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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?

#181

Post by CapstanRoller »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #176
veltas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

>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

When an envelope gets jammed in a sorting machine and some postal worker has to quickly clear the jam, stuff the contents back, and restart the machine, what you receive will look like a complete mess.

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

#183

Post by Chris_Newton »

CapstanRoller wrote: post #181
Chris_Newton wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

>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 When an envelope gets jammed in a sorting machine and some postal worker has to quickly clear the jam, stuff the contents back, and restart the machine, what you receive will look like a complete mess.

There are certainly other plausible explanations for what I received. If there were some way I could check those stamps were legitimate, the question would be academic anyway.

The whole process is pretty daft if you think about it, though. Many of us had perfectly good stamps before. Royal Mail decided not to honour them — itself an ethically dubious policy, given how those stamps had been marketed and sold — and effectively forced us to swap them out.

To enable that, they set up a system where you had to send them old stamps collectively worth up to (IIRC) £200 without any verifiable proof of what you’d actually sent, in an envelope clearly recognisable as containing that type of stamps. Then they’d send you back replacement stamps, also in a clearly recognisable envelope, which ironically should now be voidable in the event of a problem, but evidently without any willingness on their part to actually do so. For as long as I can remember, the public have been advised never to send cash by post, so the postal service forcing everyone to send a cash substitute in clearly identifiable packaging both ways was an… interesting… strategy.

In a surprise to seemingly no-one except Royal Mail, there are now widespread reports of the clearly identifiable, untraceable, fungible value tokens going missing on the way in or their replacements themselves being replaced by counterfeits on the way back. There also seems to be a not-at-all-dodgy secondary market now, where you can buy the aforementioned replacement tokens for less than their “face value”.

However, based on my experience, Royal Mail don’t seem to think there is any problem here. Based on reports such as the one we’re discussing today, a significant number of innocent people might already be out some extra money as a result, and that money seems to be ending up with Royal Mail. A cynic might think someone had set up a scheme openly inviting theft and counterfeiting, forced a country full of people to use that scheme or lose money, ignored the obvious problems even when they were explicitly reported, and then directly profited from the criminal activity.

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

#184

Post by veltas »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #176
veltas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

So there's no return address?

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

#185

Post by Chris_Newton »

veltas wrote: post #184
Chris_Newton wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

So there's no return address?

There actually is a return address on the back of the envelope that was open. However, given the story so far, it seems remarkably generous to trust that anything sent back there would firstly arrive at all, secondly result in a valid replacement for the affected stamps being sent, and thirdly result in that valid replacement reaching us properly.

(For avoidance of doubt, in my previous comment, I meant that we had no opportunity to refuse the delivery.)

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

#186

Post by LorenPechtel »

karaterobot wrote: post #175

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'…

I think you're nailing it--some black hat has figured out the encoding and is making fake stamps. Same as gift card draining.

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

#188

Post by Dylan16807 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #171
coldtea wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spendi…

> each run has 99 stamps, then they distribute them

In that case they're not making much money per batch and they have to only ever get caught once in their life, so it's not much difference to them, it only makes a significant difference to someone that isn't mass-producing stamps.

> 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."

Well I don't think the original had any loopholes, which is why I'm pushing back on your attempt to say that by pointing out a loophole.

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

#189

Post by Dylan16807 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #161
Joker_vD wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so they get prosecuted for incitement, conspiracy and organized crime. 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).

If selling 99 stamps is legal, I'm not inciting them to crime, I'm selling them the maximum allowable amount that isn't a crime. Similar with conspiracy and organized crime. And yeah, these loopholes don't work because people tried them and now counterfeiting one stamp is illegal. That's my point.

They're hiring a unique person per batch, who gets paid tens of dollars at most, and none of them are willing to say who hired them?

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

#190

Post by boomboomsubban »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #188
boomboomsubban wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spendi…

> each run has 99 stamps, then they distribute them In that case they're not making much money per batch and they have to only ever get caught once in their life, so it's not much difference to them, it only makes a significant difference to someone that isn't mass-producing stamps. > 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…

The original or real law considers counterfeiting one stamp a crime, which I think is fine.

I took issue with somebody criticizing that law by saying only counterfeiting one stamp shouldn't be a crime. So I pointed out that if you made some arbitrary non-one number the breaking point you're opening up loopholes. I'm not trying to introduce loopholes, the law is what it is to prevent loopholes.

And the ridiculousness of counterfeiting one stamp being a felony is avoided by not prosecuting anyone who only counterfeits one stamp.

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