Caithness post offices close as system crashes
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POST offices in Caithness were forced to shut when a malfunction in the national system meant that they were unable to offer services to customers.
Hundreds of branches throughout the country had to close for a time during Monday morning when the Post Office’s banking line system crashed.
The service, which provides assistance to customers who wish to make payments via credit cards or access their savings through the Post Office, suffered a system overload due to a high volume of customers at 11am.
The malfunction only took a short time to fix and all post offices were able to open by 1pm.
Thurso Post Office manager Wendy Meiklejohn said that December is the busiest time of the year but the closure did not have too much of an impact.
“It was unfortunate that the system crash happened during the festive period, as the branch has been kept constantly busy this month,” she said.
“We quickly found out that the whole network was down and we took the decision to close the post office at 1pm. We were able to reopen after 30 minutes.”
Wick Post Office postmaster Ronnie Risbridger said that he was forced to shut the office for an hour between 11.30am and 12.30pm while the issue was being resolved.
He also said that the branch is experiencing its biggest volume of customers so far this year, with people sending Christmas cards and parcels.
“We were experiencing problems on and off throughout the morning with the banking line system,” he said.
“It was just a case of too many people were using the service at the same time and the system couldn’t cope.
“We took the decision to close the branch but thankfully we weren’t shut for too long and were able to open our doors to customers quickly.
“We were particularly busy when we were forced to closed, which was very frustrating for us.
“There has been no problem with the system since it was fixed and we have been able to offer customers our full range of services.”
Network and Sales Director, Kevin Gilliland said that he appreciated the problem could not have happened at a worse time of the year, but reassured customers that the issue had been resolved.
“We are very sorry for the inconvenience this problem has caused customers,” he said. “We know how important the Post Office is to our customers at all times, but ?especially at Christmas.”
Last postimg dates for Christmas
Saturday, December 17: second class
Tuesday, December 20: first class
Wednesday, December 21: Parcelforce express 48
Thursday, December 22: Parcelforce express 24
