Then the staff would ask the woman who is just over a metre tall to use these cardboard boxes so that she can reach the machine that couldn’t be passed directly to her.
Kiruna Stamell explains why see decided to sue the Post Office instead of continuing to make complaints about the current situation in Post Offices:
“I just wanted to be able to put my pin in like everybody else and post a letter and to withdraw cash, and I wasn’t able to reach the machine and it wasn’t able to be passed to me. So staff were improvising random steps out of cardboard boxes, and it was really quite humiliating. The design was less flexible than in other shops. In places like Boots, Tesco and my bank the pin machines are held in a holster. They also have a broader range of movement because they are on a flexible tether, so can be handed to the customer.”
Some might argue that writing a letter to the Post Office management requesting that the chip and pin machines should be mounted inside a plastic holster that comes with a flexible lead would have been enough to trigger the Post Office to make changes. But Ms. Stamell unfortunately had several negative experiences at different post office counters from UK during the past years as he encountered difficulties while paying for different services or goods. Only when she realized that things were not about to change unless she did something drastic did she decided to sue the Post Office. And now things are really changing. A Post Office spokeswoman declared the following: “We want to make it as easy as possible for the millions of people who visit our branches each week to access our services. We listen to our customers and are pleased to be making the improvements needed following the concerns raised by Kiruna Stammell.
As a result we are now introducing these changes to pin pads in the over 300 of our biggest branches in high streets and city centre. Pin pads are being adapted by introducing a flex which allows them to be removed from their holder”
