Delivering Yellow Page & others

RMS2

I thought I would share this advice with you.


You may be tempted to earn a little money on the side or use it as a stop gap until something better comes along - well don't.


I've recently delivered YP and was waiting for Thomson, but their compute system won't let you book the rounds and it is not allocating any delivery slots, despite contacting the area co-ordinator several times.


Rural rounds are a complete non starter, with farm tracks and single houses to house names not consecutive, but higgledy piggledy. Missing out houses, routes and names given alphabetically instead of route order. You're back and forth and up and down like a !!!!!s draws.


Urban routes aren't much better, with a supposedly single person 6 hour route, taking two of us 7 hours to complete.


Now, I'm fairly fit and come at this like a bull out of a China shop, knowing from previous experience (delivering leaflets) that you've got to go some to make it pay.


The other bad bits. The car gets wrecked going down dirt track farm routes (whilst getting paid a pittance as you are taking forever to deliver them). Wednesday will involve putting a new strap on the rear box exhaust, which I'm sure went as a result of these 'roads'.


You get paid a pittance of a mileage (about £3) and it costs you at least £20 getting the books and driving to the area, plus then driving around in 2nd gear at 20mph trying to find these places that don't even have a postcode. You're meant to have business insurance (i.e. pay out for it) but most don't. Then you're self employed and a self assessment tax form is required.


Taking into account, petrol, but not insurance, time collecting catalogues, wear and tear on car and the fact that you're absolutely knackered after 3 days, it probably pays about £2-£3 an hour. I've got a dog which I walk 3 times a day, so it's not as if I'm not used to using my legs.


I only volunteered to help the wife (had some time off/loose end), who was waiting to hear back on a permanent job (which she's got), but never again. Not worth the time, not worth the damage to the car, not worth the energy, not worth having a garage and car boot full of catalogues, not worth all the extra time you put in collecting books, signing up and talking through the whole rigmarole, not worth the £25 insurance and not worth the planning of routes and finding postcodes every night (you can't just leave in the morning and hope you'll find them). And certainly not worth the money.


On top of all that, you have to wait a month to see if they'll pay you or try on a load of deductions.

MA61

Helpful feedback, thanks

essjaytee

On the other hand....


Can't speak for YP as never delivered them but I did deliver Thomson directories in April this year. Their website lets you pick a round in your chosen area and lets you know in advance how many books there are to deliver on each round and what the pay will be for that round, so I chose a smallish route as it was my first time and I had no idea what to expect.


I collected the books from a local depot and then had a couple of weeks to deliver them by. Delivered them all within a day and a half - I did mess up slightly by choosing a "nicer town" without realising that meant all the houses had long driveways to walk down!!


They gave me a pretty rubbish map and a list of addresses to deliver to so I just used my own A-Z and planned my own route the night before.


When I'd finished I logged in online to let them know and a week later they sent me an email advising my payment was on its way... received the full amount with no deductions. The fact that it was a sunny weekend probably helped me but I'm looking forward to doing it again next year... but will probably choose a different area with shorter garden paths!!

torbrex

Have to agree with essjaytee.

This year I have done white pages, Thomsons twice and about to start yellow pages in a couple of weeks.

My payments have never been more than 2 weeks after finishing the routes and the selection of the route was down to me so obviously I picked areas that I knew and the rest was easy.
With rurals its a case of doing your homework and planning the route yourself, with urbans again you need to plan where to park so that you can deliver maximum number of books without having to move your car, I did 950 books on one route of the Thomsons and the car never moved once.

The last routes I did earned me about £7/hour and that was taking into account collection of books and miles to the delivery area but not shoe leather.

Plan it right and you can make money, get it wrong and it seems pointless.

jack9

Have to agree with torbrex and essjaytee too.

Did Thomson Local directories for the first time last week, registered and booked my route on the website. Collected 1000 directories from the local warehouse (wasn't sure how many I could fit in my car, but reckon a Fiesta could fit 2000 in the boot/back seats - assuming the directories are A5 size and 1cm thick).

Delivered all 1000 in 7 hours for £65 on a urban route with most houses having driveways. Would carry 80-100 in my bag and as I planned my route the previous day I didn't have far to walk back to my car or to drive much.

Just waiting for the next delivery to the local warehouse so I can book some more routes before Christmas.

I'm registered on Yellow Pages/BT delivery site so will update this thread if I get any deliveries to do.

RMS2

Okay to reply to some of these, which seem to be stretching the truth somewhat.


I tried several times to contact Thomson local after my wife's original call to them. Only once did I get a reply. The website didn't work because they had no release dates from the warehouse, despite it coming up as an option and times given.


The rounds are still available because I can still log on and choose the.


If you took a short route with Thomson, they would pay about £50 for that, I know as I've looked at the rates they pay and compared them with YP, they pay less for more books.


It took me two days to do my own village (completely) and that was 664 books and Thomson pay just over £50 for 864 books, which includes all the outlying hamlets and farms plus doing the large house on the A46 fast dual carriage way.


So, you got £50 for nearly two days work. You need to add in the time collecting it, induction meeting and your fuel, plus the time planning it the day before. So that is about £25 per day.


Did you pay for business insurance or do it on the fly? How much time have you set aside to complete your self assessment as you were self employed and are responsible for all tax & NI?


Great that you got your payments so quick, but that isn't the norm and we were told that right from the start - it's three weeks today since I signed off my first completed rounds.


With rurals it doesn't matter how you plan your route, it the house is down a long bumpy path and not sign posted, then it isn't going to get any shorter or less bumpy by planning it. It doesn't take any planning, it just takes time and effort with them. There is no way you'd do 950 books without moving the car. You would end up walking back miles all the time to pick up more books.


A Fiesta cannot fit 2,000 books (I shan't even comment on weight limits). A Citroen C3 (about the same size) will take 800 max using boot and back seats. 1,000 books in 7 hours, impressive, almost 150 per hour and when you take into account the time to get them out of the car, drive to your roads, see where you're going, not stop for lunch, it's about one every 15 seconds.

PHILANTHROPIST

From a legal perspective this scenario sounds like a classic piecework con to get around paying the National Min Wage. Prima facie this practice can and should be challenged.

Phil

dawyldthing

I used to get 2p a paper door to door years ago, so it sounds like you get around 6.5p per book, so while it's not excellent rate some routes will be better than others (like if someone did my road there's about 120 houses door to door, so someone would easily deliver them in half hour so it would be a good money maker, but if it's stretched out it wouldn't be that good)

lincroft1710

PHILANTHROPIST wrote: »

From a legal perspective this scenario sounds like a classic piecework con to get around paying the National Min Wage. Prima facie this practice can and should be challenged.

Phil

Surely a wage relates to a job over a specific period of time which entails regular hours. This is a one off task, which you contract as self employed.

PHILANTHROPIST

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Surely a wage relates to a job over a specific period of time which entails regular hours. This is a one off task, which you contract as self employed.

You may in part be right lincroft and thx for asking. I only scanned my eye over the post and I have no clue whether the OP intends to do it as a one off ..or for a small number ..or several hours per week .... or is it available as a f/t position !?

Fact is that many self employed folk in UK are being conned by clients/ employers as in fact many are truly designated in law as "workers". As such they are entitled to earn NMW even if they work one hour, ten or 50 hrs per week. Also entitled to statutory holiday pay.

I was involved in such a case for 2 years and Tribunal found in favour of 60 workers re employment status and employer then settled b4 full hearing.

HTH
Phil

specialboy

RMS2 you seem to have drawn the short straw with the rounds you have been allocated, I've done the Thompson a few times over the last few years and found it an easy way to make some extra cash, I have friends who have done it too with no problems.