United Kingdom citizens have last four days left of using the old pound coins before they expire, they will no longer be legal tender after 15^th October. Old style £1 will be replaced by the 12-sided version. New coins came into circulation in the end of March 2017 and Brits were using both versions for almost 6 months. Now the time when old coins will disappear forever has come.

Since new coins came into circulation consumers have started to have complications with them. The shops and brands were accepting them since day one but most of their machines weren’t. There was a big problem mainly with parking machines. People wanted to park their cars and pay for them but how they were suppose to do it when the machine didn’t accept their money?

Gregor Hynds, student from Ayr, said: “There were the machines on the top High Street in Ayr which were not accepting new £1 coins.”

Parking machines weren’t the only problem. People who were visiting local bookmakers had a problem with the betting machines too but not for long.

Angelika Wilson, manager of Coral Ladbrokes in Troon, said: “There was a problem but it was solved in the first week. I wasn’t aware of any problems since then. I can also confirm that our machines are accepting new £10 notes already.”

People are scared of accepting the old pound coins because they don’t know what they can expect after 15^th October.  Some shops including Tesco Ayr extended time of acceptance.

Tesco’s spokesman said: “ Yes, our shops will accept the old coins a little bit longer than we wanted to in the first place. We will now accept them one week longer till 22 October. Our self-machines will accept them too so customers should not be worried about that. We are here to help.”

Local bookmakers are accepting them longer too. Angelika Wilson said: “We will accept them and bank them. But we also make our customers aware of the date. We are here for our customers and we don’t want them to feel limited.”

The Royal Mint website published that businesses are allowed to give people the old coins and they can continue to give out the old coins until 15 October. But people can also refuse to accept them and ask for new one if they don’t feel confident about old ones.

Zuzana Martinkova