Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
I know that Canada Post, Royal Mail, USPO, and other countries are notorious for not cancelling their mail, which is bad enough, but, I hate it when they pen cancel stamps. I am not sure if this was done here in Canada on receiving, or by the Royal Post Office. Either way, the stamps are now useless to me. It would have been a new commemorative stamp plus a new denomination for my Machin Heads, but, I can't add these to my collection.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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Hi Everyone;
I read in another thread that postal employees are only required to make the stamps un-reusable
and are not responsible for providing nice looking cancels that meet our fussy whims. Remember
most postal employees do not collect stamps and probably feel we are a bit strange and weird for
doing so.
I don't like those kind of cancels either, but I also don't like when I want to be outdoors and it
rains either.
Just chillin'....
TuskenRaider
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Once in a while the planets align and the Post office employees fall asleep.
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Save 'em for me! Pen cancel doesn't bother me at all.
Meanwhile, I got a nice souvenir sheet on an envelope from Midge1 in Canada with no cancellation on it at all. My lucky day? Thanks Midge!
Chris
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Well I received five UK posted envelopes today, of which three were uncancelled (and one of those was recorded mail). None had a pen strike through them though.
Unlike the rain, which nature is in control of, post office employees don't have that excuse.
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Granted, they are required to make a stamp unusable again, but, this is something that certainly is not appealing. On another note, all the post office entities want us to buy their new products and issues. If they keep cancelling, er, should I say destroy them, this way, I can't see it worth my while.
My opinion of course.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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12:41:37am
I got one from Bobby just before my trip and they jammed it into my post box which ruined a number of stamps on it including the Canada expo 87 (I think it was) - I have the Canadian s/s for that but I didn't even know a matching US sheet existed so I was excited to see it. I'll keep it but it's not in the type of condition that I would place with its mate in my collection 
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There is probably a common theme with a lot of 'oversized' envelopes. If it will not go through the machine sorter, it is at the mercy of whoever handles it manually. Here in the UK, even using pre-franked recorded/registered post does not guarantee a hand cancelled envelope; I received one just this week.
I have been told (by those that know the UK Post Office rules), if one affixes stamps to a value just under the required rate and hand it over the counter, the clerk makes up the deficit with a Horizon label. The clerk is then supposed to cancel the article by hand.
I shall have to try this at the next opportunity.
Perhaps someone has used this method, or has received mail that confirms this.
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ALL mail handed over the counter at post offices ( other than parcels ) should have the cancel applied at the counter. The only stuff that should possibly get no cancel is that put through the normal postbox which might miss the franking machine.
The problem these days is the peanut and monkey syndrome ( you pay peanuts you get monkeys !). So many employees these days - not just in the Post Office - are either on minimum wage,zero hour contracts or are agency staff being used for 2 days here and 3 days with a different employer every week - and thus are intellectually and morally disconnected from their job. Additionally so many postal outlets are these days other businesses such as newsagents or supermarkets- and the staff just do not get the training required to do what is basically much more complex than serving at a supermarket till ( with all due respect to my wife who did such a job). Unless staff motivation can be improved these problems will continue, and revenue will be lost.
I spent several years in logistics ( and after all moving mail is not so different to moving anything else ), and all logistics operators have similar staff problems - I could tell you stories which would make you hair curl. The problem is that top management in the Ivory Tower have no perception in how much difficulty the local manager has in implementing their decision made so far from the operation that it may as well be on another planet. When it came to my retirement the management were most reluctant for me to go - I could have almost have made my own decision as to my hours,had I chosen to remain.
I don't flatter myself that I was the best worker in the world, but it was the prospect of having to replace one of the last full time worker with yet another agency worker that was the problem. So many agency workers had restrictions on what they were permitted to do ( certain programmes on the computer, forklift driving etc) and yet the fulltime workers with those capabilities were not to be replaced.
Management in general ( and top management in big companies in particular ) are so disconnected from reality, that it is a miracle that the companies survive,particularly in the realms of Quality Control. There should be a Zero Tolerance of poor quality- however Managers presuppose a given percentage or error ( and it is usually far more than the poor customer realises), and provided that these are within tolerances no one gives a damn. When I started work EVERY complaint was subject to investigation - now the complainant is a nuisance ( well they were then but no one was allowed to think it ! ).
The big operators are now so cost-efficient that any company that does the job properly gets bought out or goes bust, and the low cost operators get the business - and as customers we want the cheapest price - so we really have no right to complain - we get what we deserve !
Malcolm
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Hi malcolm197;
I don't know where you are getting your info about postal worker's pay, or maybe it is very different at
the Royal Post.
Several months ago I read a different thread where everyone was playing their tiny violins and
lamenting the terrible fate of being postal clerks. So I decided to set the record straight once-and-for-all.
I looked up on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, a US Federal office in Washington D.C. Guess what I
found out? Pay scale for postal clerks and delivery route drivers was $27.00 an hour.
Nuff said.
Just not feelin' their pain....
TuskenRaider
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and that alone is $56,160. My wife's brother has 30 years in working at a USPS sorting center. Last I checked he sat at a console sorting envelopes with zip codes the machines couldn't read. He is an overtime hound and no doubt makes much more than that.
Still he will do the tiny violin concerto that he's underpaid and management is out to get him, they have this big union tension going.
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I think that fulltime workers with some service in are not too badly paid but many delivery staff have to work 6 days to reach basic full time hours.
However the point I was trying to make is that post office sales agencies ( as opposed to Post Offices proper) do not necessarily pay post office rates, but supermarket/corner shop rates which are generally national Minimum Wage or slightly above, and temporary workers hired through Employment Agencies are also not well paid. Many of these workers are female workers with school-age children working for pin-money. In fairness many of these workers are committed and good at the job, but the system is not conducive to the employment of all the best workers available. Also you have to look at the remuneration available elsewhere for the calibre of workers you wish to employ, and subject to being able to secuure employment ( and in this country the economy is making more jobs available) the rewards are often more elsewhere.
Malcolm
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Bujutsu - if you feel bad, how do you think I feel after seeing this ! 
Notice that these were all nicely cancelled with light circular postmarks prior to having the pen marks added.
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Wow....
That's one of the worst I've seen yet....
Randy
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Jimjung, you have my sympathy.
There really isn't any excuse for that.
The post offices have the equipment to cancel the stamps properly, so, why don't they use them? It is also quicker to use a clear hand stamp instead of pen and magic markers. At the very least, the post office entities need training on public relations.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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"There really isn't any excuse for that."
Yea, there is. The main function of the post office is to move the mails as quickly and efficiently as possible. Second job is to protect revenue, and I'm sure every employee has been trained to obliterate stamps that could be reused.
While the cancels look quite nice, they are very light, and in the eyes of a diligent postal worker, could be cleaned up and reused. So the worker did the right thing by disfiguring them so they couldn't be used to scam the post office out of revenue. There's something like 25 pounds worth of postage there!
The marking could have been done by a route carrier who would not have a cancellation device, or someone who grabbed what was handy. The system cannot slow itself down to perfectly hand cancel and protect every stamp for the less than 1% of people who collect stamps. The vast majority of used postage is thrown away after use.
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A few weeks ago I sent a Printed Papers package to the States from UK with 8 commemorative stamps on it and none of them were cancelled - and I specially wanted them stamped.
The stamps have now been returned to me and fortunately I've a stamp dealer friend who obliges by taking items to his village PO who cancel them.
Incidentally, I always pay surface postage to the States for non-urgent mail and only rarely does it not go by air.
Sometimes I take uncancelled envelopes to my local main PO but reception varies from 'I'm not allowed to do it', to willing agreement, to 'I'm a stamp collector and if I already have the stamp I soak it off and use it again' (!!!).
At a village PO I was treated like a near criminal trying to do something illegal.
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I don't collect stamps any more, but I save them for kids that do! This happened to be a mailing from the Indiana Postal History Society!
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Since this thread started, I've been noticing the grand amount of my philatelic incoming mail that is coming without postmarks. The latest piece even had a postal meter making up extra postage, but no marks at all on the stamps!
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I've got to stop reading threads like this one. OUCH !!!
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This cover arrived in Vancouver this week from Bulgaria. No further comment is necessary.
Bob
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@Doug,
Of course. I once had to spend half an hour bathing a cover in lighter fluid to remove a similar label on an exceptionally desirable cover from Tahiti. But in this case there's the matter of the felt pen marks....
Bob
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There was a recent letter in The American Philatelist where a Canadian collector stated that he found that he could remove those labels when heating them up with a hair dryer. He said that the label would come off a little bit at a time.
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Would the solvent used to remove self adhesives not work "Bestine or UnDo". May be worth a try.
Vic
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Some of the covers I've seen that have pen markings, such as the one from the postal history society, have the stamps put on in such a slipshod fashion I'm sure the post office wasn't even remotely thinking that they were intended to be saved or required any kind of special attention. Maybe if the stamps were put on with some care the PO might postmark it properly. Then again, maybe not.
Geoff
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I'm finding just the opposite. The mail I get from dealers with old stamps on them don't seem to get cancelled. Often these are larger thick envelopes with covers inside. Yours looks like the first clerk just cancelled that one top stamp for the record and was afraid to marr the rest of them.. then a second clerk fixed that!
Stop giving your mailman Sharpies for Christmas!
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Here is another post office disaster I received in the mail yesterday.
I know that Canada Post, Royal Mail, USPO, and other countries are notorious for not cancelling their mail, which is bad enough, but, I hate it when they pen cancel stamps. I am not sure if this was done here in Canada on receiving, or by the Royal Post Office. Either way, the stamps are now useless to me. It would have been a new commemorative stamp plus a new denomination for my Machin Heads, but, I can't add these to my collection.
Chimo
Bujutsu
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Hi Everyone;
I read in another thread that postal employees are only required to make the stamps un-reusable
and are not responsible for providing nice looking cancels that meet our fussy whims. Remember
most postal employees do not collect stamps and probably feel we are a bit strange and weird for
doing so.
I don't like those kind of cancels either, but I also don't like when I want to be outdoors and it
rains either.
Just chillin'....
TuskenRaider
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Once in a while the planets align and the Post office employees fall asleep.
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Save 'em for me! Pen cancel doesn't bother me at all.
Meanwhile, I got a nice souvenir sheet on an envelope from Midge1 in Canada with no cancellation on it at all. My lucky day? Thanks Midge!
Chris
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Well I received five UK posted envelopes today, of which three were uncancelled (and one of those was recorded mail). None had a pen strike through them though.
Unlike the rain, which nature is in control of, post office employees don't have that excuse.
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Granted, they are required to make a stamp unusable again, but, this is something that certainly is not appealing. On another note, all the post office entities want us to buy their new products and issues. If they keep cancelling, er, should I say destroy them, this way, I can't see it worth my while.
My opinion of course.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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12 Jun 2015
12:41:37am
re: Post Office Strikes Again
I got one from Bobby just before my trip and they jammed it into my post box which ruined a number of stamps on it including the Canada expo 87 (I think it was) - I have the Canadian s/s for that but I didn't even know a matching US sheet existed so I was excited to see it. I'll keep it but it's not in the type of condition that I would place with its mate in my collection
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
There is probably a common theme with a lot of 'oversized' envelopes. If it will not go through the machine sorter, it is at the mercy of whoever handles it manually. Here in the UK, even using pre-franked recorded/registered post does not guarantee a hand cancelled envelope; I received one just this week.
I have been told (by those that know the UK Post Office rules), if one affixes stamps to a value just under the required rate and hand it over the counter, the clerk makes up the deficit with a Horizon label. The clerk is then supposed to cancel the article by hand.
I shall have to try this at the next opportunity.
Perhaps someone has used this method, or has received mail that confirms this.
Login to Like
this post
12:14:54pm
re: Post Office Strikes Again
ALL mail handed over the counter at post offices ( other than parcels ) should have the cancel applied at the counter. The only stuff that should possibly get no cancel is that put through the normal postbox which might miss the franking machine.
The problem these days is the peanut and monkey syndrome ( you pay peanuts you get monkeys !). So many employees these days - not just in the Post Office - are either on minimum wage,zero hour contracts or are agency staff being used for 2 days here and 3 days with a different employer every week - and thus are intellectually and morally disconnected from their job. Additionally so many postal outlets are these days other businesses such as newsagents or supermarkets- and the staff just do not get the training required to do what is basically much more complex than serving at a supermarket till ( with all due respect to my wife who did such a job). Unless staff motivation can be improved these problems will continue, and revenue will be lost.
I spent several years in logistics ( and after all moving mail is not so different to moving anything else ), and all logistics operators have similar staff problems - I could tell you stories which would make you hair curl. The problem is that top management in the Ivory Tower have no perception in how much difficulty the local manager has in implementing their decision made so far from the operation that it may as well be on another planet. When it came to my retirement the management were most reluctant for me to go - I could have almost have made my own decision as to my hours,had I chosen to remain.
I don't flatter myself that I was the best worker in the world, but it was the prospect of having to replace one of the last full time worker with yet another agency worker that was the problem. So many agency workers had restrictions on what they were permitted to do ( certain programmes on the computer, forklift driving etc) and yet the fulltime workers with those capabilities were not to be replaced.
Management in general ( and top management in big companies in particular ) are so disconnected from reality, that it is a miracle that the companies survive,particularly in the realms of Quality Control. There should be a Zero Tolerance of poor quality- however Managers presuppose a given percentage or error ( and it is usually far more than the poor customer realises), and provided that these are within tolerances no one gives a damn. When I started work EVERY complaint was subject to investigation - now the complainant is a nuisance ( well they were then but no one was allowed to think it ! ).
The big operators are now so cost-efficient that any company that does the job properly gets bought out or goes bust, and the low cost operators get the business - and as customers we want the cheapest price - so we really have no right to complain - we get what we deserve !
Malcolm
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Hi malcolm197;
I don't know where you are getting your info about postal worker's pay, or maybe it is very different at
the Royal Post.
Several months ago I read a different thread where everyone was playing their tiny violins and
lamenting the terrible fate of being postal clerks. So I decided to set the record straight once-and-for-all.
I looked up on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, a US Federal office in Washington D.C. Guess what I
found out? Pay scale for postal clerks and delivery route drivers was $27.00 an hour.
Nuff said.
Just not feelin' their pain....
TuskenRaider
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.
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re: Post Office Strikes Again
and that alone is $56,160. My wife's brother has 30 years in working at a USPS sorting center. Last I checked he sat at a console sorting envelopes with zip codes the machines couldn't read. He is an overtime hound and no doubt makes much more than that.
Still he will do the tiny violin concerto that he's underpaid and management is out to get him, they have this big union tension going.
Login to Like
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05:56:59am
re: Post Office Strikes Again
I think that fulltime workers with some service in are not too badly paid but many delivery staff have to work 6 days to reach basic full time hours.
However the point I was trying to make is that post office sales agencies ( as opposed to Post Offices proper) do not necessarily pay post office rates, but supermarket/corner shop rates which are generally national Minimum Wage or slightly above, and temporary workers hired through Employment Agencies are also not well paid. Many of these workers are female workers with school-age children working for pin-money. In fairness many of these workers are committed and good at the job, but the system is not conducive to the employment of all the best workers available. Also you have to look at the remuneration available elsewhere for the calibre of workers you wish to employ, and subject to being able to secuure employment ( and in this country the economy is making more jobs available) the rewards are often more elsewhere.
Malcolm
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12:31:43pm
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Bujutsu - if you feel bad, how do you think I feel after seeing this !
Notice that these were all nicely cancelled with light circular postmarks prior to having the pen marks added.
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re: Post Office Strikes Again
Wow....
That's one of the worst I've seen yet....
Randy
1 Member
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re: Post Office Strikes Again
Jimjung, you have my sympathy.
There really isn't any excuse for that.
The post offices have the equipment to cancel the stamps properly, so, why don't they use them? It is also quicker to use a clear hand stamp instead of pen and magic markers. At the very least, the post office entities need training on public relations.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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Login to Like.
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re: Post Office Strikes Again
"There really isn't any excuse for that."
Yea, there is. The main function of the post office is to move the mails as quickly and efficiently as possible. Second job is to protect revenue, and I'm sure every employee has been trained to obliterate stamps that could be reused.
While the cancels look quite nice, they are very light, and in the eyes of a diligent postal worker, could be cleaned up and reused. So the worker did the right thing by disfiguring them so they couldn't be used to scam the post office out of revenue. There's something like 25 pounds worth of postage there!
The marking could have been done by a route carrier who would not have a cancellation device, or someone who grabbed what was handy. The system cannot slow itself down to perfectly hand cancel and protect every stamp for the less than 1% of people who collect stamps. The vast majority of used postage is thrown away after use.
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Login to Like.
05:29:26pm
re: Post Office Strikes Again
A few weeks ago I sent a Printed Papers package to the States from UK with 8 commemorative stamps on it and none of them were cancelled - and I specially wanted them stamped.
The stamps have now been returned to me and fortunately I've a stamp dealer friend who obliges by taking items to his village PO who cancel them.
Incidentally, I always pay surface postage to the States for non-urgent mail and only rarely does it not go by air.
Sometimes I take uncancelled envelopes to my local main PO but reception varies from 'I'm not allowed to do it', to willing agreement, to 'I'm a stamp collector and if I already have the stamp I soak it off and use it again' (!!!).
At a village PO I was treated like a near criminal trying to do something illegal.
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
I don't collect stamps any more, but I save them for kids that do! This happened to be a mailing from the Indiana Postal History Society!
Login to Like
this post
Approvals
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Since this thread started, I've been noticing the grand amount of my philatelic incoming mail that is coming without postmarks. The latest piece even had a postal meter making up extra postage, but no marks at all on the stamps!
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
I've got to stop reading threads like this one. OUCH !!!
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
This cover arrived in Vancouver this week from Bulgaria. No further comment is necessary.
Bob
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
@Doug,
Of course. I once had to spend half an hour bathing a cover in lighter fluid to remove a similar label on an exceptionally desirable cover from Tahiti. But in this case there's the matter of the felt pen marks....
Bob
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
There was a recent letter in The American Philatelist where a Canadian collector stated that he found that he could remove those labels when heating them up with a hair dryer. He said that the label would come off a little bit at a time.
Login to Like
this post
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Would the solvent used to remove self adhesives not work "Bestine or UnDo". May be worth a try.
Vic
Login to Like
this post
07:23:28pm
re: Post Office Strikes Again
Some of the covers I've seen that have pen markings, such as the one from the postal history society, have the stamps put on in such a slipshod fashion I'm sure the post office wasn't even remotely thinking that they were intended to be saved or required any kind of special attention. Maybe if the stamps were put on with some care the PO might postmark it properly. Then again, maybe not.
Geoff
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this post
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re: Post Office Strikes Again
I'm finding just the opposite. The mail I get from dealers with old stamps on them don't seem to get cancelled. Often these are larger thick envelopes with covers inside. Yours looks like the first clerk just cancelled that one top stamp for the record and was afraid to marr the rest of them.. then a second clerk fixed that!
Stop giving your mailman Sharpies for Christmas!
Login to Like
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