AIBU to ask why the new stamps of detachable barcodes if they don’t want you to detach them before sending?

[Blah1881]

I’m so pissed off because I’ve just sent money in a card to a relative using the new stamp which I bought at a supermarket. Nowhere on the stamp book packaging did it say ‘do not detach barcode) so I assumed it was something I should hang on to so I could track the letter. Now I learn that you have to keep the barcode on if the stamp is to be considered valid- aaargh! Why serrate the edge between the stamp and barcode if they don’t want you to detach it? Why no instructions on the bloody packaging?! Surely I am not alone in being caught out by this? AIBU?

@melj1213 Ah, thanks. As i thought.

I'll let her know but she won't believe me. It'll take someone having to pay to receive one of her letters before she stops.
😂

I had some "new" stamps when they were first introduced and there seemed to be a proper perforation between the stamp and the code but I just assumed that it was to stop people reusing them - you put them on a letter as one sticker but if you then tried to remove the stamp to reuse it then it would separate from the barcode at the perforation and would then be unusable as the machine would know it had been tampered with (the same way that the "old" stamps have those tabs in the middle that can rip if you try to remove them)

I recently had to buy some more and there is no actual perforation now, just a wavy line on the front separating the stamp from the code, so I just assumed that they had improved the system and no longer needed the added measure of the two parts physically separating if people try to reuse them.

Thing is, all the news releases round the time they were issued explicitly say it's a simulated perforation.

it's really odd! I mean, an actual perforation is not something you imagine is it?

I wonder if the perforated ones were the prototype ones they had a test run with? I can't find any mention of them online though.

No, the trial was explicitly done with simulated perforations as I mentioned above.

If there were perforated ones in circulation it'd be all over the DailyFail web.

But it isn't something you'd just imagine is it, so where has the memory come from?

it's weird.

The stamps I had were absolutely 100% perforated. I had to peel both bits off separately and stick them separately. I bought them, went to the car and used them so it wasn't even like anyone had messed about with them either.

The same place as Walkers salt and vinegar crisps packet change.

Crisp packet colour change?

Also the mass belief that Duran Duran's Rio album cover had an 80s design of pastel coloured shapes and lines. (Can't find link to that, but it was discussed somewhere fairly recently!)

My FIL sent me a birthday card/voucher with just the stamp part, didn’t realise he was supposed to attach both parts. He got the stamps directly from the post office. There’s no way he tore a stamp in half. (The card didn’t make it )

it's not the same as either of those though as this is so recent.

I'm appalled that people can't remember what the cover of Rio looked like though. Shocking.

I literally googled this due to same confusion arising from serration. Why on earth? Thank you fr clarifying 😃