Just back from the UK, and wanted to give a heads up that the country is currently in the process of phasing in a redesigned one pound coin. (With new 2 pound and 50p coins also in the pipeline) The problem comes that in a lot of cases on our SW England and Wales route, parking kiosks, laundromats, vending machines, etc. have not been entirely recalibrated to accept the new coins yet. Add in a tendency for a lot of the pay an display parking pay stations we encountered to have the credit card reader out of order, and there was a certain amount of digging through the change pile for the correct coins, and at one point, I asked a shop clerk for eight pounds of change in old pound coins 'because of parking machines'. (She'd dealt with that herself, and dug around the drawer for the old coins.)
Posted by
Hampshire, England.
1075 posts
They must be very slow in getting around to changing the machines in the SW and Wales, I live in the South and the only thing I've had a problem with (with the new pound coins) is supermarket trolleys.
Posted by
278 posts
Thank you. Let's hope this is improved by Sept as we have a week in Bath Sept 7.
Posted by
Paris
10288 posts
That's a very useful alert for people headed that way. Who would think of such a thing as whether the machines had been recalibrated?
Posted by
Oxford, United Kingdom
5466 posts
We are roughly half way through the changeover period, and there has been 2 years or so notice beforehand so operators really have no excuse. I suspect in many cases the use of coins has declined; certainly the case for car parking where in addition to on site card readers many will have telephone services such as Ringgo.
Posted by
Missouri, USA and Essex, UK.
1055 posts
We had the same problem with car parks in Essex/Suffolk. We all had to dig around for the "old" pound coins on a number of occasions.