i want to rent a franking machine but need advice

rebin123

hello
i had a call from fpmailing.co.uk saying i could save alot by using the machine and i need to pay £20.00 a month i know i can save a good money, any one used this machine from fpmailing.co.uk and what do you thing about it are they good....
tnks

snowman2_2

Dont forget to look at the costs of ink. Some of them are 6-7p per frank which negates any benefit from reduced postage costs. We send out 500 2nd class letters and 100 1st class letters and it was going to be more expensive with a franking machine. Watch out for long tie-ins as well and heavy charges to update the prices each April

rebin123

snowman2 wrote: »

Dont forget to look at the costs of ink. Some of them are 6-7p per frank which negates any benefit from reduced postage costs. We send out 500 2nd class letters and 100 1st class letters and it was going to be more expensive with a franking machine. Watch out for long tie-ins as well and heavy charges to update the prices each April

thank you for your advice so you means leave it and use postoffice and first and second calss stemp i well save money that way..

paddyrg

Also look at services like pdqit if we're just talking 'letter' size - they print and post, so you just mailmerge/print to their service using a printer driver (simple install) and it works out pretty reasonable

Savvy_Sue

See also this thread. There is a post there with various non-franking machine options. Possibly mentioned in it are the fact that you can get stamps cheaper from CostCo if you only need basic 1st and 2nd (OK you have to join CostCo but that can be worthwhile), and that Superdrug often have reduced prices on stamps around Christmas.

What sort of volume are you talking?

flossy_splodge

Also need to be aware that at least one of the franking machine providers threaten to sue you if you try to go to a 'refill' service like cartridge World when you need more ink.
It's tied up pretty well.
In my last company outgoing mail was about 80 to 100 letters a week and we went back to stamps as it was cheaper.

sjbrun

I find the ink on my machine is 0.25p per cartridge and i've phoned up the franking company and asked if I had to buy the ink from them and they said its just ink and I can get it from anywhere. The person on the phone even recommended cartridge world as thats where she goes.

I've worked it out and over the past year I have saved just over £7,000 with a franking machine. Thats including ink, labels, machine rental and topping up costs. Then again we spent 30k on postage last year.

sjbrun

It just depends what your wanting to use it for. If your a small office then you may get it to look more professional but it will probably cost you more in the long run.

If you sending out volume or packets then it may save you a fair bit

snowman2_2

From doing the maths, if you are sending out a lot of large letters or packets, a franking machine makes a lot of sense. For standard letters, you need a lot of mail to make it pay. The larger, faster machines are much cheaper with ink but cost more to rent. I suppose if you were doing a few thousand per month, it might be cheaper than stamps but it wasn't for us at 5-600 per month. I would second Costco for slightly cheaper stamps.

martindow

I had a month's trial with Pitney Bowes. but after realising all of the extra costs for consumables, downloading balances to the machine and updating changes in postal costs I decided to leave.

I still needed to go to the PO to hand items over and to get certificates of posting so it didn't seem worth it as the 'savings' in postal costs weren't worthwhile. If you have a very large volume of post and have it collected by RM it may make more sense but make sure you know the cost of all of the extras before you commit yourself.

GlynD

Stay well away from Pitney Bowes and shop around before entering into a contract. They're a good time saver and you can claim the leasing costs back but the ink costs have to be considered as well.