It is many months since I wrote anything substantive about the SwapOut scheme to replace invalidated stamps with new barcoded definitives. The system worked substantially well, and apart from the occasional glitch (soon corrected), most people seemed satisfied if annoyed at the amount of effort involved and that the change had happened at all.
Since Christmas, however, readers and other dealers have been commenting that the turnaround has moved from the original 7 days to much longer. Indeed I'm told the Terms and Conditions have been changed to '30 days' - but the allegations are that it is closer to 7 weeks!
UPDATE - I received a batch today dated 27 February but posted 4 March, for the stamps I sent on 30 January - so not quite 7 weeks.
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| Use up your non-barcoded stamps slogan August 2022. |
I decided to try to find out whether this was the occasional glitch or an on-going problem.
Mechanics
I phoned and established what the mechanics are for the process. The support line is at Doxford (Sunderland) but that it only the very important call centre. We send stamps in to Edinburgh, and we get stamps back from Edinburgh.
Each of our packages is logged onto a database in Edinburgh when it is opened for processing, not before. So of my 8 packages in the last four weeks only that posted on 30 January has so far been logged into the system.
The target turn-around is still 30 days, so if we experience a longer delay and phone Duxford, they check the database and they might arrange to send replacements. I imagine they wait a couple of weeks after the 30 days to ensure that when we ask, the replacements are not in transit which might mean we end up with two sets of replacements!
Manpower
It is evident that the manpower devoted to this task has was reduced after the original surge in submissions. I'm told that additional staff were added when there was a further surge late last year, but that the numbers have probably been reduced again. Obviously the call centre can't answer for management but it does seem likely that if more people are sending in larger batches additional staffing must be applied.
Freepost address and certificates of postingA reminder that you cannot get a certificate of posting if you use the Freepost SwapOut address. If you require one for anything not sent by Special Delivery or Signed For (and you should) then you must use the address shown above, with the EH12 9GT postcode or to this address for batches over £200:
Royal Mail
Swap Out
Tallents House
21 South Gyle Crescent
EDINBURGH
EH12 9PB
It does not bode well for when they have to withdraw all the commemorative stamps which have no data matrix codes on them because the phosphor band cfc postmarking machines have worn out. I shall use what I have up swiftly.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice about posting about Swap Out on a relevant post - in my defence, I posted before you posted on Swap Out.
ReplyDeleteLast week, I posted 15 lots to Tallents House of around £2,500 each, so £37,500 of Machins I've bought at auction recently as part of QE II lots which is my area of interest.
I needed more Swap Out forms and so downloaded the current form and then I noticed that there had been a change from seven to thirty days (on forms which state 'last updated 30th January 2025’) as the aim in processing applications. Previously, lots were returned to me within 2-3 weeks.
One of my reasons to spend time on this task, despite the fact that I had more pressing work to do, was to get these lots in well before the rise in 1st and 2nd class rates coming in late March/early April and so benefit from getting what I expect to be mainly barcoded 1st and 2nd class at the current rate but then being able to sell them at the new rate after the price rise. On such a large amount of stamps, the difference can be considerable).
If, as you mention, it will now take seven weeks to process orders then I won’t benefit from the coming price increase and my ‘profit’ will be less.
I’m not a dealer and I don’t want to get into selling stamps (other than at auction). My aim is that my selling covers the cost of what I keep for my collection.
But maybe the most important lesson I need to learn is to change my area of collecting. I collected GB stamps from school days and after a period of not actively collecting, returned to collecting a number of years ago but to a completely different collecting world than that that existed from the 1960s onwards.
I’m now heartedly fed up of selling commemoratives and ex-Swap Out definitives to postage reseller because of the work involved and, for commemoratives, the decreasing prices offered even for NVI commemoratives. The lots I’ve just posted where only NVIs – 1st and 2nd and large letter, all the E varieties and Special Delivery and Registered. So, not as much work as the ordinary Machins, of which I still have a box to sort into values and then send into Tallents House.
Also, as a stamp collector, I don’t like ripping out stamps for postage from – as I recently had to do – 58 albums that had been someone’s lifetime work to put together. But auction lots are as they are. Maybe, I need a new area of collecting...
If you are trading £37500 worth of stamps even at whatever discounted rate you buy them, I don't think you can avoid calling yourself a dealer.
DeleteI built my collection 50 years ago by going to local auctions in Essex and buying things that I wanted, or sometimes things that nobody else wanted! If they included duplicates I might put them into the next auction - and sometimes get more than I paid, for fewer covers. Like the earlier poster I wasn't a dealer I had a full time job and no time for proper dealing.
DeleteAdmittedly the scale of the deals mentioned above is greater.
But if I were to buy collections of all-periods GB for the QV & Kings issues, which are very interesting, like the 58 album collection mentioned, and the collector went all-periods, there will be a lot of QE2 special issues good for postage, and a lot of decimal definitives NOT good for postage.
So it would inevitably include quite a high number of 1st class Machins. There were over 95 individual Security stamps - that's £156; add booklets of 6/12 and presentation packs, and miniature sheets, and that multiplies enormously.
And then there were all the booklets issues before 2009, dozens of them with 1st & 2nd class NVI stamps in; and the airmail NVIs are now £2.80 each so a set of singles, presentation packs, and booklets comes to £84.
Yes that does seem like a lot of money, but it soon mounts up. What is the face value of what we have in our collections (answer - a lot less than it was three years ago!)