this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago (19 children)

They fined the recipient for the fraudulent stamp? What dipshittery was this?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Charging the recipient for insufficient postage has always been the policy of the British postal service. These fraudulent stamps have thus been included in with that policy because as far as they're concerned a fraudulent stamp is as good as no stamp at all.

Anything with insufficient postage is held at the sorting office closest to the recipient and a note is posted (ironic, no?) to the recipient telling them to come and pay the postage if they want it.

The reasons they've backed down this time are 1) their newfangled bar code stamps have failed to stop the very forgery they were designed to prevent, and 2) public outcry causing them (the postal service, not the stamps) to reluctantly admit that this whole thing might, maybe, uh, perhaps just a little bit, be their fault.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I am confused how the QR code was supposed to stop forgery. I have never seen anyone scan the code at any point in the process so I don't understand how it was supposed to help.

I've scanned the code myself and it's just a number sequence. Unless you're checking that against some sort of database, which I assume is the idea, then the existence of the number sequence itself proves nothing. But as I have said I've never seen anyone actually scan the damn things. I don't even understand who's supposed to do it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They're scanned by the sorting equipment. When a stamp is issued with a particular number that number can then be used exactly once, at least in theory.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

They already had a perfectly good method for preventing stamps from being used more than once which was to stamp them. But sometimes they fail to do that too.

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