Stamp swap - Royal Mail customers get fraud warnings

Some Royal Mail customers, who have used an official scheme to swap their old stamps for new barcoded replacements, have been warned they risk committing fraud.

- Anna Tims

Since the start of August, only the new stamps with scannable barcodes are valid for postage and consumers are being invited to replace out-of-date books of stamps for free under the Stamp Swap Out scheme.

However, Royal Mail has, apparently, rejected scores of applications, claiming that stamps that customers say were bought from supermarkets and post offices had already been used,or were counterfeit.

The backdrop to this is that Royal Mail introduced the barcodes in February 2022 as part of what it described as an extensive modernisation drive. As part of this, regular stamps without a barcode are now no longer valid.

Unfortunately, if you do still have some of the old stamps, you can't just take them to your nearest post office and swap them for new ones.

You need to fill in a form and send the stamps in question back to Royal Mail. But the good news is that there is now no end date as to when you have to swap them out.