MADAM – I couldn’t agree more with Mr Comfort (Max Comfort, Wednesday, July 2). The machines in the post office are utterly hopeless.

Like all these machines, some accountant has counted beans and convinced credulous bosses that money can be saved by using them instead of people. Wrong. People don’t want to use them because:

1. They don’t work properly.

2. They’re taking someone’s job.

3. They’re impersonal.

This first point is possibly the most telling, because it doesn’t matter if you’re the Brain of Britain, The Mekon, Einstein or anything, the machines will go wrong if the slightest unreadable code upsets them, and then you have ask for help like you’re some kind of mindless Luddite buffoon, when the fault is in the programming and the scanning electronics.

Even worse, someone who’s had a scanty amount of training in these things then dashes over, puts their override key in the thing and resets it.

Well, give me a key and I’ll do it.

It’s not rocket science.

Supermarkets have been trying to foist this rubbish on us for some time now.

Do what I do – simply state you won’t use them and stand in a queue.

They’ll get the message in the end, usually when the customers have gone off to find places with shorter queues.

I can’t recall seeing a survey at the post office or anywhere else for that matter asking me if I want machines at the check-out instead of people.

I don’t.

Mick Campbell

Cashes Green