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Witness Name: Melissa Karen
Delamaine
Statement No: WITNO7140100
Exhibits: None
Dated: 17" March 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF MELISSA DELAMAINE
I, Melissa Delamaine, will say as follows...
Introduction
1. I am an Account Manager for the World's number 1 privately owned
Flavour and Fragrance company. For the past 17 years since leaving
Fujitsu, I have worked in this industry in similar roles.
2. During my time at Fujitsu in Stevenage which I believe spanned
approximately 2 years, I worked as a Helpdesk operator and trained new
Helpdesk operators working on the Post Office Account.
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Training and/or instructions received for HSH and/or HSD
3. Upon joining Fujitsu, I had classroom style training where we were taught
how to handle the hardware, perform factory resets, understand thesetup
of a postmaster/mistress till, learn the softwareetc., before moving on to
how to handle a call and the processes we should go through to resolve the
issue of the caller. We were taught also, how to log this in the system.
4. During part of my time at Fujitsu I was asked to help with training new
starters. This training took on the same form as the training I had, and I
believe it ran from 4-6 weeks.
Experience working on the HSH/HSD
5. At Fujitsu we worked in teams of around 6 people, who sat together and
worked the same shift together. The shifts rotated and I believe ran from
around 8am — 6.30PM total coverage.
6. During an average day at Fujitsu, I would simply be taking any calls that
came in from a postmaster/mistress regarding issues such as, the screen
wouldn't turn on, no power lights on the base unit, printer not working,
connection issues etc. During all these calls, I would start with a greeting,
assess the issue and work through the system to direct the PM to the right
resolution. In extreme circumstances where this couldn't be resolved over
the phone, we would make a referral (I think) for an engineer to go out. I do
not know whether this then happened automatically or was vetted, as it was
such a long time ago.
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7. I wouldn't say we had any resources as such, just our training, built up
knowledge and the system we were inputting the data in to. We had a
supervisor for our team and for me it was someone called Ken. It has been a
while, but I remember him not being a good manager/supervisor and he
wasn't well respected among the team for that reason.
8. I wouldn't say my team members at the time saw Fujitsu as a career path but
more a job that would do. It was a fairly nice place to work and I had some
good times there with my colleagues but it was a very boring and mundane
job with little career prospects. I left here and ended up in the Flavour &
Fragrance industry where as aforementioned I have been for 17 years, with
great success and career development.
9. If we required a break, we were to go on DND (Do not Disturb). Our time
spent on DND was monitored.
Did the HSH/HSD provide adequate support to Subpostmasters?
10. In my opinion, the helpdesk largely provided adequate service to the
callers, however, I feel that the machinery itself was obviously problematic
and training to the PM's wasn’t sufficient. For example, I would get calls
saying the computer wouldn't turn on, and it would be because the monitor
or base unit wasn't switched on.
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Bugs, errors and defects within the Horizon IT System
11. I am not aware of any bugs, viruses, or defects with the system, but
as I say the frequency of the issues and the simplicity of the issues does
make you wonder whether perhaps there was a bigger issue.
Further comments
12. I do not feel I have anything further to add and feel that I have
provided as much information as I can recall from such a long time ago.
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Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Signed:
Dated: 17% March 2023
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Index to First Witness Statement ofMelissa Delamaine
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No. I URN Document Control
Description Number
1 N/A IN/A IN/A
2
3
4
5
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