I thought I would look for some feedback on this one. Nigel Riley has noticed over the past few months that there are frequent, albeit small, omissions from his news-paper voucher returns credit notes from WH Smith. Once he'd cottoned on to this, Nigel started to double-check all his returns, even going to the length of having them counted by two other people to ensure that his claims were 100% correct. WH Smith said that it had passed the claims onto the handling house, NCH, but had just received a “standard reply”.

“Apparently, they don’t bother to chase it up if it is only 10% out either way,” says Nigel, who runs Silverstone Post Office in Northamptonshire. “I’ve never known the payments to go up, though. They only ever seem to go down.” He also makes the point that he has been running a post office for more than 10 years and is therefore quite used to handling lots of small bits of paper. “But their answer to my queries is always ‘When the envelope was opened, the vouchers were scanned and credited. So no further credit will be given.’ “They are saying that they are right and we are wrong,” says Nigel. “This is definitely not the case.”

The vouchers in this instance are mainly The Times and Telegraph prepay vouchers that offer readers a cheaper newspaper via coupons redeemed at the newsagents. But, thinking outside the box, Nigel wonders whether this happens not just with newspaper vouchers but other money-off coupons as well. Let me know if it’s ever happened to you.

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