I needed to buy some stamps today, since I needed to get my stuff in the mail today, and our post office is sadly closed. But we have a self-service kiosk! Hooray! I know it sells standard forever stamps, so I was hoping it would give me standard postcard stamps and small denomination stamps.
Instead it individually printed me a bunch of the little QR-style labels, AFTER giving me my regular stamps.
They still will work, obviously, but I feel very sad now. They won’t be very fun to get on a letter or card. Lesson learned, I suppose. I just needed somewhere to lament my postage mistakes.
“Given a choice, I wouldn’t touch postage labels with a 10 foot pole. Unfortunately in life it’s often a 12 foot pole that’s being shoved into your hands” (Seracker, 2023)
(Ha! All that APA formatting is coming back to me )
Why mistake? If the postage is correct, everything is fine. Posrcrossing is not a site for stamp collectors. Getting nice stamps is a nice addition, but it is not required, so nothing is wrong. And finally those postagr labels will not last forever anyway.
Just have some postcards professionally printed up with QR codes on the front. With the QR postage, you’ll have maxicards. (The most boring maxicards EVER).
Ah, no worries, I don’t! I know the world won’t end if someone receives them on a card, but I do like the fun of matching up stamps to the themes of cards or how I decorate them, or what another person might like, so getting those when I was expecting something different was a bit of a bummer!
Plus not all of these are solely for postcrossing-- I just enjoy ‘fun’ stamps in general
I was wondering about it recently. We can put any graphic on the qr online bought stamps in Poland, but still… I don’t think it’s much fun. Especially if you need to print it at home and your printer is not too good and the colors just look like… ugh. As a stamp-lover (I don’t collect them, although I just admire their beauty) I would say I’d rather someone send me the postcard later with real stamps than to send them earlier with the qr stamps.
Although I get it that in some cases it’s not that easy and after all it is about postcards and connecting people.
I got forever stamps, and then all other denominations of stamps were the QR stickers. The forever stamps were a bit unique as well, though-- they have a sliver of QR on the side, next to the stamp design.
@Budgie, I suggest that you consider buying stamps from the post office website, usps.com. There’s usually a very nice selection of commemorative forever stamps for letters, a couple of different kinds of postcard forever stamps, and small denominations in somewhat boring designs. There is a small postage/handling charge.
I did buy a few batches from the site-- it’s nice, especially if they have something I can’t get from my post office. Always a bit of a bummer when I realize I can’t have them day of, though. Cest la vie-- I cope.
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