ping beamends

Did the international re-direction work well? Going to have to use that myself, but not sure how well it operates, or if it is worth my hard earned £70!

Matt

Parcelnet are a potentially good idea for a courier, marred by extremely poor management from all accounts. Basically parcelnet's couriers are members of the public who get paid about 50p per parcel to deliver them, many of them are mums who drop the kids off at school then go on to deliver a round of parcels in their area. Amazon's free delivery service uses them.

Doing it in a landy might scoff the profits of course!

Yes, it was fine. They managed to misplace a couple of parcels whilst it was still current, but a phone call sorted that out. It is well worth knowing the number of the sorting office!

Stuart

Have you ever tried claiming? You have to wait x weeks, and there's no compensation for time lost, or the fact that it may be a special order which you cannot reurn after 10 days hence you are stuck with something in stock you don't want *and* you've had to fork out for another one. Not unreasonably, out custoners are not prepared to wait three weeks to see if it's going to turn up.

Richard

Cue Brian Conley?

i can get it here but wondering on price from over there as i will be getting a new wiring loom and some other stuff as well as only paid roughly 60 quid for two 107 inch utes i will be getting a few new parts for the restoration and as soon as i get my digital camera working again i will post some pics

Adam

Yeah, bit of a nightmare. I don't even bother now unless it worth more than about £20, it just isn't worth the hassle.

I did get one-up on them a while back tho - I sent a claim in (being me and from past experience!) I took a copy of all the receipts, recorded delivery slip etc and sent claim off. Few weeks later phoned to find out why I hadn't received a refund - they said they didn't have any record of a claim and told me I needed to send the original documents off to them to claim - since I had already sent them the docs that was impossible!! and after a bit of arguing we reached an impasse. Anyway, I hadn't told them I'd copied the docs (so after making another copy!) I sent off a claim with the copy documents...to cut a long story short I received a refund, and then a few weeks later received a 2nd refund! So they either took a very long time to process the claims, or they eventually found my original claim and processed that one too! You would have thought that their system would record that against a particular Recorded Delivery reference that a claim had already been processed.

Matt

I'd want 50p/mile not 50p/parcel. Current running costs (insurance, tax,= fuel & maintenace but *not* depreciation) of the Disco II are 32p/mile. =

I wouldn't be surprised if there has been =A310k depreciation over the 1=

8 months and 20,000 miles I've done so that gives "total cost of ownership= " around 80p/mile. Which is par for the course for most vechicles accordin= g to the likes of the AA etc.

Aye, I have done that but the new round (since the abolition of the second delivery, which we never got anyway) takes him right past our front door, twice within 5 mins. I do see the postie most mornings but normally right at the start of the round and the tray with our post is in the back of the van not on the passenger seat.

21st August 2006.

Indeed, even my old Audi, on fuel costs alone, takes 9p/mile so that's only 5 miles max per parcel before it gets loss-making.

As for insurance and tax, I'd not count non-mileage associated depreciation as even if I was parcelnetting I'd still need the car.

95p/l = 4.31/gallon / 0.09 = 47mpg average. Very good. Fuel in the Disco is 15p/mile.

But why should your other uses subsidise a commercial activity? Bad business practice and a very easy way to slip into cash flow problems or "I'm working my socks off, getting paid but still don't have any profits".

Not bad for a comfortable, old car, sod all these silly dirty-to-make hybrids!

What's the point of working an existing cost into the business equation? In this case the cost would be there whether the business existed or not, so it can't really be regarded as a business cost. It would be like including your weekly shopping in your business plan.

On or around Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:49:23 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

I divide vehicle costs into "running" and "standing" costs. The standing costs are all the things you have to pay just to have it sitting outside ready and legal to go. The running costs are everything that wears out or gets used up per mile.

The latter costs I have a spreadsheet for which channels all the data down to a single "pence per mile" figure. Unsurprisingly, fuel is the big one - the minibus is currently being checked on this system and the current average is 30.5 mpg, which equates to a bit more'n 14 ppm IIRC, for the current price of diesel round here - the spreadsheet also averages the fuel prices. All the other stuff like service items and tyres and so forth (and if I paid others to do the servicing, I'd add that too) add up to about another 4 or 5 ppm, without looking at it.

Bearing in mind as always, SDP insurance is likely voided because you're receiving payment for using the vehicle!

Sitting costs shirley?

The running costs are

What don't you understand about my statement above? The money for that "existing cost" has to come from somewhere. Not all of us have a salary that magically drops into the bank account each month to pay these "existing costs".

OK taking all of it as a business cost is pushing the edges a bit but to allocate the same proportion of it as that of business/private use is very sensible and valid.

For the self employed the weekly shopping *is* part of the business plan. I need this much money each week to eat, the business needs to make at least that much profit each week or we don't eat...

I do understand it, and from your next statement it seems you understand me.

That's what I mean, it's at a point where it can be justified to include it or not include it, depending on circumstances. Fuel costs would certainly be a business expense but cash that would have to be paid out whether you have a business or not is personal finance, not business finance. If you only bought the car because you need it for business but now you have it you might as well use it for personal stuff too, then you'd be much more justified in including insurance as a business cost.

I know, but that's personal finance, and wouldn't go on the company books. I run my own PLC and it is legally a separate entity to me, my shopping is neither here nor there to it.

Blimey I think I've forgotten how we got to this point now!

Got sender unit in super quick time, top do! Gonna have to wait a bit to fit though as i recently tanked up

Cheers Icky