royal mail business account

[privateb]

Hi guys,

Do any of you have a roysl mail business account?

If so what do you think of it? Does it save you time and money?
We are doing about 10 parcels a week from the post office.

 

[Jeff FV]

Its brilliant - we save both time & money, so a double win! Started in about November and really happy with it.

For example, I have booked out a couple of mail sacks this evening - tomorrow just need to drop them off at the sorting office, no queues or waiting. System is pretty simple to do - filling in the (online) paperwork isn't difficult, doesn't take too long, can be done at a time that suits and we get a discount on 'over the counter' rates.

One happy customer!

Jeff

 

[privateb]

Cheers for that Jeff. is thete a minimum amount you have to spend or send? can. you sign up online?

 

[kulture]

You have to send about 5000 parcels a year. 10 a week is not enough

 

[arcon5]

What size/weight parcels are they?

 

[Deleted member 74679]

Could anyone who uses Packet Post advise whether you think it would be feasible for a couple of small businesses to come together to take advantage of the discounts - practically and contractually etc?

I only send about 30 parcels a week so would not be eligible on my own but I was thinking if I could find another small business locally (would they even have to be local??) to partner with I could reduce my costs substantially.

Thank you!

 

[myparceldelivery]

If you are sending 10 or more parcels / packages a week then you are eligible for regular sender discounts from couriers. The amount of discount is based on number of parcels and their size / weight. Further discounts are available the more you send (e.g. 30, 50, 100 parcels per week).

As a general rule of thumb the smaller / lighter the individual packages are the more likely Royal Mail will still be cheaper compared to discounted courier rates.

On the other hand having a courier pick up your parcels from your own home / office makes life a lot easier.

 

[kulture]

Could anyone who uses Packet Post advise whether you think it would be feasible for a couple of small businesses to come together to take advantage of the discounts - practically and contractually etc?

I only send about 30 parcels a week so would not be eligible on my own but I was thinking if I could find another small business locally (would they even have to be local??) to partner with I could reduce my costs substantially.

Thank you!

Absolutely, well worth doing, PROVIDED you all have similar parcel weights. The cost is worked out on the average weight, so if one business send lots of 90gm items and another lots of 510 gm items, then one will subsidise the other. You would have to find a near local as the parcels will all have to go in the same bags.

 

[Deleted member 74679]

Absolutely, well worth doing, PROVIDED you all have similar parcel weights. The cost is worked out on the average weight, so if one business send lots of 90gm items and another lots of 510 gm items, then one will subsidise the other. You would have to find a near local as the parcels will all have to go in the same bags.

Thank you - that's given me lots to think about!

 

[JamieM]

Absolutely, well worth doing, PROVIDED you all have similar parcel weights. The cost is worked out on the average weight, so if one business send lots of 90gm items and another lots of 510 gm items, then one will subsidise the other. You would have to find a near local as the parcels will all have to go in the same bags.

I think you can actually set up departments in OBA so you should be able to isolate the costs from one another.

You can also send from different locations so I think it would just be a billing arrangement.

 

[Jeff FV]

Absolutely, well worth doing, PROVIDED you all have similar parcel weights. The cost is worked out on the average weight, so if one business send lots of 90gm items and another lots of 510 gm items, then one will subsidise the other. You would have to find a near local as the parcels will all have to go in the same bags.

Or another way would be to send out on alternate days.

As someone said, you need to be sending 5,000 items a year, so for us we included our catalogue drop in the packet post system as large letters to help us get up to the magic 5,000.

 

[kulture]

You could split the mail up into departments etc, BUT one of the main reasons to use PPI (business account) is to get the savings by lumping all parcels into one item. The prices go in 100gm, 250,500,750 etc bands. If you have a few 60 gm parcels and a lot of 505 gm parcels, then the 60 gm parcels may well tip the average down to below the magic 500gm. Then ALL your parcels will be charged at the below 500 gm rate (£1.39 for 2nd class I think) saving about 30-50p PER PARCEL. Whereas the few 60 gm parcels will be costing about 50p each more than they should. Done properly the savings outweigh the extra costs on the few. You will NOT get these savings if you manually band the parcels by department.


What I have done in the past is work out what the other company would have been charged for their lighter parcels, then lump them all in with mine and take the saving as a small profit for admin (it takes time to bag up parcels and fill in the forms/online business account)

 

[Alicatt]

You could split the mail up into departments etc, BUT one of the main reasons to use PPI (business account) is to get the savings by lumping all parcels into one item. The prices go in 100gm, 250,500,750 etc bands. If you have a few 60 gm parcels and a lot of 505 gm parcels, then the 60 gm parcels may well tip the average down to below the magic 500gm. Then ALL your parcels will be charged at the below 500 gm rate (£1.39 for 2nd class I think) saving about 30-50p PER PARCEL. Whereas the few 60 gm parcels will be costing about 50p each more than they should. Done properly the savings outweigh the extra costs on the few. You will NOT get these savings if you manually band the parcels by department.


What I have done in the past is work out what the other company would have been charged for their lighter parcels, then lump them all in with mine and take the saving as a small profit for admin (it takes time to bag up parcels and fill in the forms/online business account)

You can also split your packages over more than 1 line to get your average weight for the majority just below the band weight. For example, if you have 25 packets averaging 490g and a couple weighing over 1kg, put these on 2 separate lines when you book them on-line rather than lumping together and having 27 packets over 500g. We can save £3-4 per day doing this.

 

[Jeff FV]

You can also split your packages over more than 1 line to get your average weight for the majority just below the band weight. For example, if you have 25 packets averaging 490g and a couple weighing over 1kg, put these on 2 separate lines when you book them on-line rather than lumping together and having 27 packets over 500g. We can save £3-4 per day doing this.

One of the benefits of the online account is to save you time (& the other is money) but I reckon I must have wasted a huge amount of time with parcles & packets of different weights, a set of scales and a calculator trying all sorts of different combinations to shave a few pence of our postal costs!!:redface: Will a couple of lighter parcels here bring those heavy parcels there down into the next average weight band? etc. etc. I sometimes find myself getting quite obsessive about!!

Jeff

 

[Angels Avenue]

Those of you who have an account, do you mind sharing how you went about opening it? We haven’t done 5000 items/year in the past (only trading for 1.5 years) but hoping to increase the numbers soon. However I think it’s crucial to get discounts on the postage together with more professional look rather than Post Office stamps. Do they require any proof of your order volumes or they open it in good faith and then close it if you don’t fulfil the requirements? Generally it would be helpful to know what sort of information/ paperwork they ask for so to be prepared when I phone them up. Is it going to work to talk it up so to get an account? Thanks!
It sounds a good idea to share the account with another business to start with but would be probably a nightmare to administer plus you would probably have to know them well enough.

 

[Christiane]

Those of you who have an account, do you mind sharing how you went about opening it?

They called me. I already had a free collection but never heard or looked into OBA (online business account). However, I had a smartstamp account so it was easy to check how much I was spending and what type of parcels I was sending.
They will need to know what you send indeed (average quantity in each weight bands).
I was rather impressed by the staff when I first started on the OBA, they really helped and explained everything. It does look complicated at first.
It's a bit slow and has a mind of its own but worth it, saves lots of time and money.

 

[preciousbags]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but i am also sending quite a lot of parcels a week and queue up in the post office every day.

I send between 30 to 50 a week and i expect this number to grow soon.

 

[kulture]

Contact the royal mail (their business contact details are on their web site somewhere) and ask for a PPI account (may also be called an OBA account). When they ask you what volumes of post say about 80-100 a week but there are good weeks and bad weeks and it obviously gets much busier near christmas. This will mean that you hit their target of 5000 a year. Once on board unless your volumes are very low you get to stay.

 

[Angels Avenue]

Thanks for all replies. And what are the options regarding collection – if you have a business account do you have to have a collection service or can you still drop the parcels off?

 

[kulture]

You can do both. A collection costs unless you do over £15,000 a year with them.

 

[Deleted member 74679]

Contact the royal mail (their business contact details are on their web site somewhere) and ask for a PPI account (may also be called an OBA account). When they ask you what volumes of post say about 80-100 a week but there are good weeks and bad weeks and it obviously gets much busier near christmas. This will mean that you hit their target of 5000 a year. Once on board unless your volumes are very low you get to stay.

Realistically, my volumes are never going to get above 40/50 per week. I agree with xukc15 that sharing the service with another company would be an administrative hassle. I don't personally know any local companies to do this with so if I found one, it would require a great deal of trust as presumably the account (thus credit agreement) would need to be in either my name or their name.

I guess there would be nothing stopping me contacting Royal Mail, inflating my figures as above, and just accepting that they might close down my account when they notice my posting falls below their threshold. I've got nothing to lose!

However, when googling I read something about minimum docket values (at £5 or £28 per order - i.e. if your parcels don't add up to that level, it gets rounded up anyway) but it was all a bit vague. Does anyone know if this is the case? Thank you!

 

[Jeff FV]

Realistically, my volumes are never going to get above 40/50 per week. I agree with xukc15 that sharing the service with another company would be an administrative hassle. I don't personally know any local companies to do this with so if I found one, it would require a great deal of trust as presumably the account (thus credit agreement) would need to be in either my name or their name.

I guess there would be nothing stopping me contacting Royal Mail, inflating my figures as above, and just accepting that they might close down my account when they notice my posting falls below their threshold. I've got nothing to lose!

However, when googling I read something about minimum docket values (at £5 or £28 per order - i.e. if your parcels don't add up to that level, it gets rounded up anyway) but it was all a bit vague. Does anyone know if this is the case? Thank you!

The minimum spend each time you use the service is £5 - so, for example, if you were only sending 3 large letters at, say, 63p each, although the total for this order would be £1.89, you'll be charged £5.

However, if in another order, you sent 3 large letters (total £1.89) and 3 packets, at say, £1.20 each (total £3.60) The total order is £5.49, so that's what you pay, as you've passed the £5 mark.

Not sure where the £28 value comes from?

HTH

Jeff

 

[North Wales Inks]

Min spent is £5.00

 

[kulture]

It is relatively easy to spend £5 on post. If you come under one day then post on the next day. If you ever do any airmail then you will reach £5 all too soon.

 

[Deleted member 74679]

I'd have no trouble reaching £5 per day. Got the £21 info from here http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/PACKET-PO...TIONS-paper-system_W0QQugidZ10000000004075514 but clearly its out of date.

Thanks everyone for all your help

 

[Raw Rob]

I think the £21 charge might be if you still use the manual paper dockets rather than doing it online through the OBA.

Rob

 

[Jonsam]

Have a look at rm biz tracked you only need 2000 a year for up to 1kg sec class it's about 2.80 first is about 3.50 think in my band and it's a full tracked service but u need a label printer that's 250

 

[kulture]

Royal Mail Tracked is a single class. They tempted me in at £2.79 and now due to "improvements" and reducing the qualifying number to 2000 they have "adjusted" my price to £4.11. You and imagine where I have told them to put the service.

 

[Angels Avenue]

That was going to be my next question –about Royal Mail Tracked. I read your comments and then looked on their websites and pricing seems a bit vague ‘calculated on your planned posting profile’. Hmm, no thanks.
With the PPI account I take it you can still send items recorded special delivery if needed. Do these services work out cheaper with an account? And do you also need any specialist equipment – printer, labels, software or is it pretty much like SmartStamp? What about scales, we have some but not exactly top of the range?

 

[Angels Avenue]

I guess there would be nothing stopping me contacting Royal Mail, inflating my figures as above, and just accepting that they might close down my account when they notice my posting falls below their threshold. I've got nothing to lose!

bigbooklittlebook, let me know how you get on. I'm planning to do exactly the same.

 

[alanc]

.
With the PPI account I take it you can still send items recorded special delivery if needed.

Yes.

Do these services work out cheaper with an account?

Yes - small percentage cheaper

And do you also need any specialist equipment

No. With a PPI account you just need a way of printing the big '1' or '2' and your permit number.

What about scales, we have some but not exactly top of the range?

As long as they are reasonably accurate. Some people weight the full sack using spring scales - they have to be quite good ones.

 

[alanc]

You can do both. A collection costs unless you do over £15,000 a year with them.

Quite correct. Annual collection costs £500 (its going to go up in April). The collection will be made in a timed window of a 30 mins.

If you're not on regular collections, you can book one-off collections for those ''heavy' days. Costs £12.50 and can be booked in the morning before 12:00 for collection between 1:00 and your closing time.

 

[kulture]

Quite correct. Annual collection costs £500 (its going to go up in April). The collection will be made in a timed window of a 30 mins.

If you're not on regular collections, you can book one-off collections for those ''heavy' days. Costs £12.50 and can be booked in the morning before 12:00 for collection between 1:00 and your closing time.

Or you drop your sacks off at your local sorting office or post office.

 

[kulture]

And do you also need any specialist equipment

No special equipment needed. the Royal Mail will even provide you with an Ink Stamp with the 1 and one with the 2 with your PPI account number.

UNLESS you go one step further and get Despatch Express (free software) which runs on your PC (windows) and prints labels to go on the mail. The Thermal printer you have to buy (about £175) but RM provide all labels. The advantage of this is time. Despatch express can be integrated to your system and thus print addresses from your system, OR you can enter addresses manually by putting in the house number and post code (it has a PAF file). This can save time per order. It ALSO updates and creates your OBA accounts, so you do not have to raise that daily order.( and if you have used OBA you know how much of a relief that can be!)

 

[Angels Avenue]

In the past I used to be in charge of the daily collections in another company but we used to fill in dockets manually. Is the electronic version similar - number of parcels 1st and 2nd class, average weights, etc? From the comments I'm guessing quite time consuming?

Can Despatch Express be integrated with a shopping cart to retrieve addresses from it or do they have to be exported in a file?

Royal Mail will phone us back on Monday, trying to think of points to discuss. So far the issues to consider are collection or drop off, and manually stamping or printing stamps. Is it possible to print stamps with your own printer if you are not going to use Despatch Express?

Any other tips I would much appreciate. You have been very helpful.

 

[Jonsam]

I am thinking of this at the moment so this thread has been helpful

Rm told me I need to post 10000 to get the software I am at around 5000

The most important thing for me is being easy and of corse price my av weight is about 1kg was thinking of using the tracked because you got the software and could print out the bar code

I always send signed for and was thinking I did not want to keep filling in the barcode stickers to match names and address

But I am likeing the stuff about printing from the cart

Can u do from a csv file.?

 

[Angels Avenue]

But I am likeing the stuff about printing from the cart

Can u do from a csv file.?

Someone needs to confirm it's possible. Sounds too good to be true.

 

[kulture]

Despatch express make recorded, special, tracked, airsure etc a breeze. Just put in the address and select the post type and press print. Label comes out, nothing else to do except at the end of the day request and print a manifest. Job done, no book to fill in, no matching of sticky labels to addresses, no docket to complete, no playing around with OBA.

There are two ways to interface. Both detailed in the helpful manual. One is to provide a batch file, and all the labels get printed. The other is to get your software to create a file in a directory. Despatch express polls the directory and prints the label defined in the file. Then puts a result code back. In practice, in my software, I press a print label button and the label comes out.

 

[Amethyst]

I have learned much reading this thread, so I think I need to contribute a little with this thread.

I opened an OBA account with RM, the rate is better than counter prices I have been paying before. I am doing parcels everyday but averagely 80-100 large letters or small packets. What I am doing now is:

1. RM authorized an account and provided me a template of labels, I bought A4 self-sticky labels from ebay and print the PPI labels from my computer.

2.I prepare my parcels exactly same as when I pay them at counter. The difference is:
a. I need to put a PPI lable on every parcels; if I want any recorded, I will put another label(which provided by RM); if it is for overseas, I put an airmail label(provided by RM), so far, just do first class UK and Airmail overseas so no experience on airsure or other service yet.

3. As I do all my parcels with 1st class(for UK), I seperate them into recorded large letters or packet, packets, large letters. For those which are similar weight, I weigh them together and average the weight by quantities, but I would weigh them seperately if a few might be obviously heavier. This will help me to decide what kind of weight band I pay my parcels online.

4. As I do it every day, but not a lot everyday, also, at the start, I have no RM mailbags, I just bring them down to post office all together. P/O will accept them and give me a proof of recorded ones which i need to write them done in the posting book(provided by the RM).

The problem I have now is comparing with the time I paid at the counter:

i. it is quite annoying that the small P/O was telling me not to go there as OBA has nothing to do with them. But I insisted on going there and they didn't refuse me. I have tried to complain to RM and hope they sort out this for me but nothing comes a few weeks later.

ii. I ordered some sacks, but no one tells me how to use them so it takes up much space and it is not good even it is free.

iii. RM has no account manager for me so it is quite annoying when i have any problem. But anyhow, I will carry on using OBA as it saves time and money.

For my business character, I need to do parcels everyday. Most of my parcels are just large letters and the average weight is less than 80grams. If everything is OK, I would like to share my account with another small business which may not be able meet RM packpost standard. But I want an easy life, so I don't want to deal with someone who might make me feel uncomfortable. If anyone is based around Eastney and interested, just PM me and we can check to see.

 

[majeed]

Hi guys,

Do any of you have a roysl mail business account?

If so what do you think of it? Does it save you time and money?
We are doing about 10 parcels a week from the post office.

Yes we started using it and we'll never look back. We started like you with ten parcels and after three months it was getting a bit much carrying all those parcels to the post office.

We looked into various companies but they were all far more expensive than even Royal Mail's regular rates.

So we rang Royal Mail and they assigned us our own friendly customer service rep who did a calculation based on the information we gave her regarding our current shipping profile.

She asked for our company details and then there was the usual security check and then we were handed over to business customer services. All in all, the process took about three weeks which in part was down to our taking time to think about it.

When you first start using the online system to input your items, it can seem a bit daunting, but after using it for a short while, it becomes very easy to use. We had a lot of questions to ask and there was always someone in customer services to patiently help us - in fact, bend over backwards.

In total, we make a 61% saving which we pass onto our customers and which helps us to make sales in a competitive market.

We also get to utilise the time we would be spending going to the post office.

So yes I would definitely recommend this service to anyone. Contact Royal Mail and start the ball rolling straight away.

If I can help from what knowledge I have gained, please feel free to drop me a line.