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Wednesday, 22 February 2023

My Swap scheme experiences.

As you will have realised, I am concentrating on getting the pre-barcoded stamps to collectors ratherthan sending them all in for swapping.  But on 8 February I sent a mixed lot total value £46.17½p.

My barcoded stamps arrived today, and all is well.  The sheet of 10p was the original printing of 11/01/22; the three sheets of 5p stamps included one dated 10/01/22 and two dated 04/04/22 (these dates have already been recorded).

The low values were 15 @2p, 75 @5p, 26 @10p and 206 others including 147 x ½p (booklet panes) and 47 x2½p, also panes mostly.  The £3.44 value of these 206 stamps translated into 6 x 2nd class.

My 38 x 1st class came as 9 x books of 4, all with cylinder numbers, and a sheet pair.

All very good.

And I posted my first > £200 batch today. All 2nd, 1st (various colours), 2nd Large and 1st Large (gold).
Those should not be too difficult to process. 


17 comments:

  1. I sent of a packet of various stamps for swapping on the 30 January and received back two weeks later an assortment of stamps which included 62 books of 4x1st class, 25 of them with cylinder numbers. I also received a pair of 1st class sheet stamps. Included in my sending was a few E stamps for which I received £1.85 Christmas stamps.

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  2. I'm holding back my E stamps until the price rise whenever that might be as they will hold their value whereas £1.85 replacements will be supplementing by 10 or 15p or more. I assume a worldwide 40g will become a £2.55 ?

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  3. How does £2.06 become six second class? At 68p that's only a fraction over three stamps, so shouldn't you have received four?

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  4. I sent off a mixture on 22 Dec and am still waiting.Royal Mail said I would receive replacement by 24 Feb-I have not

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  5. Thanks for the writeup!
    You said £46.17½p - what happened to the ½p. Did it get rounded up to a penny?

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    Replies
    1. it doesn;t rally matter as the total is rounded to the nearest multiple of 68p (2nd class)

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  6. I've had three lots of under-£200 returns so far.
    Sent: 7/1/23, took 6 weeks, returned correctly - discontinued make-up values returned as 2nd class, rounded up.
    Sent: 13/1/23, took 6 weeks. Extant make-up values returned like-for-like, discontinued values returned as 2nd class rounded up. However, they gave an incorrect count of self-adhesive make-up values and short-changed me a few pennies. Submitted a support request. RM couldn't find my details but I was sent a lightly-crumpled 2nd class as an apology after 1 week.
    Sent: 6/4/23, took 3 weeks. 1st/2nd returned, but all make-up value stamps were omitted. Submitted a support request; after 3 days I was asked to clarify values received; now awaiting further response.

    It seems like quite a hassle for a few pennies, but my tongue is rather dry after sticking a whole page of gummed stamps so I'm a little ashamed to say I rather complained on principle! 😅

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  7. Just to add, for 1C and 2C I seem to be getting mixtures of sheets and booklets.

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  8. My first two, just over £200 took 10days (amusingly SD next day took two days from Somerset to Edinburgh); small values converted to 2nd except 10p (6x sheets of 25 dated 11/01/22); 1st class came as books 4 books of 12 plus 2 loose; surely they have access to sheets of 25 or 50 1st class. but all including SD fee refunded.

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    Replies
    1. Apparently not; everybody is getting some booklets for 1st class - and only books of 4 not 8.

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  9. Will the Machin Post and Go stamps still be valid or do they need swapping ?

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  10. I'm ready to post my final £33.18 of stamps to swap several months after my initial £317.25.
    Only now do I realise what a change it'll be not using the familiar Machins which have been in use all my adult life, and all the more so with me having posted many more letters, thousands, than most people due to my involvement with a couple of voluntary organisations.

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  11. I sent my final batch of stamps to the swap out scheme. The E stamps I sent came back as £1.85 Christmas stamps. Most of the 1st Class stamps came back as books of 4 x 1st. The second class stamps were all sheets.

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