To think stamp barcodes will reduce the number of poison-pen letters.

[thirdlaw]

Royal Mail have introduced bar codes on their stamps. Each stamp is now uniquely identifiable. The barcodes don't contain any personal information, but it will presumably be possible to determine the location and time of purchase, assuming the retailer scans the barcode on the book of stamps when you buy it. Aibu to think this will make people think twice about sending poison pen letters, especially the ones that might be nasty enough to warrant police investigation?

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere - Royal Mail just say they are to improve security, with no detail on what they mean by that.

Are poison pen letters a massive issue these days?

I thought a lot of that stuff had moved online and you’re more likely to get a letter hand delivered.

Who the fuck sends poison pen letters 😂😂

Someone better inform Agatha Christie!

Are poison pen letters an issue in 2023?

We have Twitter, we don't need poison pen letters...

Serioudly though, I thought it was to reduce people re-using stamps!

Poison pen letters?

I’d expect it’s more for tracking things that go missing or threats to national security, like the anthrax thing that seemed to be big a few years ago.

😂

How's the weather in St Mary Mead today?

They will not make one jot of difference. Might tell you which postbox or sorting office, nothing else.

Ha ha ha

Who sends those now? I'd have thought social media and email has this covered quite effectively.

Poison pen letters 💀

Do you live in an episode of murder she wrote?

Do you think the police will trace the stams for that kind of thing?

Well you see officer, I was in the village store picking up my copy of Which Aristocrat when I saw Mrs Jones from the bakery. She bought a stamp! That's right. One of the new barcode ones! I just knew it must be her!

@Opos 😂😂😂😂😂

As you can't get the police out for burglaries these days I doubt they're going to spend time and manpower on poison pen letters, even if they can be tracked.

It might help theft of stamps? I often see on FB those huge sheets of stamps selling at massively reduced cost.

I mean who buys more than a book of 12 at the very most?

He can they trace you if you pay cash for the stamps? You could buy the stamps and wait a few months to use them, CCTV at the place they were sold will probably no longer be available by the time the police trace where the stamp was purchased from.

I mean who buys more than a book of 12 at the very most?

People who write poison pen letters? 🤷‍♂️

It will stop you being able to reuse stamps, which is unfortunate.

You'd just pay cash for the stamps to avoid any possibility of being traced.

😂

Have we time travelled back to the 1800’s who even uses the phrase ‘poison pen letters’ let alone sends them

Aww I want to live in a time of poison pen letters. So much more classy than a Facebook messenger post.

When I was a child, I thought Poison Pen Letters had poison in the ink that would kill the reader. I was a bit disappointed when I found out that was not the case.🧐

I went on a course last week and we needed to buy some materials. The man running the course told us where we could buy them locally, but also the address of a shop in London that we could send a cheque and a stamped addressed envelope to. I thought it was quite quaint. But blimey what a faff!