Royal Mail Produce Carnival of Post and Go Errors for Scottish Congress at Perth

As we reported earlier, Royal Mail once again took their Post and Go machine to the ASPS Scottish Congress at Perth, and not for the first time at a philatelic show managed to (being polite) make a complete disaster of the stamps they produced.

As the organisers put in their press release:

All [three designs, Machin, Lion and Thistle] will have the additional inscription:

88th Scottish Congress 2017

Except that they didn't.  None of the stamps produced at the show, from either machine, had the year 2017 shown.  And there were not just three stamps.  The Machin exists in at least undated, MA13 and I believe MA15 (now confirmed).

However, Royal Mail Tallents House also belatedly made pre-orders available using machine B001.  The minimum order was £150 (not that difficult to achieve these days) and the stamps would have to be collected from the show.  Saves time queuing up, and there is a different machine number, but I have to say I don't really see the point if you are there anyway.   But of course there was a point, and there were further surprises.  For a start, the stamps were not available at the show, and had to be posted on, only arriving yesterday and today.

Then, the inscription on B001 was as it was supposed to be.

Machin stamps from B001 are (I think) always MAIL-coded because I don't think Tallents House have finished using their original stock yet despite the number of stamps they produce from that machine.  But another surprise was in store as the Machin stamps sent to pre-orderers were neither MAIL, MA13 or MA15.... but these:

So the Royal Mail Philatelic Service has managed to produce stamps that are not even due for sale until 5 June this year with a special inscription at the end of April, a full six weeks early.
(Images mostly taken from eBay, from various sellers.  I've lost track of who the sellers are for each of the images taken, and my apologies to those sellers that I can't properly credit them.)

We have now reached the stage where we can't even guess at what errors might occur because each one that happens is even more beyond belief than the last.   Oh, we can explain to ourselves how it happens, but where on earth is the supervision, the knowledge, the understanding that would prevent it happening, or at least stop the stamps from being sent out to customers when it has happened.


UPDATE 5 May
I've been sent a copy of an email sent by Royal Mail to a customer who received the Anniversary Machin's on pre-order.

Following a careful review of the events that led to this, including the quantity of the pre-orders in question and the disruption and inconvenience caused to you at the show, on this occasion we have decided not to replace your order, you are therefore free to retain these stamps. I trust this solution matches your preferred option to retain the order and resell the stamps as originally intended.    

Once again please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and confusion caused both at the show and following the delivery of your pre-order. We have initiated a thorough review of the events and internal processes that led to this situation and will share with you the pre-order arrangements for future shows in due course.

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