u/AChinmay

I am sure this has been asked many times, but I have never used ordinary post. I have recently started writing letters and this is the first time I am using India Post Ordinary mail service. The reason I am asking is that I have seen a few posts saying that letters are not delivered or they get lost or get delayed for a long time. What is your experience about this? Is there anything I should know about this or take any precaution?

So yesterday, I visited my post office HO for some stamps and the person showed me a special stamp. It was a colourful circular shaped paper with 5 square stamps cut out in it. Each of those 5 stamps had value of Rs 55 written on them. The executive said that the whole circular stamp costs 55 and if I want to use it, I have to attach all 5 stamps to the letter/envelope.

Is this true, or is the value of each stamp is 55 and in total the value of whole circular paper in which these 5 stamps are is 275? The reason I am asking is because no one in the post office in my city knows anything about ordinary post. The oldest person over there has been working for the last 10 years and he has never seen anyone use ordinary post.