassing and we got a lot of bad press about it. It caused a lot of people an inconvenience as they were worried they wouldn’t be allowed to enter the competition.”

Ms Stratford said the organisers had been left about £250 out of pocket as they had to reissue packs to many of their competitors.

She added that when she raised it with Royal Mail, they were “most unhelpful and quite rude”, telling her to take it up with the Post Office branch.

Earlier this year, the Labour Party in Brighton suggested there were problems with Royal Mail’s new barcode system after several of its leaflets arrived to constituents with a £2.50 charge for a supposedly faulty stamp.

A Labour spokesman said at the time: “Labour would never knowingly use counterfeit stamps for the posting of its literature to residents.

“Discussions with the retailer have revealed problems with the new bar-coded stamps the Royal Mail has introduced. We have therefore demanded an investigation by Royal Mail so incidents like this will never happen again to anyone.”

Royal Mail announced in February last year that it was switching to stamps with barcodes as part of its modernisation drive and to improve security. However, the company has refused to say whether it was investigating issues with its new system.

Consumer experts Which? called on the company to investigate “as a priority” any issues with its new stamp barcode system to ensure customers are not left out of pocket.

Lisa Webb, Which? Consumer Law Expert, said: “It’s unacceptable for recipients to be wrongly charged for stamps that have been bought legitimately from reputable retailers. It’s in Royal Mail’s interests to investigate as a priority any issues reported with its new stamp barcode system.

“Anyone who believes they have been wrongly charged for stamps marked as counterfeit should raise it with Royal Mail and the company must ensure that any customers who encounter problems with the new system are not left out of pocket.”

Royal Mail and Post Office respond

A Post Office spokesman said: “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.”

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.

“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.”