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I regularly get online notices that I can buy USPS “Forever” postage stamps at a big discount from private sellers. Since when does the post office discount its stamps to anyone? It seems like a scam, but it happens so often that I wonder if I am missing out on a good deal. —Skeptical
It’s often said that online scammers love to target old people who aren’t terribly savvy about modern technology. If that’s true, it’s hard to imagine a more perfectly self-selecting group of marks than that subset of Americans who still use stamps. (Though if anyone knows of a grift that involves hard candy and writing paper checks at the grocery store, I’m all ears.)
“Forever” stamps, for our younger readers, are stamps that are guaranteed to cover postage for a U.S. first-class letter forever, even if postal rates have gone up in the meantime. For example, a stamp purchased for 41 cents in 2006 (when that was what it cost to mail a first-class letter) is effectively worth 78 cents now. This is the explanation for how the stamps you’re seeing can be so heavily discounted.
Notice I said “this is the explanation,” not that that explanation is true. In this case, it’s what people who study social engineering call a “pretext,” meaning a rationale provided to explain how something that seems too good to be true is, actually, totally fine! Plenty of people on message boards are still all-in on this theory—hope springs eternal—but there’s no evidence for it.
The real explanation, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, is that stamps with discounts of 20% or more are simply counterfeits printed (recently) overseas. “Don’t fall for them,” begs their website. “It is ILLEGAL to purchase or use counterfeit postage.”
One wonders if the USPIS, like others who post in ALL CAPS, is masking feelings of powerlessness, because the sad truth is that counterfeit stamps are pretty hard to spot in the wild without time-consuming inspections involving expensive equipment, and one suspects that most users of counterfeit stamps are getting away with their crimes.
But that doesn’t mean you should join them! Hasn’t the post office suffered enough? That’s why I’m urging stamp users to do the right thing and buy real stamps. (It’s a long shot, but if there are any Americans left who’d respond to something as old fashioned as an appeal to conscience, it’s these guys.)
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
