recipe for disaster

I didn't have any parcels to post this weekend so I popped into our local post office to get some commemoratives to stamp next week's lots.

'Sorry, we don't have any. We always send them straight back.'

Unbelievable. One of the best ways for the PO to make money is to sell stamps to collectors - it's almost all pure profit. And one sale leads to many others. This is business suicide. Okay the main business of the PO is to deliver items, but the collectors side is a nice little extra earner.

By doing this one aspect of the PO is sabotaging the other.

On a similar theme a year or so ago I phoned re setting up a Key Account with the philatelic bureau, which gets you a 5% discount when you spend over £5000 pa. When I explained I wanted to use the stamps for postage they said 'we didn't hear that'. Ridiculous!

The PO needs a panel of professional philatelist that can be consulted on all philatelic matters, because at the moment they look like they are working blindfolded.

losing the plot

First an apology. Sorry for using the Album Cover stamps to post your stamps.

Let me explain. A year or so ago a few stamps started appearing with an unsoakable gum. This was being introduced, together with slots, as a way of disrupting the mythical trade in reused GB stamps. Fact is this gum isn't unsoakable and in fact, for the postage trade, it's made no difference, in fact after using Stamplift or WD40 not only do the stamps come off safely but they even have the decency to stay sticky!

When the muck was used on Christmas stamps the PO explained that Xmas stamps are actually definitives, but that this new gum would NEVER be used on commemoratives.

So what have the morons done? Gone and used this muck on the Album Covers stamps! No way can these be described as definitives. So well done, PO. You've just created modern rarities because I can't see any way of safely getting these off paper, and no sensible collector is going to start collecting stamps on paper.

So for all those customers who have had these on their packages once again I apologise. My usual buy back offer won't apply because these stamps are simply unuseable. I won't be using any more, or indeed any more PO self adhesive issues, until this idiotic policy is reversed. You can still get the stamps of course, but from the mini sheets or prestige booklets, which will have a different SG number. Genuinely off paper used self adhesives are going to be far rarer than Penny Blacks!