Royal Mail have announced dates on which various stamp issues which will cease to be available from their Tallents House bureau, during the remainder of 2024.
30 September
In Memoriam (Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth II issues), Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Tutankhamun.
31 October 2024
Christmas 2022
30 November 2024
Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones
31 December 2024
Transformers, X-men
Migratory Birds and Cats went off sale on 31 July - sorry for not reporting this earlier.
This post has a collection of short pieces not really warranting a whole blog post of their own.
Last year we discussed what products would need to change apart from postage stamps, with Horizon and Post & Go Labels being obvious examples.
Horizon Labels bearing the head of the King have appeared, but not Post and Go - although Royal Mail stopped using Post & Go machines at the end of the year, so no replacement was necessary there. The existing stamps continue in use at Post Office self-service kiosks, although there are trials of a new label which does bear the profile of King Charles.
A couple of readers have reminded me that although there is no postal stationery on sale now other than the prepaid plastic Special Delivery bags. However the Houses of Parliament, and in particular members, are entitled to use prepaid postal stationery which currently still bears the Machin head. Both 1st (provided by RM) and 2nd class (from RW) are in use.
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| House of Commons prepaid 2nd class envelope used June 2024. |
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| House of Commons prepaid 1st class envelope used May 2024. |
Thanks to BB for alerting me to more counterfeit non-definitive stamps being sold on eBay. The current range now includes the Discworld, Cats, Christmas including miniature sheets, Paddington Bear and Children's TV Classics. OK, they might be genuine, but it's clear from this photograph that there are no phosphor bands whereas there should be two.
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| 2022 1st class 'Cats' stamps which should have two phosphor bands.... |
Thanks to CN who has alerted me to changes of numbers of the King Charles booklets in the Stanley Gibbons Concise Catalogue 2024, as follows:
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CN also tells me about the new printing of the booklet of 8 x 2nd class stamps, now with M24L year code. Here's his picture:
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| King Charles III 2nd class booklet stamp coded MEIL and M24L, 2024 printing. |
JH has provided a good photograph of the whole booklet.
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| King Charles III 2nd class booklet with stamps coded MEIL and M24L, 2024 printing. |
Back in 2014 we reported that Royal Mail was using real stamps (stuck over the PPI) on sendings of bulletins from Tallents House. Sadly this practice didn't last long.
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| Set of 2014 Butterfly stamps used on mailings from Royal Mail Tallents House, Edinburgh. |
Few philatelic bureaux do use stamps on their sendings (Isle of Man and Greenland do, I think), but Guernsey has made up for not using stamps by advertising them on their envelopes! My thanks to RM for sending this and other interesting material.
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| Guernsey Post envelope used in 2024 for sending out stamp orders, illustrated with examples from previous stamp issues. |
That's all for now, thanks for reading, and keep sending your news - thanks!
Earlier this week we received the autumn Stock List from Royal Mail Stamps & Collectibles (now far more collectibles than stamps). At the time it hadn't been added to their website, but I am pleased to say that it is now there, so if you previously picked up a copy at Stampex, you can now read it online here.
If you still collect new stamps and haven't been able to get them from your post office during the current situation you will need to be aware of last day of sale dates. For the 'Stamp Souvenirs' these are very short dates, but these are unaddressed FDCs in effect, so you probably got something at the time.
Most stamp products have long dates or WSL = While Stocks Last, but the following are noteworthy, get them now if you want them:
Royal Navy Ships, Cricket World Cup MSs, go off sale on 31.12.2020
Also of note, if you didn't notice before, and I may not have mentioned it, is the print quantities for Press Sheets of miniature sheets -
Marvel - 1000
Star Wars and Queen - 500
The Gruffalo and Palace of Westminster - 300
I think demand for these - like most other products - has dropped since they were first produced.
Page 8 has a number of 'Bundles' - groups of products sold at a discount from the original prices. These nearly always include some premium products for fans, and it's arguable that this provides some indication of which have been worthwhile and which were spurned by fans.
All Machin and country definitives, including booklets are available indefinitely - or at least while stocks last.
So there you have it. A conservative stamp issuing policy doesn't guarantee success if you don't have enough customers - philatelic or otherwise. Of the 2.3 million tourists who visit each year many do so for weekend or 5-day breaks, as we did in January. We sent no postcards, although there are many on sale and we bought a few. With the cost of postage being £1.65 (US$2, €1.80) that was a step too far.Dear Friends
Iceland Post, Stamp and Philatelic Department (Postphil) will be abolished at the end of this year after about 90 years in operation.
We still have two stamp issues left this year, on September 12th and October 31st, but when they are done the department will be closed down for good and will stop serving stamp collectors, domestic and foreign, altogether.
The fact that the number of our philatelic customers have constantly been decreasing year after year has lead to years of deficit for Postphil.
Iceland Post has got a new CEO Mr. Birgir Jonsson, who is cutting down everything that is not profittable in this company, including Postphil, and that is due to the fact that Iceland Post currently has severe operating difficulties.
Today, August 20 Iceland Post is laying off about 50 people throughout the company.
The current management of Iceland Post Ltd., prefers if possible to stop issuing new stamps altogether, but on the basis of current law, Iceland Post cannot unilaterally decide to do so.
However, there is some uncertainty as to how these matters will be handled in the future and the company is waiting for answers from it´s owner, the Icelandic state.
If the company must keep on issuing new stamps in 2020 and onward the number of new stamps will be very few each year and there will be no service for stamp collectors.
According to CEO Mr. Birgir Jonsson this task of producing and issuing new stamps could be given to outside contractors.
I will leave Iceland Post Ltd, in September after 20 years in charge of Postphil.
From October to December there will only be 3 people working at Postphil so operations will be at minimum
Kind regards,
VILHJALMUR SIGURDSSON
HEAD OF PHILATELY POSTPHIL | ICELAND POST
TEL: +354 580 1050 | DIRECT: +354 580 1051 | MOBILE: +354 825 1051 | STAMPS.IS | facebook.com/icelandicstamps | vilhjalmurs@postur.is
STORHOFDI 29 | 110 REYKJAVIK | ICELAND | TEL: +354 580 1000 | FAX: +354 580 1059 | POSTUR.IS |
In late October 2017 I tried to get the 2p 2017 on SBP. Stock at the PO was 26/09/14. I offered to buy their remaining stock (about 4 sheets) if they could order fresh stock. On a subsequent visit stock arrived dated 05/07/16. I repeated the exercise a few weeks later and stock arrived 30/01/17 (Year 17 plain backing). Again the exercise was repeated and this week I collected (year 16) 21/12/16!!
I now have quite a few sheets of 2p but that's not a problem as they are low value and I can use them up. A similar exercise with the 10p results in the latest stock being 08/02/16.Some recent stamps have been difficult to find and were out of stock in our shop. One of these is the 2nd Large booklet. My local post office has stock, including cylinder books - with the year code MA12!! These stamps are 5 years old, they just don't have much call for them. On the other hand he has frequent turnover of others, partly because of restrictions on what he can order from central stores. He recently wanted more packets of 12 x 1st but was restricted to 3 packets - 150 booklets. That would be alright for one post office, but he also runs six outreaches. That makes for a very thin spread round those villages.
Our customers expect us to deliver all of their items in excellent condition.
For our philatelist customers – people who collect postage stamps as a hobby – this means ensuring that we do not bend their items on delivery.
All philatelic items are despatched in a PPI business class envelope, which lists Tallents House as the return address and includes the words ‘PLEASE DO NOT BEND’ on the bottom right hand corner.
If you see that a philatelic item has been damaged in the mail centre or on delivery, it must be returned to Tallents House, 21 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9PB
A P3960 should be included on the envelope to highlight the reason for non-delivery, so a new replacement can be sent to the customer.Now if we can just get them to take similar care of dealer-to-customer philatelic mail, and ensure that the stamps thereon are properly cancelled, we will be even happier!
Delivery
If you cannot deliver an item without bending it, please:
- Check if a neighbour is happy to take the item. If so, return to the address on the item and post a completed ‘With Your Neighbour’ slip or P739 ‘Something for you’ card through their letterbox. Doing so will inform the customer which neighbour has their item.
- If you are unable to successfully deliver the item, scan the item as ‘not delivered’ and post a fully completed P739 ‘Something for you’ card through the letterbox and return the item to the office.
- If the item is not collected, our Customer Experience team will contact the customer to arrange for it to be redelivered.
My prime contact at Royal Mail is now on holiday, and I don't want to burden the hard-working team who are trying to solve these problems by asking for an official statement/comment on this situation. Last month I was told that on one aspect of the statement/invoice problems they were having a manual investigation of 4,500 records - whether that is 4,500 accounts or 4,500 transactions within just some accounts I don't know: it isn't solved yet.Since the introduction of the ‘new’ computer system, there have been numerous problems which are still on going and show no rectification to date.You will only notice this problem if you pay your direct debits via Barclays Bank. On some occasions the Bureau is requesting the payment, and is taking it, and then almost immediately the payment is refunded into your account. This however is not happening on every transaction, so some transactions are going through as normal. I would say it is very likely that some customers are possibly unaware the transaction has not completed, unless they have looked at their bank statement. As Customers haven’t received any sort of statement from the Bureau since February, it might be worth warning customers they might expect a one off hefty billThe Bureau were aware of this problem back in February and thought the problem had been fixed, though in June it reared its head again. When I spoke to the Bureau yesterday re this matter, they were thinking of sending letters to those effected, to make a one off payment of the outstanding amounts they have not collected. This has happened to me on 3 occasions since February.The Bureau have not made any attempt to re-collect the failed payments.
And after a lot of early frustration collectors reported several weeks later, that their phone calls were being answered in 5-10 minutes instead of 40-50, and that some missing items had been delivered - in some cases more than once!And another collector sent this email to philatelic.enquiries@royalmail.com:
Is it just me, or has anyone else not yet received their Standing Order for the QEII 90th Birthday issue? I've called Tallents House several times now, and although they are always polite, understanding and apologetic, I feel this is very poor service. This issue will have been planned months, if not years, in advance and could easily have been predicted to have been popular, and yet RM just don't seem to have geared up for it. No way to treat a Standing Order customer (for all issues) of over 35 years! My ANZAC Customised Sheet has also not arrived, presumably caught up in the QEII issue debacle. Shocking planning and service.
Again The Royal Mail management do not appear to know how to handle their customers' Regular Orders. In the dim and distant past orders were received on the issue date. Then, it seemed to change to 5 to 7 days before receipt. Now with the Queen's Stamp issue of the 21 April delivery appears to be 24 working days!! That's according to the Philatelic Bureau today, and you have the audacity to charge delivery.
When can we look forward to the current management being changed to one who believes in Customer Service?
Several other people have also mentioned not receiving their Queen's Birthday orders - and many of these are standing orders which should have been packaged up and ready to go well before the date of issue, just as those to dealers usually are. One of these is producing special first day covers - he's not a regular cover producer, and not a registered dealer, though he does sometimes sponsor special handstamps - if he's hoping to sell those, the market will have evaporated by the time he gets the covers back from the handstamp centre. Too much monkeying about, perhaps...?
First and foremost can I apologise to our customers for the service received from Royal Mail Stamps and Collectibles at the moment. This is certainly not the level of service we seek to give our customers.We are currently moving to a new computer system which has given us challenges as we implement new more financially compliant procedures and measures to safeguard our customers personal data. We are working hard to put this right, we are giving our agents additional training and moving staff from across the Royal Mail business to answer our customer enquiries.Things are improving and I ask customers to bear with us at this time of transition.
We are continuing to work on this issue, as we do see it a the correct way to communicate. However there are other priorities at the moment and we will deal with this issue at the appropriate time.
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