Postage costs increasing in April

[WendyS]

First Class and Second Class stamps are both increasing in price by 2p from the beginning of April.

Will it be legal for me to buy all my second class stamps for this year's Christmas cards at the old rate and still use them in December without having to add extra stamps to cover the additional postage (assuming the stamps are marked Second Class and have no monetary value on them?

Theoretically, if I'm sufficiently tight fisted (or prudent, depending on how you look at it), what's to stop me buying a large enough supply of stamps at the old Second Class rate to keep me going for a couple of years? Will the Post Office still have to honour them?

[Oneeyedvic]

Absolutely - buy as many as you can - but don't forget that you are pre-paying for a service so the saving may not be as great as you anticipate as it comes out of your cashflow.

[dzug]

Royal Mail will recognise any post-decimalistion stamp at the value printed on it. If that value is '2nd class' then that's what it will be accepted for, including the current value of 2nd class in making up larger amounts.. If it's '21p' then that's all it can be used for.

So yes, buy as many as you need. Bear in mind that what constitutes a second class letter may change - there has been talk of a size based system rather than a weight based one.