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We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

royalmail.com

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Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#81

Post by londons_explore »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #78

> Can I take my stamps to the Post Office to swap them out? > No — you can't swap your non-barcoded stamps out at a Post Office. You will need to pick up a 'Swap Out' form and send in your non-barcoded stamps to Royal Mail (free post address on the form). Print one off our web site; contact Customer Experience and we'll post one out to you; pick one up from your local Delivery Offices' Customer Service Point. > Pleas…

Post offices are an independent business from royal mail. So they generally want to be paid for every service they offer, and I guess royal mail doesn't want to pay the fee.

Also, this swapout is in part to eliminate fraudulent stamps. The post office won't have the necessary high tech equipment to separate the real stamps from the (very good) fakes.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#82

Post by daveoc64 »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #78

> Can I take my stamps to the Post Office to swap them out? > No — you can't swap your non-barcoded stamps out at a Post Office. You will need to pick up a 'Swap Out' form and send in your non-barcoded stamps to Royal Mail (free post address on the form). Print one off our web site; contact Customer Experience and we'll post one out to you; pick one up from your local Delivery Offices' Customer Service Point. > Pleas…

Since privatisation, the Post Office is a separate company to Royal Mail.

While the Post Office does sell a lot of Royal Mail products, there are some that the Post Office has deemed unprofitable, and as such, the Post Office has nothing to do with.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#83

Post by Double_a_92 »

ZiiS wrote: post #44

Seems very quick deprecation? If they urgently need the barcode why support picture stamps without it. If the don't then supporting both for a year will dramatically reduce the amount of swapping they need to do.

There are huge amounts of fake regular stamps being sold on e.g. eBay. I guess the damage those cause, is higher than the costs of the swapping.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#84

Post by FridayoLeary »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #78

> Can I take my stamps to the Post Office to swap them out? > No — you can't swap your non-barcoded stamps out at a Post Office. You will need to pick up a 'Swap Out' form and send in your non-barcoded stamps to Royal Mail (free post address on the form). Print one off our web site; contact Customer Experience and we'll post one out to you; pick one up from your local Delivery Offices' Customer Service Point. > Pleas…

It is stupid. Many things that were once trivial to do in a post office now have extra hurdles.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#85

Post by whoooooo123 »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #61
MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #9

Translation: Keeping with our effort to turn this country into more of a Panopticon, and aligned with our belief that no two parties should be able to communicate privately, we hate that you can send mail mostly anonymously, and this gives us a bit more power to surveil you by making stamps unique.

How will the mail become less anonymous by adding a random unique number to it? It's not like you need an ID to buy stamps.

> It's not like you need an ID to buy stamps

In the coming cashless society, you won't be able to buy anything whatsoever without it being tied to your ID.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#86

Post by paulmooreparks »

londons_explore wrote: post #52

There are so many features royal mail could add to letter/parcel delivery that users might want to pay for, and would cost them nothing. Eg. * See what mail is headed your way. They could have email/text/app notifications of mail that's headed towards you, including a picture of the outside of the parcel and estimated delivery dates/times. * The ability for the receiver to pay to prioritize incoming mail. Sometimes y…

> Perhaps an x-ray service so you can see inside parcels - would be handy for businesses that do returns who need to check the real goods are headed their way.

Funny story: In a previous job I led a team developing the UK Post Office's self-service kiosks. Because of that work, another national post office in Asia contacted my company to investigate a similar kiosk. One of their requests -- I swear this is real -- was a "snake detector." Apparently, mailing snakes out of the country to be sold as pets is a real problem. We never quite sorted out the best way to accomplish that.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#87

Post by elsjaako »

londons_explore wrote: post #79
nicky0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant. If I was looking to hire an ideas guy I would have you.

I suspect part of the downfall of postal mail services worldwide is lack of them having an ideas guy on staff... Postal mail services have a massive advantage when expanding into so many fields of business - (eg. ecommerce, anything that involves having a network of people who travel every street every day). Yet none have capitalized on it.

Now I think about it, there's a bunch of ideas there that don't involve delivering stuff.

If you have 1000 pieces of installed hardware spread around the country in urban areas, you should be able to pay the postal company to take a picture every week so you know nothing's been vandalized.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#88

Post by voxadam »

Someone1234 wrote: post #31
neilpanchal wrote: post #17

For those who are curious, these are 2DID Datamatrix codes, also used in the semiconductor industry extensively to mark wafers and chips. If you pick up an Intel CPU, its going to have a couple of tiny datamatrix codes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix

If anyone was curious why Data Matrix instead of QR Code this article goes into detail: https://www.laserax.com/blog/data-matrix-vs-qr-codes Looks like Data Matrix has higher error correction (per size) and better data density (at every size). QR Code has a higher theoretical storage capacity, larger maximum size, and multi-byte data support (rather than limited to alphanumeric), none of which applies to this use cas…

Data Matrix may be technically superior but if memory serves it's encumbered by multiple patents.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#89

Post by Symbiote »

bvm wrote: post #70
Symbiote wrote: post #2

At the top: > The barcodes will enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world through the Royal Mail app Then in the FAQ > Why are you adding barcodes to stamps? > > The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way f…

"Counterfeit stamps are often sold in quantities of 55..." I wonder why this is? Surely it would be relatively easy for a counterfeiter to sell them in quantities of 50 instead.

It shows how useless eBay is in policing their own site.

Assuming (as reported) the stamps are produced in China and Turkey, it would be very easy for the counterfeit sellers in the UK to simply cut off 5 stamps from each sheet, removing this obvious signal to eBay.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#90

Post by kkfx »

I think it's more interesting asking for a (large) Qr code who encode:

- sender data

- recipient data (POSSIBLY GPS etc included)

- paid fees

Aside of any human-readable information. That's might simplify shipping process much and allow quicker operation between different countries address formats having a "QR generators platform" who take care of the differences up front. For instance generating proper human-readable addresses for both sender and recipient locations according to local postal service rules.

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