royal mail strikes

COOLTRIKERCHICK

because of the wildcat strikes, and now a potential royal mail national strike loaming ..

i have now contacted some of my buyers, to ask instead of sending me cheques in the post, which could get held up, which would not help my cash flow, to pay me via internet/bacs payment.

i know if any of my payments are held up, it would not take long for a cashflow blip to happen.

so it was just a thought to put a post on here...

ukbill69

Umm some customers might not like to do this and asking them might put them off. Id suggest waiting for the mail. I seem to be getting all my mail.

grand_march_aida

There's no need for cheques in this day and age with practically instant BACS payments. You should be encouraging them to use BACS regardless.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i must admit i think i should have done this a while ago, as it is also cheaper than putting a cheque into a business acount.

i am still getting my mail through too ukbill69, but there have been wildcat strikes in various parts of the country, and by all accounts there is a huge backlog of mail, i thought if they do more strikes, then that huge pile of un-delivered mail is going to get bigger, and take a heck of alot longer to deliver, there is also a bigger chance of things getting lost too ( in my opinion)

I dont think you could put buyers/customers off by asking them if there is any chance of them paying you via the internet, due to the postal strikes, and i will be doing like wise, instead of sending cheques out, asking them if i could pay via the internet, just to make sure my bills are paid,

I should imagine that these strikes will play havoc with some businesses, who are allready struggling due to the current climate.

Slinky

I hate it when we have postal strikes, it just becomes a good excuse for slow paying customers to delay even longer.... I sent the cheque last week etc etc.

It's amazing the number of times I've had that excuse, yet they aren't clever enough to back date the cheque when they finally do decide they have to cough up.

Threre really does seem to have been a shift to paying over the net now though, I'm getting nearly 50% of my payments by BACS or card now.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i spoke to my postman today, and he was saying they are just waiting for the result of the ballot, so he seems to think that after going to the table with royal mail, etc the national strike will start in about a month...

slinky....lol.... as you say they could have at least back dated the cheques.

paulwf

In the industry I was in (notorious for late payment) it was very common for wholesalers to offer an early settlement discount. It doesn't have to be much just a couple of percent but that might be worth offering...the enhanced cashflow may offset the discount.

gibbyni

if it happens its going to effect us the the other way as we use Royal Mail for our deliveries. Theres currently a ballot that ends 8th Oct results announced a day after and im sure they have to give some notice of the strike. So if it happens it will prob be some stage mid to late October.

We had a Royal Mail unofficial strike over here (Northern Ireland) at the start of 2006 where they just walked out for over 18 days. That realy hurt us as at that stage most of our payments where by cheque but now its all electronic. Not a single bit of mail went in or out of NI the whole time.

moneypooh

I'm hoping to persuade some customers to go via BACs/internet and using the postal strikes as a tool; the majority already do.
I think they'll be more grieved to be on stop, rather than changing, but that is account customers only of course.
The cost to raise and bank a cheque is terrible these days and I'm using internet banking more and more. It has saved us a small fortune over the past year alone.
We currently have a few outstanding cheques, but it's not affecting cash flow.

I do think it'll go ahead, and we've already put contingency plans in place as we are a mail order company and we have to do so to survive.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

thought i would just bump this thread,

as it looks as though there is def going to be national strikes.

soooooooooooo glad i organised my main big buyers to pay via bacs/internet banking.

and to be honest it also saves me alot of time going to the bank, and standing in the que..lol.. so it means now that i can get more work done..( but it also means i cant use the banking as an excuse to have a sneaky scive sp? .....lol...

borders_dude

Yet another threat of Royal Mail strikes. An Ebay sellers nightmare!