Invalidating non-barcoded definitives: a summary consolidation

Despite an update on this blog a few days ago, there are still comments being added to the earlier posts drawing attention to something which has since been reported.  This is as much my fault for not linking those blogposts together, so I am doing so now.

Please read through carefully before asking questions either by email or in comments.  Any comments/questions which are clearly answered here will not be posted or answered. If you don't get an answer from me, then please read it again.  If I have misunderstood, email me again.  I just don't have time to do a stand-in job for Royal Mail's team.

 It is quite possible I have made errors, although I try not to. I hope nobody suffers a loss due to anything they rely on here, but this is purely my interpretation of what has been published by Royal Mail and the stated experience of others and I can accept no liability for any errors.

 

1. To repeat the latest news:

Official statement from Royal Mail's Matthew Parkes, Managing Director Stamps and Collectibles :

THE CHANGE

[1a] Royal Mail is transitioning to digital, barcoded stamps in order to provide new and innovative future services for our customers. In order to give our customers even more time to use up any remaining non-barcoded stamps, we have decided to introduce a six month grace period starting from the original deadline of January 31 2023 where non-barcoded definitive stamps will still be delivered as normal. 

 

[1b] To make things even easier for our customers, we have also agreed with Post Office to include swap out forms alongside Freepost envelopes in Post Office branches. This means that customers will be able to fill out a form, insert it into a freepost envelope with any remaining non-barcoded stamps and hand it over for posting in a Post Office branch.

 

AS CONTEXT for editors

 

[1c] Royal Mail first announced the transition to barcoded stamps in February 2022. Under the original scheme, Royal Mail had planned to stop accepting letters bearing non-barcoded stamps into its network from January 31.

 

[1d] Customers will not be out of pocket as there is no end date as to when customers should swap their non-barcoded stamps by. Customers will still be able to access the “Swap out” option after 31 January 2023. The process of swapping out is free and we are sending a leaflet and a swap out form to all 31 million UK addresses to make this even easier.

2. This is said to be not an extension of the deadline, but a 'grace period' during which Royal Mail will not surcharge items which are partly or wholly prepaid in 'invalidated' stamps.  Do not expect a further change to the Terms and Conditions.  Effectively it means everybody has until 31 July 2023 to use their old stamps.  There is still no end-date for swapping any that you have.

 

Volumes and delays.

3. It seem that Royal Mail can no longer meet their initial promise of turning round Swap-Out forms within 7 days.  I understand that many people have experienced longer delays but this might be expected from the volume of applications - which Royal Mail probably grossly underestimated.  Recent press comment - although it mainly referred to people not being aware due to a lack of publicity - will have contributed to that increased volume.

So I don't think anybody should get worried about a delay of 2-3 weeks.   

What's in and What's out.

4. In describing the stamps which will or will not be invalidated Royal Mail have used the terms 'valid (for) postage' and 'valid for swap(-out)': I will try to avoid such confusion.

4a. Will be invalidated

(i) All unbarcoded national Machin definitives, large and small, from the 10p cerise through to date, including the large format Parcel Post high values, Profile in Print PSB, embossed £1 gold, and £5 Accession Anniversary stamps.  

(ii) All country definitives, with Machin profile and national emblem, and the pictorial ones with the small cameo head.

(iii) All substitute definitives: Queen Victoria/Queen Elizabeth double-heads, the original and the later 20p and 1st class; both Olympic definitives (1st class and airmail).

(iv) Smilers/Generic sheets containing country definitives, excluding those with the St George's flag, the Welsh Dragon flag, and the Scottish Saltire. 

4b What will not be invalidated. 

(i)  Frama stamps, Post and Go stamps of any kind;

(ii) Decimal Wildings; Decimal Wilding Regionals; Wilding Castles (I think the pre-decimal £1 will be OK because Royal Mail won't see it as old);

(iii) Definitive-sized commemoratives: Dr Who, Game of Thrones, Poppy, Union Flag, Dragon, Saltire and St George's flags, Music Giants - Queen, Greetings/Smilers excluding country definitives in 4a(ii) above.

(iv) Christmas stamps of any sort and size from 1971 to date.

(v) Commemorative/Special/Greetings stamps from 1971 to date. 

(vi) Smilers/Generic sheets containing the St George's flag, the Welsh Dragon flag, the Scottish Saltire, Poppy, and any small-size greetings stamps.

4c What may be swapped (although some in 4b above).

(i)  Mixed content retail booklets for the whole value.

(ii) Mixed Prestige Book panes, ie those with a mix of Machin or Country definitives and others.

(iii) Some complete Prestige Books (ie those not containing special stamps): 

all up to and including DX10 1989 Scots Connection
DX14 Tolkien
DX22 Profile on Print
DX24 Special by Design
DX39 Machin Anniversary
DY21 Machin 50th Anniversary

(iv) Miniature sheets which contain any Machin or country definitive even if they contain other stamps will be exchanged for the complete value, or the invalidated stamps may be extracted from them. Examples (this list is not complete): Lest We Forget, Diamond Jubilee, Long To Reign Over Us, Robert Burns (2009), Celebrating England, Scotland, Northern Ireland & Wales.

 

4d. What may be swapped but we think will still be valid for postage.

(i)  Castles definitives

(ii) £10 Britannia definitive 

(iii) Special stamps contained in miniature sheets if sent in complete (see 4c (iv) above).

 

4e. What will not be accepted for swapping despite containing stamps in section 4a

(i) Some whole Prestige Books: 

DX11 London Life
DX13 Wales
DX15 Agatha Christie
DX16 Northern Ireland
DX17 National Trust
DX18 Euro96
...and all later unless mentioned above in 4c(iii)

The Process and a warning about Post Offices

5. Two forms are available from Royal Mail, one for sendings of under £200 and one for over £200. (see details in original post below.)  

6. There is a short Freepost address which has caused problems for some users at some Post Offices which have refused to provide a certificate of posting.  This makes it difficult to make a claim if no stamps are returned from the Swap-Out.  We recommend that you use this address:

FREEPOST RUCZ-UTGU-AULY
Royal Mail Swap Out
Tallents House
21 South Gyle Crescent
Edinburgh
EH12 9GT

You can also copy & save the image to print it onto an envelope.

7.  Following distribution of a leaflet to all/most households in the summer, Royal Mail allowed stamps to be sent in on plain paper accompanied by the complete leaflet or a copy of the reverse of it.

 

What you get back.

8.  Royal Mail originally said that stamps would be replaced on a like-for-like basis, ie send in 5p and 2nd class, get back 5p and 2nd class.  Any stamps with no direct equivalent (E, Worldwide Posctard, 13p, 68p, £1.33 etc) would be aggregated and divided by the value of a 2nd class stamp (rounded up) and replaced with 2nd class stamps, and this is how the scheme worked for the first few months.

9.  This was changed in July to "... we will typically return to you 2nd class barcoded stamps although we may at our discretion return alternative barcoded stamps, including, for example, where the aggregated value of the stamps is lower than the value of a 2nd class stamp." 

10.  So you may get anything - indeed there is a report of a single E stamp being replaced by a £1.85 or others by a £2.55 stamp.  One thing this does mean, is that you might send in a lot of stamps for which there is no barcoded equivalent and get back fewer stamps than you expected.  For instance for mixed £25 worth you might get just over 26 x 1st class stamps instead of 36 x 2nd class stamps.

11.  Royal Mail have indicated to some people that, now that the country definitives have been issued with barcodes, they will be used to replace similar stamps sent in.  I haven't tested this yet.  Country definitives or regionals do NOT including decimal Wildings issued on the 50th anniversary of the originals.

Oops you made a mistake

12.  So, you mistakenly include in your sending a very small percentage of loose stamps listed in 4b above.  If this really is only a few/small percentage it seems that Royal Mail are swapping them rather than wasting time sending them back. (Aside from anything else many of these are gummed and if you've stuck them on their form they can't easily extract them to send them back to you!)   But I have to stress that these are from individual reports and include only a few stamps which are not to be invalidated.

UPDATE 23 November - Oops, THEY made a mistake.

13. I've put this on a separate post as it is so mind-blowing but any comments on it should be here please.

 

UPDATE 13 December.  My thanks to Tim C who reminded me of something I should have included in this post originally.

Tim points out that (especially after the effect of strikes) postage rates will increase next year, maybe earlier than usual (but not 1 January*).  So if you are using stamps for postage, use the ones with values which have no direct equivalents.  Currently 2 x 34p stamps = 2nd class.  Some time next year, 2 x 34p stamps will be short and you will need to pay more, whereas a 2nd class stamp will be good for 2nd class after the rates rise.

* Royal Mail have to give one month's notice to the Stock Exchange about price rises. That hasn't happened yet so there will be no rates rise until at least 13 January.

UPDATE 17 January.  There have been suggestions that Post Offices will not accept letters and packets with non-barcoded stamps after 31 January 2023.  I asked in my Crown PO today and was told that this was not true: they have been specifically told that they should continue to accept them as normal.

On the other hand the Royal Mail Special Handstamp Centres will not accept items for postmarking with a date after 31 January which have non-barcoded definitives on.

UPDATE 30 JANUARY:   Royal Mail have recently confirmed that they made what they say was a very complicated change to their Swap-Out software/database to ensure that people sending in stamps with the Europe rate (E, Europe 20/40g) would get £1.85 bar-coded replacements.

Tim C (see earlier) has pointed out that whilst this may have solved a problem which we all wish they had addressed before the scheme launched, there is more to come.

a.  If postage rates change as usual this spring, then the system will have to be changed so that the new value of 2nd class letter stamp is used to determine how many new stamps are supplied in exchange for those for which there is no direct equivalent. (This is, in essence, another effect of the point made on 13 December above).

b. However there are four other NVIs at least - 2 x Signed For, 2 x Special Delivery - and the worldwide airmail stamps which will have a new higher value.  This will be important when aggregating the total and these details will have to change in the system as well.  (This would not have been a problem if the usage hadn't been extended to 31 July.)

Currently for 100 x 1st Large Letter stamps the calculation is (100 x 235p) / 68p = 345.58 stamps.

If the rates rise to £2.45 and 70p, then it will be (100 x 245p) / 70p = 350 stamps.

If they fail to change one or the other their calculation might be:

(100 x 245) / 68 = 360.3 stamps or (100 x 235) / 70 = 335 stamps.

Be alert to swaps after the rate change and before 1 August.

Comments are now open for questions not answered here, and your experiences not already mentioned on previous posts.

 

 

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The earlier post

For the record, here are elements of the earlier blogpost nor repeated above.  I have excluded anything shown or corrected above (I hope),  and if you want to read about the experiences of other readers I suggest you go back to the original here.

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31 March 2022

Royal Mail will launch an ongoing nationwide awareness programme, that will run throughout the year, to ensure that everyone who wishes to swap out their stamps will have the opportunity to do so. The campaign will include press and radio advertising and a national door drop leaflet delivered to every household in the UK.

Mechanics

There are two Swap-out forms, one for consignments worth up to £200 and one for bulk swaps.

For consignments under £200, gummed stamps (ie not self-adhesive) must be stuck to the form. Self-adhesive stamps should remain affixed to their original backing paper.

For bulk consignments, gummed stamps must not be stuck to paper and must instead be clearly batched by the stamp value and colour in clear plastic bags of 50 stamps (less than 50 stamps must be collated together in value order). [1]

Dealers

Some dealers I have spoken to have confirmed that they will trim their Machin stocks according to popularity. It makes sense if you overstocked on some values to liquidate them now, especially if they were purchased at a lower price than the current tariff.

Those dealers who already offer discount postage – and probably some who don't – will offer discounted barcoded stamps after trading-in because they will be hugely overstocked with those.

Another has said that they will consider retiring more quickly and get the benefit of full value for at least the Machin & Country stocks. And that is where life gets difficult – what does he do with £50,000-worth of barcoded 2nd class stamps?

Collectors

If you are a collector, it is time to sort your collection and check all packets and stock-books for mint duplicates, or for gaps in your collection. If you are going to carry on collecting, look out for dealer special offers. 

Postage and losses

Anybody using the scheme can use the address FREEPOST Swap Out.

[My earlier blogpost included an extract from the Terms and Conditions but these have changed from time to time - the latest was on 7 November 2022.

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Many comments on the above were actually answered in the blog itself, and if not, were answered in the comments.  Most have now been realised, but I will mention these:

Post & Go:  On 8 March Royal Mail customer service confirmed (wrongly) that Post and Go stamps would become invalid.  This is not the case at all and it was never intended that they would be. 

'E' & Airmail stamps: some early submissions were processed without these being replaced but I haven't heard of such an instance recently,

Postage refund: similarly some early submissions had returns for the stamps but not the postage.  Nobody has mentioned this in the last few months so things must have settled down.

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