An interesting incident at a post office in London

Photo: Queue at a post office

(November, 25, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a local post office in the outer London Harrow, an interesting incident took place on 23 November 2007. This is not something praiseworthy cricketing news or someone enjoying a hot cup of high quality Sri Lankan tea.

As usual when the post office opened, there were about fifteen people queued up to deal with all sorts of postal matters. In the queue there was a Sri Lankan lady as well. In front of her stood, a nearly 70 years old Englishman. He was attended to when his turn came up. He wanted to make the payment for the service by credit card. He put his credit card into the small payment machine on the counter and entered his pin number and incorrectly pressed the cancel button instead of the enter key.

He tried twice and on each occasion pressed the wrong cancel button. The postmaster (an Indian) explained to him to use the enter key instead of cancel button. The English man lost his cool and shouted in high voice: ‘You Sri Lankans are credit card fraudsters. Wherever you go these f***ing Sri Lankans are taking the money from the customers credit cards. Petrol stations, supermarkets everywhere…. These b*****ds should not have been allowed in this country. Now the f****rs are trying to take the money from my credit card at the post office’.

The Tamil lady was very ashamed to hear all what the Englishman said. She said, ‘we cannot blame the man. It is true that widespread credit card fraud is carried out by some elements in the community. It is unfortunate that innocent Indian and wider community people are getting the stick for the criminality of some terrible Sri Lankans’. This incident proves to the extent the credit card fraudsters are bastardising the entire Sri Lankan community. Sri Lanka earned the name for its quality tea and cricket amongst many other things. But the credit card fraud is sticking very heavily now on the Diaspora Sri Lankans.