Post Office Trials New ATM

London, November 16, 2008.
Robin Hunt


See The Post Office and Trust.

Trust and the Post Office

In the letter to Gordon Brown dated October 30 - sent less than a month after he rejoined the government - the business secretary [Peter Mandelson] says: "We should examine the prospects for POL [Post Office Ltd] becoming a much more significant player in financial services - offering a wider range of attractive products within easy reach of the whole population, available from an institution they can trust."

An interesting idea at a time in which the high street banks and building societies have lost swathes of our trust. But does the Post Office's semi-ubiquity denote trust? Does it have the same trust qualities of, say, a Starbucks? Once again the mental map of Britain seems stuck in 1973, the time before branding.