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Outrage after residents pay to collect leaflets from Winchester City Council candidate who used fake stamps

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TrueBlueTerrier
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Outrage after residents pay to collect leaflets from Winchester City Council candidate who used fake stamps

Post by TrueBlueTerrier »

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/201060 ... ke-stamps/

RESIDENTS in Wickham have been left unimpressed and out of pocket after a candidate sent them his election material in the post using fake stamps.

The fake stamps were bought on Amazon and have left Winchester City Council candidate George Madgwick facing a bill of hundreds of pounds and the potential for ‘lost votes’ after their use was refused by Royal Mail.

About 200 letters promoting him were sent to postal voters in Portsmouth as well as in the Meon Valley using the first class stamps.

Recipients were asked to pay £2.50 in unpaid postage fees to unknowingly collect the pamphlets.

Some have taken to social media to share their disapproval.

A member of Facebook group Wickham - A Hampshire Community said: "Lots of Wickham residents have had this. Won't be getting my vote."

Another added: "Doesn't promote confidence."

Another said: "Do not pay! I had one too! Sadly I paid £2.50 for the privilege of a pamphlet from this joker."

Mr Madgwick, a businessman who runs restaurants in Knowle and Cosham, has already attracted attention this election as he has been criticised for standing in two wards.

He is a current serving councillor in Paulsgrove for Portsmouth City Council but is now standing for election in the neighbouring Wickham and Southwick ward for Winchester City Council.

However, he was criticised by other candidates when he said that Paulsgrove would remain his priority if elected.

Mr Madgwick said the fake stamps had not been spotted when they were used as part of a group effort by the Portsmouth Independents Party to post more than 1,000 letters ahead of the postal voting deadline.


Talking to the Local Democracy Service, he said: "They were bought on Amazon. The listing had good reviews and as far as we could tell, they were perfectly legitimate. They were even more expensive than they would have been at the Post Office.

"After we first noticed the issue we noticed there had been complaints in February that they were selling fakes and yet they were not removed.

"We contacted Amazon and I’ve been less than impressed with their response."

The stamps are still listed for sale by the retail giant with a rating of 4.6 stars out of five, although the majority of recent reviews raise issues with their legitimacy.

A spokesman for Amazon said the stamps had now been taken down from its website.

"The authenticity of products on our store is a top priority," they said. "We encourage customers with concerns to report them to us so that we can investigate and take action.

"Fewer than 0.01 per cent of all products sold on Amazon receive a counterfeit complaint but we won’t rest until that number is zero. The product in question has been removed and we have taken action against the seller."

The candidates in Southwick & Wickham for the May 5 election are:

Neil Cutler (Lib Dem)

George Madgwick (independent)

Sandy Phillips-Lee (Conservative)

Paul Sony (Labour)

Julia Stolle (Green Party)
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Woody Guthrie
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Re: Outrage after residents pay to collect leaflets from Winchester City Council candidate who used fake stamps

Post by Woody Guthrie »

It does make you question the policy of recovering the postage from the recipient in situations like this.

I can understand with isolated incidents where trying to recover the cost of one stamp from a sender might be prohibitively expensive and difficult to investigate but this was a fraudulent bulk posting from one easy to identify sender so when it became obvious the stamps were fraudulent why not stop the whole lot in transit and bill the sender for costs plus a fine?
Only dead fish follow the current
tractorboy2
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Re: Outrage after residents pay to collect leaflets from Winchester City Council candidate who used fake stamps

Post by tractorboy2 »

I don't believe he paid more for them , than he would have from the local post office either.
logicalthinker
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Re: Outrage after residents pay to collect leaflets from Winchester City Council candidate who used fake stamps

Post by logicalthinker »

It is a fact that most (if not all) postage stamps for sale on Amazon and eBay are counterfeit or washed.

I just did a quick search on eBay and the top listing is for sheets of 50 large letter first class stamps for £28.49, and they've already sold 412 sheets. That's a saving of £44.01 per sheet on the normal price, at a cost of nearly £30K to Royal Mail on the total value. And that's just one listing. Looking at the eBay 'sold' listings for cheap stamps in the past 12 months, I'd say the cost to RM is at least £1.2million annually. Multiply that by all the other selling platforms and that's a big chunk of money to be losing from your bottom line profit.

The only giveaway (to the naked eye) that they are counterfeit is the absence of phosphor bands, but they have two stripes of UV reactive ink instead to try and fool the detection. If you look at them under a UV lamp the stripes will glow.

If you report these listings to eBay as counterfeit they never remove them. Even if you report them to Royal Mail they never get removed. I believe the counterfeit stamps are printed overseas and sold in bulk through online clearance auctions as 'liquidated stock' or some other equally superficial reason as to why so many stamps are being sold for such little money.

Hopefully when stamps have to be the barcoded version it will put a stop to it.
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Re: Outrage after residents pay to collect leaflets from Winchester City Council candidate who used fake stamps

Post by Lounge Lizard »

tractorboy2 wrote:
04 May 2022, 07:35
I don't believe he paid more for them , than he would have from the local post office either.
If he was daft enough to do that he didn't deserve to be elected.
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