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Comment by Ajay-p | Hacker News Reader

It is strange that a person would receive a fine for receiving a letter with a "counterfeit" stamp. That would make for a very nasty revenge operation - send your worst enemy letters with counterfeit stamps to cause them to incur a five pound fine.

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From the article, sounds like the recipient can pay the fine and get the mail, or not pay the fine and not get the mail. Maybe it'll get returned to sender, for insufficient postage? Maybe it'll be destroyed?

It's unlikely that it will be returned to sender. In the UK it is uncommon to write the senders address on the mail piece, and even if a sender address is procided, how do you know that the sender information is accurate?

next level operation:

put your enemies' address as sender (not legal advice)

It is not a fine. It is a fee for optional delivery.

Ugh. It's kind of blackmail then. :(

"Pay us $ (even though legally you don't have to), otherwise we'll be keeping and/or destroying your stuff".

Technically not blackmail.

Extortion :)

It may depend on what's in that envelope.

True, but no competant blackmailer would put the threat beind a paywall :)

Ahhh, good point. :)

You don't have to pay it. It's only payable if you want to receive the letter.

The problem is that there is no way of knowing what the letter is. All you get is a slip through your door saying an item of mail is waiting for you and has a £5 fee to pay. If you're like me, you pay the fee, fearful that it might be something important.

At my local depot they allow you to see what the item is before you decide to pay or not.

Yeah it could be a speeding fine caused by a faulty detector after all!

same goes for bad checks, the person cashing it pays a returned check fee!

You pay the fine if want the post. You don't legally have to pay. Presumably it works like this because they can't always identify who sent the letter.

> Presumably it works like this because they can't always identify who sent the letter.

Not to mention that this way targets the person that is far more likely to pay, and far less likely to challenge a false counterfeit charge.

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