New Self-Service machines cominng to Post Offices sometime.

There are often reports of Post and Go (P&G) or Self-Service Kiosks (SSK) in Post Office branches being out of order and we know that these are second generation, the NCR machines taking over from Wincor-Nixdorf from 2014 onwards.

Earlier this year Post Office Ltd started the process for replacing those NCR machines.  A paper was published in the summer with details of the requirement and what the new machines would be required to do - which is more than they do now.  This is a 12-page document (plus more pages explaining the Crown Commercial Service Spark framework system).  Here are a few:

From this you will see that the system will still be required (of course) to link to the "Horizon back end". In some ways it would make sense for Fujitsu to be involved - at least then there would be no blaming the other contractor when things went wrong.  But given Futjitsu's record on the previous problems with Horizon it would seem to be unlikely that they would be involved even if they offered the best price.

Meanwhile Better Retailing suggests that there could be SSKs in non-Post Office stores.

The ‘family’ of devices would include ‘full service kiosks’ providing a wide range of basic post office services and other devices focused on areas such as parcel drop-off and returns.

The advert read: “All devices must have the potential to increase revenue by reducing queues, transaction times & cost to serve and to enhance the customer experience by improving access to particular products.”

While it said many of these would be made available to PO and its retailers on a purchase or lease basis, the document also included plans to deploy the devices “in new stand-alone non-PO locations”.  [My emphasis]

Although the article also says 

When asked to comment, PO said it has since abandoned the plans. A spokesperson told betterRetailing: “The ‘self-service devices’ notice was an early market engagement exercise that started in 2019, then stopped and was not taken any further."

the fact that they considered it means that the option is always there to be considered.

Implications for collectors

When new machines are introduced I think it is most likely that there will be off-site trials, followed by live installations in a few test areas so that the public can do the 'test to destruction' and find the bugs that the contractor has not thought of.  This will be folllowed by a more general roll-out.

It is inconceivable that the overprinting on the new stamps produced from these machines will be identical to existing NCR or RM machines, so we will have a repeat of the situation when NCR were replacing Wincor.  The saving grace for those with limited budgets, or the sad thing for those who like a great deal of variety, is that there will be few different stamp designs available.  

The only stamps which should be available (barring any unexpected new issues) would be Machin 1st & 2nd, Union Flag, and - at the appropriate time - Robin and winter (probably Winter Greenery).  If the people who have managed to create multiple varieties from the last set of changes (using old stock which should not exist) haven't used all that on the September changes, then they might be expected to use it up on tomorrow's changes and thus have nothing left to feed the new machines.

Certainly I would hope that nobody would try to suggest that, for instance, Birds, Farm Animals, and British flowers would be legally available from the new machines.

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