I did, from the days when my dad ran the department at the Bank of England dedicated to such matters: sounds grand, but it consisted of him and half a secretary (never did discover which half!)However , it is an offence in the UK to deface banknotes!
But not to destroy them!
Currency and Banknotes Act (1928).
Who knew?!
I do wonder if they'll be forced into delaying their date for last use of the old stamps. Another year on top of the current date would give people so much notice that they might reasonably be able to use most of their existing stock without going through the inconvenience of exchanges. People buying the stamps a long time in advance of using them has traditionally been a good thing for RM because of the cash flow it brings in, but it appears that now they want to have their cake and eat it by taking the liabilities off their balance sheet.
In reality have done it before. They did it fairly quickly after decimalisation when everything older, apart from QE2 £1 stamps, was demonetised. What I think is troubling them now is that they have an obligation to accept all stamps from 1971 onwards (Plus a few earlier £1 stamps) at the same time as they are facing an onslaught of forged and reused stamps (look at eBay). I have some sympathy with them as a business and if the swap scheme is fair none of us will be out of pocket.
Well, 2 post offices local to me I took £1 coins to didn't want anything to do with them....
Tend to agree. I think the problem is the swap scheme will not run that long in the great scheme of things (old books of stamps located in old desk drawers and such places around one's house or office.....), the swap not being able to be done at a local sub post office will make it harder for some people - even getting the form for the non tech savvy does not seem possible at a post office, you would appear to have to go to a royal mail sorting office counter - and there are fewer of them. If you find just 2 or 3 stamps you will probably just shrug your shoulders and write it off, which is not very fair, as @Watershed says.
www.onepostoffice.co.uk
Extract of webstory said:
Interesting. I suspect the sub postmaster concerned did not want to bother with it so was economical with their answer. I wonder what would happen if went in and presented the coin along with a request to pay it into an account! Might get a different answer. I should try that next time I find another one - I thought I had got rind of them all back in 2017 when they were withdrawn but I reckon I've had about 10 since then from one place or another...Interesting! Perhaps they didn't get the memo.
Not quite the end of the Round Pound | One Post Office
On 15 October, round pound coins were no longer legal tender, meaning those of us that haven’t spent them in time aren't now able to use them... but our customers can pay them in to any of their usual high street bank accounts through any Post Office branch
If the intention were to simply transition over to the new model as soon as possible, they would be able to make the transition much less painful. For example by allowing people to swap old stamps over the counter, and having a much longer 'grace period'. Similarly to how coin and note changeovers are managed by the Bank of England.
Being able to rebook a missed delivery for another date has been a marvellous improvement too, although perhaps I had it easy to begin with: my local Delivery Office was open 0800 to 1000 Mondays and 0800 to 1330 Tuesdays through to Saturdays!
I'm sure you are correct about all that - they did not want to make an incentive payment to sub-postmasters I expect. Mind you it would be more analogous to what RM pay a PO for the sale of every stamp I suppose.
The January deadline is not great as I expect many folk use stamps mainly for Christmas cards and not so much during the rest of the year. Just make sure you don't have too many left over.
Indeed - at least it means if you use hardly any between now and xmas you have xmas 2022 to use up the rest and / or the swap out runs beyond then I think (?) maybe till March 2023 so any left overs could be swapped then. Tho if the swap out works well there is a case for getting as many as you can swapped out sooner rather than later, which I think is what I will aim to do.
Thanks for posting link - that's helpful to have.
No, not yet .....
It seems the link has subsequently changed, and can now be found at https://www.royalmail.com/sites/roy...Stamp-Swap-Out-Form-under-200-pounds-v1_1.pdf.
Replacements arrived this morning, probably my fault for the delay, the covering letter says that I claimed the value of the stamps I sent them was £154.30 but they think the value is £164.50 and they've sent stamps to their higher value, so I guess my submission was diverted into the "needs a little investigation" pile for a few days. Anyway, all good!
More likely because royal mail and post office are separate organisations and post office would want paying to carry out the service.
Quite possibly. Not unusual to take items back, to the place where you bought them, for exchange though.
Indeed I'd be curious if there isn't something in whatever the consumer rights act is actually called, to permit returning to the place of purchase?
For those unable to access the document, it should be added that the non self-adhesive stamps (ie those that you would lick to secure them) are redeemable via the Swap Out.
Good idea if it stops people reusing them. I didnt realise that it was such a problemTo be honest I've always got a couple of stamp books on the go so doubt I'd notice or be bothered to look for a pair of scissors.
Flipside is that any stamps not swapped out by 31 March 2023 seemingly can't then be used and Royal Mail get to retain all the prepaid revenue for same without having to provide any service.
