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Mai iy Stoddart
To: Mervyn Jones
Subject: FW: Horizon - further loss of on-line services
Hi Mervyn
I said I would copy you in on the email exchange with Dave Hulbert on goodwill payments covering the run up
to Christmas and New years Eve . This is the chain that started the ball rolling and I will send you a couple of
others that lead to the final deal.
Marilyn
Marilyn Stoddart
Assistant General Secretary
Evelyn House
22 Windlesham Gardens
Shoreham-by-Sea
West Sussex
BN3 5AZ.
From: Marilyn Stoddart
Sent: 23 December 2009 12:09
To: ‘dave.hulbert¢
Cc: George Thomson; ‘anita.I.turnert _
Subject: RE: Horizon - further loss of on-line services
Dear Dave
Thank you for your reply, but I think it illustrates why the usual parameters of the Goodwilt Agreement need to
be extended to deal with the intermittent nature of the problem, which meant that although branches may
have had on-line services restored for a period this was often short-lived and it was impossible to keep
customers once they had experienced the problem. As I indicated, lost custom is not the only impact here as
many subpostmasters have hired additional staff over this period and will of course have to cover their {
payment. Therefore we believe that the usual qualifying period should not be applied in these H
circumstances and that subpostmasters should receive payment for all days when the service was not fully I
operational. We also believe that the level of payment should be enhanced to recognise the additional impact
given the time of year.
Of course these payments can never compensate for the long term impact of customers feeling let down by
the network at a crucial time of year and abandoning their local post office where they have other options. I
You indicate that yesterday's problems were not related to the ISDN issues but were another ‘unrelated
hardware issue’ which was difficult to diagnose - does this also apply to Monday's failures too, or were they
part of the ongoing ISDN problem. It would be helpful if, once you have further information about yesterday's
hardware issue, you could share that with us.
{ appreciate that you will endeavour to make prompt payments in January and hope that the goodwill gesture
will more generous on this occasion.
I look forward to your consideration and hearing further from you.
Regards
Marilyn
Marilyn Stoddart
Assistant General Secretary
Evelyn House
22 Windlesham Gardens
Shoreham-by-Sea
West Sussex
18/01/2010
’ service issues.
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jave.hulbert
Sent: 22 December 2009
To: Marilyn Stoddart
Ce: anita.I.turner=~ “3 Duty. Manager = GRO Willoughby;
Adam Martin; Lynn Hobbs; tracy.marshall¢
Subject: Fw: Horizon - further loss of on-l
Marilyn,
firstly please accept my apologies for the service over the last couple of weeks and the impact this has had on I
your members and their customers. My team and our suppliers have been working hard to resolve the I
problems as quickly as possible, but I accept that we are judged on the end results and I can understand the
level of disatisfaction there will be in the branches impacted by the recent failures.
In terms of the points at the bottom of your email, the facts are that we did have 2 days of intermittent service
on the 8th and 9th December, followed by 2 days of intermittent service on the 14th and 15th. These service I
issues affected the branches who connect to Horizon via an ISDN line, which is a maximum of 689 Post
Offices. The level of disruption caused at each of these branches would have varied and this is due to the
cause of the problems, which Ill cover off in a bit, but it means that some branches will have had service back
quickly where as others like Thorngumbald were impacted significantly. The Horizon Service Desk did try to
keep branches that got through updated with the best information they had, however, the event proved
difficult to diagnose and therefore the information was initially sketchy.
The root cause was found to be intermittent hardware failures on the servers that authenticate the ISDN
connections. As the issues were intermittent this took longer to diagnose and resolve, but as soon as we
identified the problem, these servers were replaced and no further problems have been encountered. I should I
point out that the servers sit in Wigan and Bootle and not N. Ireland and therefore has nothing to do with i
Horizon On LIne - hence Mark Burley’s reference to the matter being dealt with by the business as usual I
teams. I
With regards to yesterday's problems, this wasn't a network connection issue and therefore wasn't a repeat of
the ISDN issues. However, it does appear to be a another (unrelated) hardware issue and did cause a loss of
service for banking and card account transactions right across our network for up to 30 minutes. Again,
apologies for this and at the time of writing we're continuing our investigations to ensure there's no further
Finally, in terms of the goodwill gestures, as you know we have a Goodwill Payment agreement in place and
whilst I will work within that agreement for the 689 branches that were impacted by the ISDN issues, I am
sympathetic to the loss of business at this busy time of year and therefore I'll endeavour to get all the
payments made in January rather than the normal 3 months timescales.
Regards.
Dave
Senior Service Delivery Manager
Operations Directorate
Post Office Ltd
18/01/2010