Shortage of stamps at POs reported

Just when you thought there were too many stamps being issued and too few being used, some areas are reporting severe shortages.  

Before Christmas there were many reports in the press of branch POs running out of stamps, a situation not helped by the failure of Royal Mail's website upgrade to proceed as planned and the non-availability of the Smartstamp and PayPal/eBay 'print postage' facilities.

Although extra stamps were ordered in many cases they arrived too late for the peak demand, and we understand that the shortages have continued into the new year.  At least one office was using all the Roald Dahl values on Tuesday 3rd January (a week early) simply because they had too few other stamps. Shortages of the 68p stamp are reported to be particularly acute.  I wonder if they broke up the prestige books - which are now sold above face value - look out for this stamp dated before 10 January!

UPDATE from Bristol:

Only 10 Olympic Definitive FDC blanks available

No stampcards

Only one of the two retail booklets: 20 packs in stock all the same :-(

Well, TJ, my sub-office hasn't got ANY Olympic booklets on the day of issue, though I will concede that our village doesn't rank as high as the city of Bristol when it comes to demand!

UPDATE: Thanks to David R I can now show a picture of the 68p Roald Dahl postmarked at the Jubilee Mail Centre on 4 January 2012 (this was supplied on 7 January but I didn't have time to show it right away).

My postmaster told me this week (14 Feb) that he ordered 68p stamps in December and has still not had any provided !!
On twitter, Post Office Ltd said: recently there has been a high demand for these stamps, due to this; it's taking more time to fulfil branch orders. Sorry for any inconvenience.

---