Franking Machine advice

[MikeH]

As many of you know the franking machine industry seems to be a minefield of contracts, licences, service plans, expensive ink and rip off top up phone lines.

We like to keep posting mail simple. We just want to frank mail at a reduced rate to RM. We do not want a service plan for a basic machine.
We do not need postal scales
We do not need post rate updates (we can calculate the cost of posting ourselves)
We do not want expensive cartridges

Our current machine has apparently hit the magic number of 100K impressions and has been programmed to stop. What a ridiculous addition to what is essentially a simple printer with a calculator attached.

Is there any way of renting or buying a machine without a 6 year contract and without an annual service plan. I can’t imagine the need for such a thing on a basic machine.

Any experts out there please get in touch. Anyone managed to avoid the ‘add ons’ please join in the thread with your advice and let me know who you use.

 

[owas]

try nepost, I cant guarantee, they will be able to help, but from what I have gathered they quite flexible and helpful.

 

[DaveSUK]

We use Pitney Bowes but there is a minimum term contract of 12 months we pay £9.00 per month for our machines on a 5 year contract thou.

I think Royal Mail are missing a huge market. They should be offering the same discounted prices on their Smart Stamp service, as it is now you end up paying more using Smart Stamp because you have the cost of printing your own stamps.

 

[sanjiv]

Pitney Bowes and Neopost are the two big ones. You can buy the machine outright on usedfrankingmachines.co.uk but I don't see the point really. We have just signed up with Pitney Bowes on a 5 year plan at £10 per month including service plan. All we need to pay for is ink. Negotiated free top ups with them. Postage updates can be entered manually into the machine anyway - not worth paying £60 odd for an update.

 

[[email protected]]

Hi

We've not used ours for a few years it needs a new print-head and I didn't take out the maintenance agreement. We're still paying the lease on it, until 2013. Going to to cost £200-300 for a new print-head, which I think is way more than the savings I'll make on RM discounts.

The pre-pay nature of franking and very very small discounts meant we were far better off using RM PPI instead for our large volume contract mailings.

As for day-to-day mailing, we're getting by with stamps.

The people we got it from send us invoice once a year for over £100.00 for auto-update of the rates, I refuse to pay, but they keep sending me invoices. Be careful, the modern ones have the rates updated automatically, so you may have no choice but to agree annual rate-change charges.

Regards

Rob

As many of you know the franking machine industry seems to be a minefield of contracts, licences, service plans, expensive ink and rip off top up phone lines.

We like to keep posting mail simple. We just want to frank mail at a reduced rate to RM. We do not want a service plan for a basic machine.
We do not need postal scales
We do not need post rate updates (we can calculate the cost of posting ourselves)
We do not want expensive cartridges

Our current machine has apparently hit the magic number of 100K impressions and has been programmed to stop. What a ridiculous addition to what is essentially a simple printer with a calculator attached.

Is there any way of renting or buying a machine without a 6 year contract and without an annual service plan. I can’t imagine the need for such a thing on a basic machine.

Any experts out there please get in touch. Anyone managed to avoid the ‘add ons’ please join in the thread with your advice and let me know who you use.

 

[MikeH]

With our mail volumes a £9 per month machine is not possible and probably not suitable. Managed to negotiate a shorter contract, with consumables included and no ridiculous maintenance fees.

My 2p worth. Do not just go direct to Neopost or Pitney. Lost of independent sites with deals and room to negotiate. Also consider de-regulation. This may increase competion in time with many companies waiting in the wings that may provide a cheaper service. A five year contract may be something you regret.

 

[Jayser100]

I looked carefully into this and Neopost is your best bet. they have two distinct advantages over Pitney Bowes:

1). The impressions per ink cartridge works out better
2). If you top up your postage account using direct debit, it costs nothing whereas PB charge however you top up.

The little Neopost machine works well, it's a perfectly usable system.

 

[sanjiv]

Very easy to negotiate Pitney Bowes not to charge for top ups. Just say Neopost are doing the same deal with free top ups and they'll match it.

They'll even forward an internal email about how good their holiday is and to get the customer signed up before he goes with Neopost.