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Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

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Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#171

Post by boomboomsubban »

coldtea wrote: post #162
boomboomsubban wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in "I counterfeit 99 stamps at a time then sell them. That esy I never break the law."

Yes, the parents question is meant as "where did the idea that doing 99 'at a time' would somehow bypass a law about >= 100 being illegal comes from?".

How would having 99 counterfeit stamps violate that law?

I think you/the other person (assuming that's what their question meant) took it as "each page printed only has 99, but they're still printing multiple pages per run" while I meant "each run has 99 stamps, then they distribute them."

edit or you think the law could be based on how many counterfeit stamps they had made, not possession. Dunno, we're really spending too much time attacking my bullshit hypothetical that was meant to say "make it hard for the law to have a loophole."

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#173

Post by pavel_lishin »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #46

Here's an excellent blog post explaining the anti-forgery features of Royal Mail stamps: http://www.jolschimke.de/briefmarken-und-ganzsachen/erste-ge... What strikes me most is how crude the imitation stamps are - most aren't even trying to emulate the genuine printing techniques. It's all quantity over quality, trying to minimise the cost of producing counterfeit stamps whilst hoping to sell bulk loads of them to na…

> What strikes me most is how crude the imitation stamps are - most aren't even trying to emulate the genuine printing techniques.

Of course. Their goal isn't to fool the post office; it's to be just good enough to sell to buyers.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#174

Post by M2Ys4U »

lb1lf wrote: post #136
NeoTar wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prices have been increasing above inflation for years, but especially in the last few years - e.g. in 2001 a first class stamp cost 0.27 GBP (0.49 in 2024), and even in 2019 in was 0.70 GBP (0.86 in 2024).

In fairness, though, mail volume must have plummeted as email and electronic invoicing became a thing. My receiving a letter by actual mail now usually means I have forgotten to set up e-invoicing for a service I subscribe to. Yet, most of the infrastructure required to handle the (vastly reduced) volume of mail remains. (I would be surprised if an increasing amount of packages being shipped due to online shopping of…

Royal Mail was also privatised in 2013, which goes a long way to explaining the price hike.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#175

Post by karaterobot »

What's interesting to me is that the meaning of 'counterfeit' is being shifted. Counterfeit does not mean actually counterfeit, it means 'we couldn't process this stamp', which is a different thing altogether.

I guess that either the Royal Mail's system is failing to read the bar code correctly, or it's encountering a bar code it's already seen before, and assuming it must be malicious. But in the latter case, there's no basis for saying the second use of the code is the counterfeit and not the first. That is, apart from doing actual forensic analysis on the stamp, which my guess is they are not doing—not in every case at least.

If someone called me a counterfeiter, or even just said I was benefiting from counterfeiting, I'd be pretty angry. Especially if I found out they were accusing me without any evidence, without doing any diligence beforehand, and possibly as a consequence of their own error.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#176

Post by Chris_Newton »

veltas wrote: post #153
Chris_Newton wrote: post #91

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…

Some mail machines cut thick or oversized envelopes by accident sometimes. So this might not have been tampered with. 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 recour…

Unfortunately, in this case the item was delivered by Royal Mail themselves and left in our mail box, so there was no opportunity to do anything like that.

I might have bought the idea of a mechanical issue causing the opening if it had been a clean cut and the contents had been otherwise undisturbed, but with a very rough tear and the contents having apparently been shoved back into the envelope, it seems rather less likely.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#177

Post by pomatic »

lesserknowndan wrote: post #155
rkangel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That scandal was the Post Office, which is a completely separate organisation from the Royal Mail.

Where do these people go to pay these fines?

You get a link to the RM website, pay on line. If you don't pay, you don't get to receive the letter/packet involved.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#178

Post by jldugger »

rtpg wrote: post #122
coldtea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I think it's important to internalize that stamps are like a form of currency[0]. Like you stick it on the envelope to pay the shipping fee. There are tax stamps/revenue stamps which are used to pay for things in a way that is hard for the fee collector themselves to steal. I applied for a visa-related thing a month or so ago. The fee was 6000 yen, so I stuck 2 3000 yen stamps on the application form. I had paid the…

>I think it's important to internalize that stamps are like a form of currency[0].

So much so that the original Ponzi scheme involved arbitraging the price of stamps via international reply coupons (and then promptly got way out of hand).

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#179

Post by kazinator »

zbyszek wrote: post #126
kazinator wrote: post #105

> penalty for those who receive (and accept) mail posted using one Insane! Britain imitating Monty Python.

Monty Python imitated Britain first.

Well, yes, and art did life, more generally.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#180

Post by graemep »

tim333 wrote: post #167
graemep wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can keep your privacy, but most people will not bother. Most people will buy stamps with a card (or phone) payment so there is a complete chain of identify. The aim is mass surveillance so a few people going to the trouble of avoiding it is not a problem. True, it is meta data (not letter contents) but we know that is pretty powerful by itself. I do mean it is the aim - they never really explained what the real a…

Using cash to buy them is not hard and the odds of anyone going through the CCTV is low unless you are going to post anthrax to the PM or something. I imagine the main reason to do it was to make it harder to use fake stamps, although there may be some tracking going on.

That is not the point. This is about mass surveillance so what matters is what most people do.

> I imagine the main reason to do it was to make it harder to use fake stamps

it was never put forward as a reason IIRC. How common are forged stamps in the first place, to make it worthwhile

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