151–160 of 213 posts
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The Royal Mail and the Post Office are not the same thing! They are completely separate businesses. The Fujitsu/sub-post master scandal has nothing to do with the Royal Mail.
Wikipedia explicitly says: Post Office Limited From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Post Office Ltd) Not to be confused with Royal Mail.
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There was this computer system scandal when lots of post masters were convicted of fraud even though it was known the computer system was buggy. So I wouldn't assume too much competence involved.
That scandal was the Post Office, which is a completely separate organisation from the Royal Mail.
I don’t know whether I should post this as it may be an ongoing case, but not so long ago I sent off my old stamps to the official “swap out” service to have them replaced by the new barcoded ones. A few days later, I did indeed receive equivalent new stamps back — in an envelope that had clearly been tampered with, being roughly cut open all down one side and having the paperwork accompanying the stamps obviously be…
The right way to deal with anything you receive by mail is to return to sender, as long as it has a return address. Cross out your address, clearly write RTS on the front and in small write e.g. "item not sealed on arrival / tampering" or something, then stick in a post box. The sender has more recourse to deal with issues in transit anyway. Generally refuse anything sent that arrives like this.
The US Postal Service processed 116 billion parcels in 2023[1]. If they had counterfeit stamp detectors that gave false positives 0.0001% of the time, that's still 116,000 bogus fines per year. And the engineers might have no way to reproduce the glitch, because it's so improbable.
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-th...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was this computer system scandal when lots of post masters were convicted of fraud even though it was known the computer system was buggy. So I wouldn't assume too much competence involved.
That scandal was the Post Office, which is a completely separate organisation from the Royal Mail.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps a counterfeiter would do 99 at a time. And by the second batch they'd have counterfeited 198, so I fail to see the problem...
They hire someone to take each batch from them. So at best, you can only ever prosecute a fall guy, not the skilled counterfeiter. In essence, it's easier to make any counterfeiting illegal, and then not prosecute the person who once prints a picture of a stamp and tapes it to a letter. Trying to make counterfeiting legal in certain situations can be abusable.
Seriously, as a rule of thumb, none of those extremely simple loopholes you can come up in five seconds of thinking work: there people were before you, and they too could think (even though in case of lawmakers it can sometimes be hard to imagine that they can actually think).
I don’t know whether I should post this as it may be an ongoing case, but not so long ago I sent off my old stamps to the official “swap out” service to have them replaced by the new barcoded ones. A few days later, I did indeed receive equivalent new stamps back — in an envelope that had clearly been tampered with, being roughly cut open all down one side and having the paperwork accompanying the stamps obviously be…
well ... it's the royal mail which happens to be identical to the royal mail from the post office scandal. that's about the reassurance you got to expect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
> A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, was broadcast on ITV in January 2024, after which the scandal became a major news story and political issue.
I swear I read some long form journalism on this issue years ago. Anyone know what I might have found? For the Brits who have previously heard of this scandal, did you know about it prior to January of this year?
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well ... it's the royal mail which happens to be identical to the royal mail from the post office scandal. that's about the reassurance you got to expect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
The article credits a docuseries I've never heard of for making this a widely known issue: > A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, was broadcast on ITV in January 2024, after which the scandal became a major news story and political issue. I swear I read some long form journalism on this issue years ago. Anyone know what I might have found? For the Brits who have previously heard of this scandal,…
If 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...
> In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. For counterfeiting _A_ stamp? I guess in the US even breathing the wrong way is probably a serious federal felony. Land of the free, and all that...