A SHOPPER was outraged after a store refused to accept his old pound coins on Sunday – despite there legally being a further 11 hours to pay with old tender.

Nigel Skinner, from Holywell, visited the B&M store in Flint retail park at approximately 1pm on Sunday to buy his usual round of dishwasher tablets and washing powder.

Mr Skinner said: “I had a pocket full of old one pound coins, I’d raided my piggy bank to use them up. When I go to the till after going around the shelves, it came to around £16.

“I got my change out my pockets and the lady on the counter said ‘Oh, they’re old ones. You can’t use them today.’

“I thought to myself, well I can, because by law it’s (until) midnight. But she said that I can’t, saying something about Saturday being the end of their financial week.

“I told her that’s absolute rubbish, and asked for the manager of the store to come over. She was struggling to find him and by this point there was a queue forming behind me.”

Mr Skinner added that although he felt “bad” on the member of staff who was “just the messenger”, he was adamant to stand by what he believed to be right and decided to put the correct amount of money on the counter and walk away.

He said: “Luckily, every penny in my pocket added to the exact amount the receipt came to.

“So I put my money down and said, ‘I’m going’ and she insisted she couldn’t take it but I was headed for the door.

“It was just silly, it’s not as if the coins can’t be accepted by the banks. She was just following some daft information from a manager.”

Mr Skinner said the main issue with this “excuse” was the lack of signs displaying this alternative rule.

He said: “They had ample opportunities to put up signs in the days before. It’s no excuse, and if they had (put signs up) I wouldn’t have had an issue.

“They should have said before I came in, collected my goods and got my money out.”

Another customer, a business owner, who wishes to remain annonymous, had a similar encounter with the B&M store in Flint on Sunday afternoon.

He said: “They refused my 13-year-old brother (with) the last pound coin he had.

“There were no notices and management looked like they couldn't be bothered which resulted in myself and a lot of others going to Home Bargains.

“In the time I was in there, five cutsomers complained.”

Mr Skinner later asked: “What will they tell the police if they call them: a man just paid for his things and left?”

A spokesman for B&M said: “We apologise for any inconvenience caused, colleagues misunderstood the deadline for accepting the old pound coins.”

Poundland’s chain of shops will continue to accept the old pound until October 31 as the ‘Legal Tender Extender’.

Tesco stores will still accept the old pound until Sunday, October 22 and Lidl store’s trolleys accept both old and new tender.