Pricewatch reader queries: The mystery of the unbuyable stamps

A reader called Brendan contacted us with a bizarre stamp story:

“I went in to Blackrock post office this afternoon to buy a stamp,” he writes. “I like to buy 10 at a time as I hate going to the post office with their queues and often surly staff. I asked how much a stamp was, and she said 68 cent. I asked if there was a price increase due, and she said that they were going up to 70 cent on July 1st.”

So rather than buy the cheaper 68-cent stamp, he thought “damn the expense” and asked for 10 of the 70-cent stamps. My time queuing is well worth the extra 20 cent. The fun began.”

It certainly did. In the mail he sent to us, he reproduced his memory of the dialogue he had with the staff member verbatim. It is worth repeating.

“We are not allowed to sell them until July 1st.”

“I don’t want the new stamp, I just want any 70-cent stamps.”

“Sorry, we can only sell you 68-cent stamps.”

“Okay, can I have 10 68-cent stamps and 10 two-cent stamps?”

“No, we are not allowed sell you two-cent stamps before July 1st.”

“Okay, can I have 20 35-cent stamps please.”

“What do you want them for?”

“I want them for my stock”

“No, you can’t have them.”

So poor Brendan ended up buying 10 of the 68-cent stamps. Then “I went down the road to Ballsbridge post office. Locked my bike. Queued up again and asked for eight two-cent stamps. ‘Certainly, sir. Here you are.’

“There might be a good reason for this, but damned if I can think what it might be.”

We contacted An Post. A spokeswoman apologised for our reader's experience. "It shouldn't have been like that and Brendan should have been sold 70-cent stamps, as he requested. We will ensure that our post offices are clear on this," she said.

She said the situation with the small denomination wasn’t so simple. “A number of professional fraudsters have been caught attempting to pass off single-digit denomination stamps as higher-value postage by using various techniques such as doctoring and so on. As a result, we have been advised to restrict sale of low-value stamps and so we insist that customers buy them at the time of posting. We also lift this restriction for a number of weeks following any price change. We are not being awkward, it’s simply a necessary security precaution as stamps are classified as legal tender.”

The spokeswoman then apologised for the “inconvenience, time and extra tyre rubber we caused him”.

Oh, to have a mortgage in Spain instead of Ireland

Seoirse O’Toole sent us an observation: “How we are paying on the double for our Irish banking industry’s resuscitation! As you will see, Spanish bank CajaSur is offering a fixed mortgage rate of just 2.5 per cent, while variable rates can be had for not much more than 1 per cent. This does not compare to Ireland, where variable rates hover around 4 per cent and fixed rates are marginally less.”

Last month the Central Bank published some mortgage pricing research, which confirmed that standard variable rates here are high. The average is 4.26 per cent, compared with just over 2.5 per cent on average across Europe. The report does point out, however, that when tracker loans are added to the equation, the average rate here on all mortgage borrowings is roughly in line with Europe.

Low-cost trackers, however, are only one reason why standard variable rates are high here. Another is the absence of any real competition, with most international banks having fled when the crisis hit. A third reason is the credit risk here and the length of time it takes a bank to get hold of a house when a mortgage deal goes bad.