Quote:
Originally Posted by Russ B
I'm working for myself. It's mail order related, most of my incoming and outgoing mail is in envelope form. At the moment I'm getting by just using stamps but I'm looking at getting a RM business account and forking out for a 'franking' machine. To justify that cost I need to be sure of a business plan which I'm tentatively working out.
Although bad the economy isn't affecting my trade directly but the RM would really screw up my projected growth. It's hard enough selling the idea of small businesses to people when I have major league competition but all it would take is delivery delays to take longer (even asking people to be patient during the strikes doesn't work - most people want things NOW or they go elsewhere) and potential customers give up and take their business elsewhere.
I need a delivery service I can rely on. It should be the RM but I'm not fussy, I'll pay anyone to deliver my mail and have orders brought to me, this is why I'm more than happy for the RM to have competition if they won't do the job they're supposed to do.
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Given the competitive growth in the mail / parcel delivery service sector and the fact that you're not fussy about who performs this element of your business then perhaps you should do as you suggest and consider one of the alternatives to RM.
In essence, if your business plan projections don't hold much faith in the service levels offered by RM then perhaps exploring the possibility of a service level agreement with an alternate provider is the answer.
That said, if your business is operated through a service provider / middleman such as ebay you might want to consider an alternative to that as they are moving towards a "no postage fee" model in many categories.
Given the current economic climate vendors who are active in these categories and unable to absorb / offset these losses effectively - without passing the costs on to their customers - will undoubtedly falter or fail.
Without wishing to sound like a merchant of doom - and good / reliable postage services aside - the days of smaller mail order startup business thriving in an online environment such as ebay are numbered.
That's exactly how they'd like it.