On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 20:12:22 +0100, "Peter Masson"
wrote:


"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
et...

Apparently there's a something on the stamps - I can't remember the words
but some smarty pants here will insert them. Photo something perhaps ...
I
can't be bothered raking through the remaining grey cells :-)

If there are any stamps which display this 'code' on an envelope or packet
it will make the whole sum of the stamps, even if all the others are coded
as 1st class, be shunted into the 2nd class system.

At least, that's what I was told by Royal Mail.

If you hold stamps up so that light is reflected off them you can detect a
narrow band on 2nd class, and a broad band on others. However AIUI if the
sorting machinery, which uses this band of whatever it is to turn envelopes
the right way up, detects one 2nd class stamp only it treats the item as 2nd
class, but if it detects a broad band, or more than one stamp, it treats it
as 1st class.

IIRC you're looking at the wrong bit on the 1st class stamp. Your
"broad band" is the space between the two bands, more easily seen if
you compare a strip of 1st class with a strip of 2nd class where the
former has a dull band down each side (or straddling two adjacent
stamps IYSWIM) and the latter has the dull band down the middle.
--
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Alba gu brath |//___\\|