Diamond Jubilee definitive confusion at Tallents House clarified

We have an update on the situation regarding the Diamond Jubilee definitive distribution, as reported earlier (see below).

Royal Mail have now confirmed at 1445 hrs today:

"As we are sending the Diamond Jubilee Miniature sheet to all regular order DS customers we opted not to send the new Diamond Jubilee 1st Class definitive as an individual item to avoid duplication and additional costs.  We can still fulfill requests from customers requiring individual stamps, formats or colour blocks on an ad-hoc basis  Any orders fulfilled under these circumstances will have the P&P waived."

I had checked the situation with Royal Mail Tallents House on Monday 19th, and was told that the normal 'ad-hoc' order charges would apply to any supplementary orders for the  definitive stamp from sheets.

I welcome this statement of Royal Mail's new position and am pleased that collectors, especially those without access to UK Post Offices will be able to buy the definitive sheet stamp at face value without incurring additional costs.

-------------------
(Friday December 16th) A reader tells of his experience with Royal Mail's Tallents House 'Philatelic Bureau' on this new stamp.  His standing order statement was 46p short, lacking a single from the counter sheet:

After a certain amount of confusion I was informed that there will be no counter sheets, but they could supply a single from the business sheets, and a block of six if required.

He suggested, not surprisingly, that our website page and this blog might be inaccurate.  I checked the information we had received from Royal Mail Philatelic...

The associated stamp formats are a
POL counter sheet of 1st standard size,
100 x 1st business sheet, 12 x 1st book
as shown here.

As from 6th February 2012 this new
Diamond Jubilee Definitive 12 x 1st
Class book will be available and remain
so throughout the Queen’s jubilee year
thereby replacing the gold Definitive.

Later in March the 4 x 1st Large book, 1st
Large as a POL Counter sheet and the 50 x
1st Large Business sheets will be issued
(POL = Post Office Ltd, ie counters)

Our reporter was told by Tallents House that because of computer problems they could not see his statement at that time. Those same computer problems may have led to the misunderstanding quoted above in blue.

If you have a standing order, or want to order this from Royal Mail, the stock code for the stamps from counter sheets is DS461. Normal 'one-off' handling charges apply. (update 21 December - no further handling charges will apply.)

The Business Sheet is DS961, and the booklet is UB340.  These last two of course can only be supplied as complete sheets or booklets by Royal Mail, but we will be supplying them as singles if you don't want to shell out £46 and £5.52.  And we'll have the Large Letter versions in March.

---