UK Royal Mail stamps on Linux lovers

In their ongoing quest to shut down post offices offer a great customer experience, the UK’s Royal Mail has been encouraging visitors to their website to print their own postage-paid labels. As the system is browser based, delivering the labels as pdfs, even hippy Linux lovers were able to use the service to post their Christmas prezzies around the world.

This standards compliance was too good to last. Following an upgrade, the labels now feature a big ‘Sample’ marker when viewed on screen: “‘Sample’ will not appear when printed”. Unfortunately for Linux lovers, common software like evince and xpdf doesn’t understand the Royal Mail’s game, and prints labels complete with ‘Sample’ markings - very expensive sticky waste paper.

Royal Mail chiefs have refused to regress the software ‘upgrade’, claiming that “The change to add the word ‘Sample’ to the screen was taken as a security measure as it was decided that screen prints of the postage impression could pose a risk of fraud.”

The fact that the ‘protection’ can be bypassed simply by clicking the ‘print to file’ box on Adobe Reader appears to have passed them by.

Possibly loss of face is a bigger issue for the Royal Mail than loss of business.