United Kingdom
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
view the rest of the comments
Stamps no longer have a face value. They are 1st or second class.
As they put up the price each year it's becoming common to buy stamps before the price rise and sell them after.
The margin on the last rise was ~13% on 2nd class stamps, 8% on first class stamps.
13% has been roughly the average every year since 2005.
So you can absolutely buy stamps at less than "face value". Someone who bought them 4 years ago could easily give you a 20% discount and still make a profit.
As stamps are not allowed to expire (or have to be replaced if they do) this is a safe investment.
Royal mail have encouraged this to inflate sales in the short term and are suffering from those valid stamps still being available now with no further revenue.
Taking the face value off stamps is what's caused this problem.
There was never an investment opportunity in buying a 90p stamp that was still worth 90p postage years later.
But buying 1000 2nd class stamps that are always worth 2nd class postage has been an inflation beating purchase.
Their new barcoding system could allow them to sunset stamps after a certain number of years (though I can imagine the uproar if they did!)
It would also negate the point of the legislation that means they have to accept stamps in the first place.
You should not have to visit a post office in person or online to post a letter.
There are letter boxes in walking distance. If you've bought a book of stamps everything you need is in your desk.
That's the system we have and it would never be designed by a business that way. But it's a business that's taken on that system alongside the I infrastructure for it.
If you genuinely depend on the post accessibility to it is important. It could be modernised but it was working before, modernisation and cost saving are not the same thing.