Right?? You’re telling me I could have been sending JKR letters with fake stamps this whole time and SHE’D have been charged actual money for it? My new greatest regret in life is missing the timeframe where I could have done that.
They should still be charged if the wrong amount of postage has been paid.
So if you send what royal mail count as a large letter but with a normal stamp instead of a large letter stamp they will be fined and charged the difference in postage.
Charging the recipient for insufficient postage has always been the policy of the British postal service. These fraudulent stamps have thus been included in with that policy because as far as they're concerned a fraudulent stamp is as good as no stamp at all.
Anything with insufficient postage is held at the sorting office closest to the recipient and a note is posted (ironic, no?) to the recipient telling them to come and pay the postage if they want it.
The reasons they've backed down this time are 1) their newfangled bar code stamps have failed to stop the very forgery they were designed to prevent, and 2) public outcry causing them (the postal service, not the stamps) to reluctantly admit that this whole thing might, maybe, uh, perhaps just a little bit, be their fault.
I am confused how the QR code was supposed to stop forgery. I have never seen anyone scan the code at any point in the process so I don't understand how it was supposed to help.
I've scanned the code myself and it's just a number sequence. Unless you're checking that against some sort of database, which I assume is the idea, then the existence of the number sequence itself proves nothing. But as I have said I've never seen anyone actually scan the damn things. I don't even understand who's supposed to do it.
There may be nothing to indicate who the sender is, whereas there is always something to indicate who the recipient is. So they put a charge on the recipient if they wish to receive the letter. I don't believe you have to pay the fine if you don't want the letter.
Also a lot of people who do use computers! Lots of people selling their stuff of eBay or Etsy will be sending things in the post. Way less letters than the old days, but way more parcels (I think).
Lol, is the UK like that? Where only computer people have figured out SMS, email, chat apps, telephone and so on?
Here the only letters that actual people send are the very occasional Christmas/birthday card and maybe an event invitation for something like a wedding. No one writes letters that actually tell something important. I can't see why anyone would bother with pirating stamps.
Hell we can even send letters without buying a stamp, we can buy a postage in an app which gives us a code to write on the letter.