Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the mail service isn’t protecting paedophiles as far as I know.
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Step 1: Stop wasting money subsidising their bullshit.
Step 2: Take a slice of advice from the revolutionary French.
Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
51–60 of 213 posts
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#52If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...
The issue is, the recipient is paying the fine. I send you a letter with a fake stamp, you pay. The £5 is an inconvenience, something you’d pay while tutting “what is the world coming to”. The sender is none the wiser. 7.3bn letters delivered in 22-23 ( https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/272795/... ) If 0.01% of that are tagged as counterfeit, that’s £3,650,000 in fines.
Makes me feel like sending a load of them to the Daily Mail...
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#53If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...
Forging stamps is up to 10 years in the UK, it's considered the same as counterfeiting money. But I think it has to be proven that it was intentional, so if the sender was simply scammed by someone selling fake stamps that wouldn't be prosecutable.
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Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#54If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...
I knew a guy whose hobby was drawing fake stamps on envelopes and mailing them.
He said someone eventually tracked him down and he was just told to stop doing it.
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I (an American) agree with your sentiment, it appears that the British royalty don't actually rely on tax money, but instead they keep 25% of the money that the royaly estate /makes/ and the other 75% goes to the British treasury. But I might be wrong. https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57559653
The Crown Estate is where the sovereign grant comes from, and it's weird. It's "owned" by the current monarch, but only in their role as head of state (the Crown). Realistically it belongs to the country and to the public, and were we to abolish monarchy, would not become the private property of the Windsor family. So while they don't rely on tax money (outside of the huge amount of tax money spent on their police pr…
> were we to abolish monarchy, would not become the private property of the Windsor family.
Today, I expect that's what would happen. But I bet the Windsor family could have kept a lot if they had given up monarchy a while back. Which puts the "rightfully belongs to the people" claim in question, if you believe a king can ever legitimately own anything.
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I (an American) agree with your sentiment, it appears that the British royalty don't actually rely on tax money, but instead they keep 25% of the money that the royaly estate /makes/ and the other 75% goes to the British treasury. But I might be wrong. https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57559653
Also an American and I like the British (and also Japanese) royals. Benevolent monarchs are a cornerstone of serenity and sanity. And yes, I realize the irony as an American. I think on average Americans like the British royal family more than Britons do?
> Benevolent monarchs…
The British royal family has veto power over parliament. They use this power to rewrite laws. Lots of this is well documented, but poorly publicised.
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Anecdotally it's 50% "France had the right idea" and 50% "God save the king" with very few people in between.
Sibling comment confirms
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#58"It is unclear at what point these ‘counterfeit’ stamps have entered circulation, and their source — or whether they are genuine and Royal Mail’s scanning technology is at fault." Given the precedents from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal , I think the second option is plausible. My experience in the UK is that dysfunctional organizations try to hide issues by bullying their own customers…
>My experience in the UK is that dysfunctional organizations try to hide issues by bullying their own customers.
I noticed this from Royal Mail. I reached out to them multiple times regarding a scam carried out using one of their tracked products from an eBay purchase and they said there was nothing they could do about it. But there was something they could do, and it was already going on completely silently in the background.
I later received a letter from Royal Mail stating that the delivery did in fact not take place, and with that I was able to claim a refund from eBay. However my interactions with Royal Mail were not reasonable:
1. They did not disclose that the matter would be looked into, instead they stated unequivocally that it would not and there was no way to escalate the matter. This meant that my plans were altered on account of assuming that the funds were lost.
2. They were unwilling to provide any official statement to eBay regarding the limited "tracking" available for their own product, and naturally eBay won't accept second-hand statements. If they were slightly flexible this would have resolved the dispute promptly - and I doubt I was the first person to fall victim to this scam, so some communication between eBay and Royal Mail would seem reasonable.
3. They gave no notice that they found in my favour and would be sending me a letter as evidence. I only received that mail by chance as I happened to book the same accomodation in a later visit, and this luckily coincided with that letter's arrival.
The unhelpfulness, stonewalling and opaque investigation seem entirely designed to cover for their own shortcomings. They would have had location data for the signed delivery, and they would have immediately had visibility that this didn't match my address.
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#59The stamps have "unique" codes, but a genuine counterfeit must still have a code -- and to be useful it must duplicate the code on a real stamp. If the counterfeit gets used first, the stamp is marked as spent, and when the unlucky purchaser of the real stamp tries to use it, they're told theirs is "counterfeit" because it's flagged as "used" in the database?
The barcode in the article decodes to "JGB S11221017031011395940006622112101 BC046285E760466C01" if anyone fancies having a crack at making a stamp keygen.
Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?
#60The stamps have "unique" codes, but a genuine counterfeit must still have a code -- and to be useful it must duplicate the code on a real stamp. If the counterfeit gets used first, the stamp is marked as spent, and when the unlucky purchaser of the real stamp tries to use it, they're told theirs is "counterfeit" because it's flagged as "used" in the database?
That would be dumb. Nothing prevents attempted reuse of a genuine stamp.
Sorry, what about that would be dumb? Attempted reuse is exactly what would be prevented by scanning the barcode and seeing it had already been used.
This is exactly why gift cards have scratch-off material covering their secret keys, otherwise folks would just take a picture of the next card in the stack, wait for it to be funded, and then use it before the recipient does.
edit: And would you look at that, you can buy stamp sheets on Amazon.co.uk, and users have helpfully submitted a bunch of photos with barcodes visible.