19-Aug-2010 15:46
Should I or shouldn’t I?
This morning amongst the pile of letters kindly delivered by our long-suffering and ever-complaining postie was a package with seven 2nd class stamps haphazardly attached..
Nothing out of the ordinary you may ask?
Well, the seven 2nd class stamps had been missed (by about two inches) by the computerised franking system & were thus still 'mint'.
My quandary: do/may I re-use them or not?
On the one hand they had been purchased and used in good faith & thus re-using them could possibly be deemed stealing, but on the other hand, I figured the postal service wouldn't miss a few little stamps, I could save a few bob and so……
Has this dilemma ever worried you?
Re-using the stamps would, in practice, be little different to spending the banks' money that may have in error found its way into your account or keeping the extra £5 in wrongly issued change at the supermarket…
You know it's wrong, but…
I'm afraid that my decision was probably the correct choice.
I did not use them but instead of simply tearing them up (as ethically perhaps I should have done) I stuck them into my favoured charity (to help the less fortunate) box sitting forlornly on my desk.
What would you have done?
Cannot say I've ever experienced that problem with my hand-made Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada, John Lobb and Berluti shoes...
We grumpy old codgers could go on and on .. perhaps it's worth a separate blog!?
Getting labels off the soles of new footwear is one of my pet hates .. you're left with just the same sort of sticky mess which immediately gathers grime.
Anyway, happy Friday!!
... & the check-in-desk brain-dead workers put those damn sticky luggage-sticker tag-things on the back of your passports and neither for love nor money can you EVER remove them without half a tag remaining super-glued for life or with your pristine passport forever left with a sticky back cover!!
Doesn't it drive ya nuts ;-(
Along the same lines - if off topic here sorry - it drives me mad when passport stampers in foreign lands make a real hash of their primary role by choosing the fullest page instead of an empty one and then stamping my passport upside down, half off the page, on top of another stamp etc.. anything but a nice neat stamp. It really can't be that hard or any more time-consuming and I think it must be their way of rebelling because there's nothing we hapless travellers can do about it.
It drives me crazy when i've got a nice, neatly written letter/parcel ready to send out, and then when i hand it to the Post Office to send it recorded/special delivery, the staff absemnt mindedly slap a couple of great big, haphazardously placed stickers at all kinds of silly angles!
Grrr...
As for re-using the stamps... If something is perfectly useable, isn't it just wasteful to throw it away? Environmentaly speaking surely it makes better sense to re-use, rather than throw away and buy new ones just for the sake of it?
I plead the 5th Amendment here but you raise one point which disturbs me .. "stamps haphazardly attached"
Horror of horrors! I can't bear to see a carefully prepared package suffer from wonky stamps. My local Post Office team have been well trained to pass all labels back to me for application .. and sometimes they even forget to groan!
Anna Figiel
You paid for 'em & you sent them out..
If they are subsequently returned unstamped you can certainly do with them as you wish...
My burning question is, 'why are your letters returned?'
Are your data base details incorect or are they returned by your clients with orders or better still payment cheques?
I send out lots of pre paid envelopes with £1.00 stamps on them, and when they come back, unstamped I tear them off, out comes the pritt stick and the stamp makes another journey!
I want to say I am too honest, but I am not.
It would, for me, be the some as throwing at least £10.00 away a week. No way am I going to do that. I just dont see the sense!
Its not even a dilemma for me either!
Now, all stamped stamps are recycled for charity - does that good deed wipe make an Ok person again?
Sally L Asling
You made the right choice.
Perhaps if they put just one extra teller on duty...especially on busy days...I might have a tinge of guilt.
Fay.