East Level 2
Well-Known Member
Did the money actually exist or was it just amounts created in error by the faulty Horizon software?
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Mr Bates vs the Post Office
- Thread starter bluethrunthru
- Start date
Tommy_Catons_Perm
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 22 Dec 2011
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- 2,523
It was included in the post office profits and then paid to Paula Vennells et al as part of their well earned bonus.Watching it now for first time (on ITV) - i think it's the 2nd one.
The union man tells the group about him seeing the computer wipe money from post offices.
Where did the money go? Was anyone pocketing it?
Elbow beards
Well-Known Member
This is raised in one of the later programmes.Watching it now for first time (on ITV) - i think it's the 2nd one.
The union man tells the group about him seeing the computer wipe money from post offices.
Where did the money go? Was anyone pocketing it?
They say all the money that the post masters paid would have gone in a holding account and when it wasn't claimed back would have just gone into the profits of the post office. Cunts.
Elbow beards
Well-Known Member
It did exist, it was all the money the post masters paid back.Did the money actually exist or was it just amounts created in error by the faulty Horizon software?
Watching it now for first time (on ITV) - i think it's the 2nd one.
The union man tells the group about him seeing the computer wipe money from post offices.
Where did the money go? Was anyone pocketing it?
The "missing money" shown on the Horizon system was never missing it was created by bugs, errors and defects in the system, one example is that in certain circumstances when a postmaster rolled over from one week to the next the system would add phantom stock to the file that didn't exist. So the following week when the postmaster balanced it looked like that stock was missing. In other words the cash and stock the postmaster had was correct it was the system figures that were wrong. There are now 43 known errors that would create phantom stock/cash.Did the money actually exist or was it just amounts created in error by the faulty Horizon software?
The postmaster paid back the "missing" cash. It is now known that this cash was held in a suspense account for a period of time but then transferred to POL bottom line. So they effectively stole money from postamsters!
The "missing money" shown on the Horizon system was never missing it was created by bugs, errors and defects in the system, one example is that in certain circumstances when a postmaster rolled over from one week to the next the system would add phantom stock to the file that didn't exist. So the following week when the postmaster balanced it looked like that stock was missing. In other words the cash and stock the postmaster had was correct it was the system figures that were wrong. There are now 43 known errors that would create phantom stock/cash.
The postmaster paid back the "missing" cash. It is now known that this cash was held in a suspense account for a period of time but then transferred to POL bottom line. So they effectively stole money from postamsters!
A maximum of three years.
MCFC Wirral
Well-Known Member
The sad thing is that they surely won’t be the only business to suffer with unfit IT systems.
I'm With Stupid
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- Joined
- 6 May 2013
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- 20,341
I've worked for a company for 10 years and every time they introduce a new IT product, I hold off learning it too quickly, because it's almost certainly going to be massively scaled back at some point when it turns out to be shit.The sad thing is that they surely won’t be the only business to suffer with unfit IT systems.
A friend of mine found himself in a meeting giving evidence of the problems of one IT product with a bunch of managers who insisted they were still committed to it. After they thought he'd left the meeting (he was still there) they went on to discuss how they had no intention of fixing any of the issues and were going to just quietly let it limp on because it wasn't worth the resources needed to fix it.
But as Ian Hislop pointed out, it's not so much the shit technology, but the trust people have in it. Just believing that the computer must be correct, even though every bit of experience we all have is that computers constantly fuck up. It's not about whether or not IT systems fuck up though, it's what you do when they do.