Bargain Deals?

[mikepayn]

Hi,

I'm still very new to all this. What do people think about keeping each other advised of current hot deals?

For instance, we have been using SmartStamp to generate our stamps and labels for years @ only £5 a month. We have avoided a franking machine (though it's cheaper) because of the monhly rental and the inconvenience of having to type labels rather than just cut and paste into SmartStamp. However, it's easy to set up a mail merge/mailing list with Bluepark!! (First download and install the free Avery label Wizard to attach to MS Word from: http://www.avery.co.uk/uk1/downloads/wizzard.jsp?gclid=CI_Om4Hei5UCFQcUQgodsw-Nqw - Then just export your current orders as a csv file from Order Manager into Excel - Setup the Avery Wizard once and you are away - believe me it's faster than cut 'n paste!)

Recently Pitney Bowes contacted us (Matt Gilbranch 0207 200 5430) and offered a years contract for just £10 a month. After a year they would be looking at a 60 month contract if you decide you like it. This is for their E726 Franking Machine plus G7UK 2Kg Interfaced Scales. Plus a special deal on your logo.

With a franking machine a 36p stamp costs 34p, a 1kg packet costs £2.61 instead of £3.08, a 2kg packet costs £5.51 instead of £6.40 etc etc. It'll not take long to recoup your £10 monthly fee.

If you are interested give Matt a ring - mention my name and if there's any commission we'll split it! We think it's a great deal.

Mike
http://www.carhamptonemart.co.uk

[little-linguist]

Hi Mike (and others reading this)

Just to let you know that you can get these same low postage rates if you open a PPI account with Royal Mail. The advantages of PPI over franking is that you don't need to hire a machine at all - the only "cost" involved is producing the labels to stick on the mail which is very small and probably cheaper than the franking labels anyway.

This has already been mentioned on this forum but another advantage of PPI rather than franking is that you are not obliged to post the mail the day it's prepared so you can carry on getting the mail ready one day and it wouldn't matter from a Royal Mail point of view if you didn't actually post it until the next day.

[mikepayn]

[quote=little-linguist;2522]Hi Mike (and others reading this)

Just to let you know that you can get these same low postage rates if you open a PPI account with Royal Mail. The advantages of PPI over franking is that you don't need to hire a machine at all - the only "cost" involved is producing the labels to stick on the mail which is very small and probably cheaper than the franking labels anyway....

Thanks for this, I agree. However, to sign up for PPI requires a minimum annual spend of £5,000 on postage. We use Royal Mail up to 2Kg then a carrier for everything else so it doesn't help us (heavier parcels mean bigger orders for us ! ).

Great to have the options tho'.

Mike

[Adva Trading]

"...However, to sign up for PPI requires a minimum annual spend of £5,000 on postage."

Not really.

You can negotiate and get them to have you as a customer if you 'promiss' to get there within a year.

They will never come back and check. They will forget to check on you by the end of the first year.

[little-linguist]

"...However, to sign up for PPI requires a minimum annual spend of £5,000 on postage."

Not really.

You can negotiate and get them to have you as a customer if you 'promiss' to get there within a year.

They will never come back and check. They will forget to check on you by the end of the first year.

Yes - I'm pretty sure that we weren't spending over £5k when we first got our PPI account. Royal Mail customer account dept. don't seem to know their arse from their elbow so I'm pretty sure that if you told them that you would spend £5k and didn't achieve it then they'd never pick up on it. And if they did, you would just lose the right to have a PPI account the following year so you'd have still benefited from one year's PPI services.

[Adva Trading]

I am entering my third year with less than 5k.

[mikepayn]

Thanks guys. I'll definitely try them. Seems like so much less hassle than any thing else we've tried!

Mike

[petad]

I agree - I'm going to look into it next week. Thanks all.

[mikepayn]

Hi,

Don't know if it is of any use to anyone, but TouchLocal (http://www.touchlocal.com/) are running a promotion at the moment. You can try out their internet advertising for free for a month. The usual pricing ranges from £5 per week for a modest number of hits up to about £15 pw for virtually unlimited traffic. We opted for the unlimited option ('cos it's free). It's very quick to set up and your add will even link to your eBay shop if you have one.

I don't think it will be a lot of use to us as we only trade on-line. For the advertising to work for us, someone needs to search for Internet Shopping, Taunton. When they do however, you will be about number two on the page in Google. Having said that, we have had eight hits this week so we might try out the cheapest option once our freebbie runs out ;)

mikepayn
Carhampton eMart (http://www.carhamptonemart.co.uk)