Royal Mail Collections

[party_pete]

Anyone get their Royal Mail Collections for free?

We've just had our annual invoice of £480 and before I 'try' and haggle, it'd be useful to know whether anyone has been successful in getting it cheaper.

TIA

[leehack]

Last time i looked into this Pete it was volume driven i thought. Check out your volume this year to last and use it as a bargaining tool if no useful information comes to hand.

[Donna]

Hi Pete
Lee is right it is volume driven.
It never used to be so tight but now they require £15000 of business annually.
Here's the link to the page:
http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/j...6&catId=400040

They require that you send in 3 months invoices to them as proof of turnover.

I hope this is helpful!

[fleetwood]

Only free if you spend £15,000pa.

Otherwise £280pa standard charge, £480pa for a late collection (after 3:30pm I think).

I don't think these charges are negitioable

If you happen to trade from the 15th floor of a tower block, your fugged (£55 per floor surcharge )

Parcelforce are also pushing up prices left right and centre.
Take your negitioated contract rate, then add a £1 per parcel surcharge if you don't use online documentation, then add 5.5% fuel surcharge!!!

[leehack]

It never used to be so tight but now they require £15000 of business annually.

kinell that is a lot of post!

[fleetwood]

kinell that is a lot of post!

cleverly calculated so that you can never quite reach the required limit!

[leehack]

cleverly calculated so that you can never quite reach the required limit!

If i had a business that was getting close, 480 quid a year would be the last of my worries, boxing up 100 orders a day would have me in a tizz though lol. 20 a day used to blow my mind.

[Stereo Steve]

We get ours free at 4pm. But then, we are serious playas.

Fifteen grand isn't a lot. Our average is £1.83 so that's er.... 157 parcels a week? We do about 5-600 most weeks I guess, bit less in summer.

[Stereo Steve]

Lee, 100 a day and you can afford a packer. Or you are doing something seriously wrong. It's when you are doing 30-40 a day that it's marginal and you end up packing and trying to run the site and the CS and the accounts.......

Economies of scale do come into it. I love to hear the sound of tape guns downstairs while I panic about SEO and google upstairs.

[TraceyHand]

while I panic about SEO and google upstairs.

you worry about SEO and Google, Steve?
We'd really never noticed:

[pnagames]

Lee, 100 a day and you can afford a packer. Or you are doing something seriously wrong. It's when you are doing 30-40 a day that it's marginal and you end up packing and trying to run the site and the CS and the accounts.......

Economies of scale do come into it. I love to hear the sound of tape guns downstairs while I panic about SEO and google upstairs.

i wish we were sending out that many.

we send on avg 15 a day (last month and this month). we expect to double that on october with christmas coming up.

then we will be pushed to our limit.

15K is not a lot. we spend between 15-20 every day. (and we are a small player in the market)

i bet if we had the amounts of orders other known websites have, we will have them running around for us.

[Stereo Steve]

Panagiotis, it takes time to grow but you'll get there. I have got your email by the way and will answer when I have 5 minutes (in the middle of major Amazon re-jig at the mo).

[kathynewman]

In next few weeks we are going to have to start paying for our collection. At moment we take our post down to local sorting office (5 mins away) but have been told that they are going to be closing at 10am 4 days a week soon as there is no call for the office to be open - apparently they have very few members of public going in to collect post and we are the only business that takes our post down, so it's not cost effective for them to stay open.

Kathy

[siwalker]

i bet if we had the amounts of orders other known websites have, we will have them running around for us.

If it's any comfort we've spent £20k with them in the last 12 months, but that still only gets us a service provided almost grudgingly.

Anyone here use E*Pro and managed the transition to OBA? RM haven't even managed to provide us a login to OBA yet.

Lee, 100 a day and you can afford a packer. Or you are doing something seriously wrong.

Exactly.

Cheers,
simon

[acompton]

You people are making me feel small. We've just crossed 3 a day (and growing), but it will go up to about 5x that in the Christmas runup.

I love to hear the sound of tape guns downstairs

I love the smell of packing tape in the morning!