For those UK members about to enjoy sending letters for InCoWriMo 2022

[Chrissy]

We heard from our relatives in Australia that our Christmas card to them finally arrived last week!!
It was sent from here on 29th November and was stamped with an "E" (Europe) stamp currently valued at £1.70 plus an Air Mail label. It fitted through our standard Letter rate slot and weighed less than the current 20grams rate that costs £1.70 worldwide. Since it took 7 weeks to arrive I could only assume that someone made an error somewhere and sorted it into the Surface Mail bin rather than putting it on a plane.

Following a 23 minute wait on the phone to talk to someone at Customer Services about this I instead sent an email to someone with whom I had had a previous dealing at the CEO's office.

Today I received a phone call from that person and am quite surprised at the information I received so I feel I should pass it on so that other UK members will be aware of it.

There are currently many staff changes at Royal Mail so obviously more inexperienced people are handling mail items. As the "E" stamp is now at least a 10 year old stamp and is no longer available from Royal Mail or at Post Offices it's possible that some Royal Mail staff have never seen one and know nothing about them or their value. They have no instant way to check an "E" stamp value when they are sorting mail, therefore they may believe they are handling under stamped mail items and could quite easily sort them as Surface Mail rather than Air Mail.

I have been advised to not purchase any more "E" stamps, even from authentic online stamp sources, for use anywhere outside of Europe as they might be delayed.

Make of this what you will, but it looks like only Worldwide stamps or those marked with the current Air Mail price will always work for countries outside of Europe.