Royal Mail Collection Service

[eCommerce63]

Hi All. I am considering Royal Mails Collection service. Apparently if you
have a spend of £15,000+ on Postal Products per annum this service is free of charge.
Otherwise its £725+VAT
I have got to the point where I am spending approx £12,000 per year posting parcels
and would like to avail of this service.
At the current rate of growth I think that I will possibly spend more than £15,000 on postage in the next 12 months.
Question is, can I apply for the free of charge service? And if I do and my spend in the
next 12 months is < £15k, will I then be charged the £725+VAT?
Does anybody here have first hand knowledge on how the free collection works?
What would be the best way to go then in terms of printing postage labels etc?
Any help appreciated as I've had enough of standing in queues :redface:

 

[Esk247]

Think you qualify for free collection. RM will send a van round to your warehouse/office and pick the parcels up once a day if you have an account with them.

You still need a franking machine to put all the labels on, but you can do it fast, weight it, label it, shove it in the RM sack and then the RM driver rolls up and shoves it in their van. Simples.

Not sure on the costs related to the latest price changes though.

 

[kulture]

Royal Mail will charge you the £750. When your spend ACTUALLY exceeds the £15,000 (and not just projected) then YOU have to tell them this and YOU have to demand the free collection. They will happily carry on charging you. Then, once you are on the free service they monitor you. If your post cost drops below £15,000 then they try and charge you again. In my case they looked at an old account and wrongly thought I was below the £15,000. Fortunately it only took one phone call to correct them.

You do not need a franking machine. All you need is an OBA account and a PPI licence. Then you print the licence on the address label. You do not need a collection service. You can deliver the sacks yourself to the local sorting office. Depending on how far away that is, it may work out cheaper to pay the £750.

 

[Esk247]

They must have changed it then :| We used to frank everything and then bag everything up in the warehouse and the RM van came round at around 2pm every day to collect the sacks. It was free to collect as we reached so much spend..that was 2011 though so not sure if OBA was available then or whatever.

RM never offered it to us anyway.

 

[smo]

You definately dont need a franking machine, as has bene said just an OBA and PPI

As well as taking bags to the sorting office you can deliver them to ANY post office too - they don't like taking more than 2-3 bags though so dont turn up with 20 unless its the sorting office.

We got to chose the collection time, we try and aim for around 4pm and our driver was able to shuffle his round to accomodate us, but we are one of the largest accounts in the Exeter area so they try and be accomodating where possible - this sadly isnt the same for deliveries though!

 

[eCommerce63]

Royal Mail will charge you the £750. When your spend ACTUALLY exceeds the £15,000 (and not just projected) then YOU have to tell them this and YOU have to demand the free collection. They will happily carry on charging you. Then, once you are on the free service they monitor you. If your post cost drops below £15,000 then they try and charge you again. In my case they looked at an old account and wrongly thought I was below the £15,000. Fortunately it only took one phone call to correct them.

You do not need a franking machine. All you need is an OBA account and a PPI licence. Then you print the licence on the address label. You do not need a collection service. You can deliver the sacks yourself to the local sorting office. Depending on how far away that is, it may work out cheaper to pay the £750.

OBA Accnt/PPI licence and dropping stuff off at Sorting Office seems the way to go for us. Time for a bit of research now .... Thank you all for your input