Franking machines or Royal Mail?

[jim_gold]

My office manager is in a quandry as to whether to stick with our current franking machine supplier, Neopost, move to a competitor like Pitney Bowes or start using a Royal Mail service like SmartStamp or Online Postage.

We post maybe 30 items a day on average. A big mailing also goes out monthly, but we get a mailing house to do this for us and are happy with that service.

My office manager just had a run-in with our current provider with whom we were paying about £750 a year up till a couple of months ago, when they came in and replaced the machine with a new one which they said was an essential technical upgrade. Turns out, with all the hidden extras like maintenance costs, we're going to be paying about £1600 a year from now on. Interestingly, they subsequently posted us a contract which remains unsigned by us, though the invoices are coming through at the new rate.

I don't like the underhanded way this was foisted on us and am curious to find out as to whether anyone has done away with their franking machine in favour of a Royal Mail service (particularly Online Postage as my manager runs on a mac - not supported by SmartStamp) and if so, what's your verdict?

 

[TotallySport]

what size items are you sending? if mainly large letter or bigger then Packet post is cheaper than smartstamp and franking machines but doesn't do letters, also if you can use dispatch express its excellent.

No idea about smartstamp or online, but I know you can buy stamps on ebay cheaper than in the shops no idea if they are any good or cost effective.

Good Luck

 

[jim_gold]

Thanks TotallySport, apparently we sent out about 40 DL letters a day and 20 C4 100gm, we'll look into Packet post.

 

[westend]

Jim, I think you have to also take into account the fact that you get 5p off the price of a first class stamp if you have it franked. So on your postage 60 letters x .05 = £3 a work day = something like £600 a year you'll be saving using a franking service.

What annoys me is that you pay to lease these things for 6 years, but it's not lease-to-own so they take it back! Second time round I bought mine outright.

 

[Doug]

Hi Jim,

I may be barking up the wrong tree and dont know if you can do this, but, have you considered emailing these documents.

We made the move away from post and have saved a fair amount of money.

We used to send out 100 statements and invoices in the post each month as an example and we now email about 95% of the clients their documents.

In terms of mailshots we use an external company to do eshots for us, we found that each document now costs pence instead of pounds so we saved a lot in this area too!

 

[Flexicose]

Hi Jim

We use Francotype Postalia for our MyMail machine and we pay £35 per month. This includes all the ink and 12 uploads per year free. They just direct debit the postage.

All our mailings are packets but it still does the job when we do large 1000+ mailings.

We have been with them nearly 6 years and would recommend.

Hope this helps.

 

[jim_gold]

Thanks Flexicose, we'll look into Francotype Postalia, sounds a good price, especially if its a step up from the entry level Pitney Bowes machine which is on offer for £20 a month.
Doug, yes, we already send out most correspondence via pdf/email and hope to increase the proportion sent this way.

 

[Doug]

Good luck with that Jim, we wrote to our customers and suppliers and found most were pretty receptive to receiving electronic documents, although i am amazed to find people that still think you need to keep a copy of documents in paper format!! Not sure how much truth is in it, but our accounts dept reckon we get paid slightly quicker because of it too.

We found that we send so little out that on the rare occasion we do post something it's cheaper just to buy stamps!

If you go down this road and want to automate it, drop me a PM.

All the best!
http://draycir.com/downloads/flash/Spindle2005FlashDemo.php

 

[jim_gold]

Hi Doug, we already automate the conversion of our monthly publication into digital format, we use a very good company called yudu.com.. but thanks anyway