Royal Mail stamp reuse and franking

Grabbing a padded envelope to reuse, I found it already had a stamp on it which appears to be unfranked. Is there something I’m missing here, or can I just re-address it and pop it into the post box? Is there some other way they use to mark stamps as used now, or did it just get missed?

They did this on R2 recently. Apparently* you would be committing fraud by re-using a stamp which you know has already been used, even if it hasn’t been marked (which is fairly common).

Don’t think anyone has ever been prosecuted of course even if they could detect it.

Also it is morally wrong, but I’ll leave you to wrestle with that one 🙂

*IANAL

Go for gold and basque in your 62p saving.

actually I’ve just googled it and found this:

Operation Gum-Gum. A new generation of people are now unaware of the seriousness of such fraud. In 1989 the police, in association with Royal Mail, started an investigation under the name of “Operation Gum Gum”. They built up evidence against a number of people who were buying kiloware, extracting unfranked stamps (and in some cases even cleaning off light postmarks), and selling them on to others. Those who were targeted found it a surprising and scary ordeal. Some individuals were arrested, some of these tried and convicted, and some ended up with prison sentences. For a while this had the predictable effect of stopping commercial activity in stamps without postmarks.

watch out 😯

Wasn’t planning on setting up a business doing it – to be honest the main advantage is that I can just pop it in the post box rather than have to go down the post office to buy a stamp (don’t have any large letter stamps here). It struck me what a waste of time that would be when just about to peel off the “unused” stamp to replace with a different one. My morals can cope with shafting the fat cat shareholders who’ve already made a killing.

Stick it to the man!

Use it then buy another stamp later and burn it.

If they didn’t notice this chap creating a hundred of his own designs and using them, I’m sure they’ll not spot your re-use of an original:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10411201/Royal-Mail-man-makes-own-silly-stamps-featuring-his-own-face-and-sends-letters-for-free.html

Don’t worry I recently sent a letter and it never turned up so I guess it all evens out.

Perhaps they frank them with UV ink?

I love that article, made my day 🙂

Its thieves like you that caused them to design that stamp with the little bits on the edges that get left behind if you try and peel it off. Ruined it for everyone you did!

I,m a shareholder I WILL grass on you 🙂