A Sampford Courtenay resident has raised concerns over the quality of Royal Mail’s customer service after waiting weeks for new stamps to arrive.

Kim Allsebrook grew upset after she was unable to reach anyone in customer service when she contacted Royal Mail to inquire when she might receive her new stamps as part of Royal Mail’s Stamp Swap scheme, a free service to allow customers to swap their stamps for the new barcoded style ones.

She said: ‘I sent my old stamps back on October 10 and waited for weeks to get anything back.

‘It was so difficult to get hold of customer services. I tried email and Twitter and had a 30 minute wait on the phone, but they immediately cut me off after 30 minutes. Then they had the cheek to give me an automated message asking for feedback — I told them what I thought.

‘I even tried to fill in the online form but it asked for my reference number. I didn’t have a reference number so I couldn’t contact them.

‘If I had realised it would be this way I would never have done it.’

Ms Allsebrook finally received her stamps last week after nearly a month’s wait despite the Royal Mail informing customers that it aims to process their stamps within seven days.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: ‘We are very pleased that this customer has now received her new stamps.

‘We apologise to any customers experiencing a delay in receiving their barcoded stamps. We are increasing the number of staff in our fulfilment team to speed up processing so that they can respond as quickly as possible.

‘While we aim to process requests in seven days, we thank any customers waiting for longer than this for their patience.’

Royal Mail set up the Stamp Swap scheme after it announced that it would be adding barcodes to regular stamps, including Christmas stamps, in order to introduce new security features and modernise the postal system.

The scheme opened on March 31 this year to enable people to change old stamps without any extra cost.

From January 31, 2023, stamps without barcodes will no longer be valid and any postage with non-barcoded stamps will be treated as if there is insufficient postage on an item.

However Royal Mail will not barcode special issue stamps — those printed to commemorate a person or event and any non-barcoded Christmas stamp will remain valid as postage after January 31, 2023.

Royal Mail has not issued an end date to the Stamp Swap scheme so customers will continue to be able to swap their stamps after the end of January.