Royal Mail, the British postal and courier service began switching all snail mail stamps to barcoded stamps last year. The purpose of the barcode was to enhance security, deter stamp reuse, and possibly prevent forgeries—which it has failed to do.

If a stamp have a barcode, why not just let people who have printers at home to print it on the envelope directly? This eliminates the need to buy physical stamp, thus the probability of buying counterfeit stamps.

  • @[email protected]English
    23•7 months ago

    Sorry but at this point my money is on the Post Office being incompetent and dishonest. They have form given the ongoing Horizon scandal.

    • This is a newly introduced system
    • There’s no evidence it has ever worked correctly
    • I’m not seeing any corroborating evidence, e.g. people being prosecuted for making or selling forged stamps
    • I’m not seeing an explanation offered as to why such forgery is only happening now as opposed to before barcodes were introduced
    • umami_wasabiOPEnglish
      3•7 months ago

      Isn’t Post Office just a convenience store? I thought the Horizon scandal is to the Royal Mail, which is responsible for stamp printing and mail processing.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•7 months ago

        On checking: You’re correct that the royal mail and the post office are separate organisations. They split in 2012. At the time of the majority of the active development of the horizon scandal, they were the same organisation however.

        I would still want to apply the same test - not just demonstrating a notional or paper loss, but that something has actually been stolen and acquired by some other party. This was one of the signal failures with the horizon scandal: that it was simply a bookkeeping error and they were unable to show beyond that any theft or loss on their part or gain by another party.