Stamps Real or not

[hasenut-0]

Here I have bought some stamps pic below. I want to know if they are real or not. The barcode and stamp itself seems legit and the barcode scanner in the Royal Mail app confirms this. My problem is that it came in a yellow paper that I have never seen any Royal Mail stamps come in. Somebody help.

[tressygirl]

If you bought them from China then probably not.

The only people to verify them is your Postie o at the Post Ofice.

If you find they are fake,  proceed this way:

You have received an item not as described,  so you are guaranteed a full refund under eBay's 30 day MBG,  Money Back Guarantee policy,  if you claim within 30 days of the item's last estimated date for delivery.

You then go right of the item in your Purchase History,  and from More Actions select Return this item,  selecting the reason...  Item Not as Described.

The seller has 3 days to accept the case,  if they don't ,  you need to  escalate on day 4,  or within 30 days,  and eBay will step in and force the refund.

If the seller wants the item back first,  they need to pay for a fully tracked return postage.  On receipt of their item they have 48 hours to refund you.  Again,  if they don't,  you escalate the case.

Do not close the case early for any excuse or promise the seller may give,  and do not forget to escalate.

If it is a Chinese seller stand for no nonsense that they have to be returned to China at your cost.  Check the location of the item on the listing,  it'll probably say UK,  that is where they are sent back to if the seller requires,  and at their own cost.

@hasenut-0 

[smashi26]

Report this as fraud to Ebay. They won't pull the listing though they never do. They protect fraudsters on this platform. Report it to Trading Standards.

[fotherbale]

Difficult to tell anything from your pic - it needs a good clear scan of the sheet or part of the sheet to get anywhere, and perhaps photograph taken at an oblique angle which can show up differences in the type of print for different parts of the stamp which can sometimes be a give away.  

There are various things to look for, but as time goes on and the Chinese counterfeiters have better and better resources available to print fakes and they get better at it they become increasingly hard to spot. 

The important thing to note is that thus far the most usual way for the fakes to be printed is by copying a genuine sheet, so the 2d barcodes will read as a genuine stamp - you can pick them out if you buy more than one sheet or book of stamps because each sheet will be identical and any stamp in a particular position on the sheet will have an identical barcode to that on every other stamp located in the same position on the other sheet(s).  Obviously, genuine sheets will have a different barcode for the stamps in the same place on different sheets because each individual stamp has a unique barcode.

It was pretty much certain that until a couple of years ago almost all the GB current stamps for sale on ebay were counterfeits - the Chinese are printing them and sending them here by the palletfull.  However, since RM have demonetised the earlier non-barcoded definitive stamps, and started their 'swapout' program for exchanginging unused demonitised non barcoded definitives, most stamp dealers have taken the opportunity to clear what were huge stocks of mint unused non-barcoded stamps and many have now got huge stocks of up to date barcoded stamps which many are now selling at a discount on ebay. 

It is a minefield to the average person and the only advice I can give is to try to ensure that you are buying these genuine swapout supplied stamps from a reputable philatelic dealer.    Buying from any other source, you are highly likely to be buying counterfeits.

As is often said on these boards, ebay don't seem to take action against counterfeits of anything anymore (not sure whether they ever did other than through VERO), and a good many philatelists and philatelic dealers have repeatedly reported very obvious and well known fakes to ebay, and have become very frustrated with the lack of response.

[wyntersemporium]

 Not all Chinese though a husband and wife team from Birmingham had a backyard shed full of made up British stamps which they made by using some kind of tool. 
this was years ago as my sister was one of the idiots that bought the stamps from him to use for sending out her eBay items. 
the fraud squad got in touch with her to appear at court but she give them a document saying how long she bought them from eBay.

[fotherbale]

Years ago, yes, quite probably.   Nowadays, the counterfeits are likely to be all Chinese. Any that are actually faked here are likely to be insignificant and I don't know of any recent UK (or Europe) printed fake GB stamps.  All the ones flagged up on philatelic websites in recent years have come from China (in huge quantities).