OAP’s shop bust-up

A FURIOUS pensioner claims a newsagent tried to make him buy something from the shop before he would allow him to use a free bill payment service.

Michael Hughes (77), of Belton Walk, Westwood, has been using Oldham News to pay his bills with PayPoint for years, but on his last visit to the High Street newsagent he says the shop keeper told him he could no longer use PayPoint without buying something first.

Mr Hughes said: “I go in there to pay all my bills because I’ve been messed about by direct debits too many times. Not only is it easier to pay my bills using PayPoint, it also gets me out of the house.

“It’s disgraceful to be told I had to buy something to use a free service.”

But shop owner Mohammed Patel refuted the claim: “We haven’t told anybody they have to buy something, we have just put up a notice that just says ‘due to reduced commission from PayPoint we would encourage customers to buy something’.

“It’s costing us £660 a month for the service. We want to keep it to allow our customers to use it but it’s getting very very hard because of the cost and that people aren’t buying things.”