553 karma · joined April 18, 2011
See Nick Wallis' coverage: * https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/03/the-smoking-gun.html * https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/
> [Anne] Chambers closed the ticket with a definitive: “No fault in product”.
> The cause of the defect was assigned to “User” – that is, the Subpostmaster.
> When Beer asked why, Chambers replied: “Because I was rather frustrated by not – by feeling that I couldn’t fully get to the bottom of it. But there was no evidence for it being a system error.”
...
> Chambers conceded: “something was obviously wrong, in that the branch obviously were getting these discrepancies that they weren’t expecting, but all I could see on my side was that they were apparently declaring these differing amounts, and I certainly didn’t know of any system errors that would cause that to happen, or that would take what they were declaring and not record it correctly…. so I felt, on balance, there was just no evidence of a system error.”
> No evidence. [Sir Wyn] Williams pointed out that it surely was unlikely to be a user error if both trainers and auditors had recorded the Subpostmaster as inputting information correctly. Chambers replied:
> “Well, yeah, I… yes, I don’t know why… I’m not happy with this one. But I still stand by there being no indication of a system error and the numbers that they were recording just didn’t make a lot of sense.”
So it may have looked like "it was TV what done it" but the wheels of justice were turning long before the show came out.
> The Postmaster reported that the problem at his one specific site had been been happening intermittently all year. He told NBSC who sent experienced trainers out to ensure the Subpostmaster wasn’t doing something wrong. The trainers concluded the Subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and witnessed the error happening. The auditors, who were incentivised by the Post Office to suspend Subpostmasters with discrepancies (another story), came out. They concluded the Subpostmaster was doing nothing wrong and they witnessed the error happening.
> Chambers went to work. She delved into the system and reported: “have checked the system figures… and can confirm that all the variants reported since then have been calculated correctly. There are no known issues that would result in the variance being incorrect.”
> Chambers closed the ticket with a definitive: “No fault in product”.
> The cause of the defect was assigned to “User” – that is, the Subpostmaster.
> When Beer asked why, Chambers replied: “Because I was rather frustrated by not – by feeling that I couldn’t fully get to the bottom of it. But there was no evidence for it being a system error.”
...
> Chambers conceded: “something was obviously wrong, in that the branch obviously were getting these discrepancies that they weren’t expecting, but all I could see on my side was that they were apparently declaring these differing amounts, and I certainly didn’t know of any system errors that would cause that to happen, or that would take what they were declaring and not record it correctly…. so I felt, on balance, there was just no evidence of a system error.”
> No evidence. Williams pointed out that it surely was unlikely to be a user error if both trainers and auditors had recorded the Subpostmaster as inputting information correctly. Chambers replied:
> “Well, yeah, I… yes, I don’t know why… I’m not happy with this one. But I still stand by there being no indication of a system error and the numbers that they were recording just didn’t make a lot of sense.”
Saying that, the auto wipers can be dreadful. They mostly work OK, but occasionally will randomly turn on when it's dry, or not come on when it's pissing down. It's down to the fact that rather than use a simple infra-red based rain sensor (that the rest of the industry has used for decades) Tesla think they can do just as good a job using the front-facing AutoPilot camera and save a dollar or two on a dedicated sensor.
> Tesla's electric cars may look like the future, but once again, feedback from owners reveal the brand's disappointing dependability.
> 39% of Tesla owners we heard from with a car aged up to four years old had at least one issue they needed to get repaired in the past year, which is twice as high as the average fault rate for cars this new.
> The most common issues are, somewhat unusually, to do with the exterior and are mostly minor. Those that experienced faults with the exterior (19% of all owners) or non-engine electrics (21% of all owners) most frequently complained about paintwork issues and problems with lights respectively.
> Slightly less common were issues with rainwater seals, meaning water can leak into the car. It's rare for a brand to have such issues in such numbers on its new cars, and indicates a general low level of quality with the finish of Tesla's vehicles.
> While the fault rate is high, the breakdown rate (or cars failing to start) is in line with the average for cars in the 0-4 year group at 4.9%.