Italy Globepostalservice Gps

I received a post card from Florence Italy a few weeks ago with this stamp on it.




Turns out this Globepostalservice (GPS) is a private mail carrier which is neither cheap nor fast.

Apparently lots of shops are selling these to unsuspecting tourist who believe they are using regular Italian Postal Service.

Here are a couple of links, one to the GPS site

http://www.globepostalservice.com/

and the other to a tripadvisor site where tourist complain about GPS

http://www.tripadvisor.ca/ShowTopic...S-Italy.html

Here is one such complaint.

I just received a card from my parents posted in Siena using GPS, which had taken over a month,
compared to 3-4 days with normal Italian post.
These private operators are a complete menace- they clearly pay commission to souvenir shops to sell
their stamps and then they deliver the cards very late, if at all.
My parents were not even told that the stamp they were sold was GPS,
nor that it was supposed to be posted in a GPS box.

Mine also took about a month to get here.

Has anyone else received one of these in the mail?

check out this earlier topic:

https://goscf.com/t/36098&SearchTerms=gps,stamps

When I was in Venice a few years ago, this was the only sort of stamp the hotel gift shop sold for overseas mail.