All Service Centre articles – Page 12
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News
Smell a rat?
Here’s a seasonal story for you. Chris and Marion Clark, who run Marion’s Shop and Filling Station on Rousay in the Orkneys, wondered why every Switch transaction via Streamline in the run-up to Christmas involved a call to Streamline’s authorisation centre. “As a consequence,” says Chris, “our customers have been ...
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Sue online
One of the forecourt operators who contacted me about Deal Direct/Our Price was Bernard Knowles who runs Forge Garage in North Yorkshire. He had his fingers burned in dealing with Deal Direct and issued a small claims court summons over the internet. The company, which had not been responding to ...
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News
Does this sound familiar?
The flyer from Our Price offered ‘amazingly low priced, fast-selling chart DVDs’ along with a free counter display, window poster, delivery, 25 per cent profit margin on every DVD sold and a 100 per cent sale or return guarantee.A number of you rang up to enquire whether Our Price and ...
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News
Occupational hazards
I don’t suppose you need me to tell you what a dangerous industry you work in – deadly substances on tap and tills full of high turnover (shame about the profit). But you still might be stopped in your tracks by some shock-horror statistics from the Health & Safety Executive ...
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News
Off licence confusion
Susan Young, who runs Nantybwch Service Station at Tredeger in Gwent, was bemused to get a letter from a firm of solicitors in Merthyr Tydfil, suggesting that she might like to use their services in renewing her off licence and urging her to reply by November 10. Susan wondered if ...
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News
It’s that time again
As the festive season heads into the home stretch, remember to remind your staff that there will be more strangers, and dangers, around. Some of the bounty that makes up Christmas will come in the form of back-of-lorry offers and freshly-minted dud notes and dodgy plastic from the unwanted customer.And ...
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News
Selling money
Have you had a go at offering financial services yet? Automated teller machines come in many flavours – full service, self-fill, free-standing, inserted into brick walls – so there should be something to suit every shop. Andrew Clark, who runs my local garage just off London’s Southend Road/North Circular, had ...
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News
Words fail
Are you still selling phone top-ups? Steve Dyer, manager of Knight Bros Thornfalcon Garage at Taunton in Somerset, has sent me a rant. Cardpoint had written to say that Orange had reduced its retailer margins on e-top-ups by 0.5 per cent. “Words absolutely fail me,” writes Steve. “I have told ...
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News
What price profits?
Our story back in August about Chris Cundall’s quest to make up his deficit on his Texaco petrol margins by putting up his snacks and confectionery prices has prompted some interesting responses. Richard emailed me a comprehensive set of equations to show you don’t necessarily need to match the competition. ...
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News
Different, but similar
Anyone who has visited North America will likely come back with the notion that they don’t know they’re born as far as petrol prices go. Last month I visited my family in Canada, managing to arrive 20 minutes before a huge hydro blackout rendered everything into darkness along the eastern ...
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News
The art of writing
They say letter writing is a lost art. Well, not entirely, although it may have become a bit sidetracked into those great stacks of emails and txt msgs u get 4 eg. But the writing of a good, coherent letter of complaint, now that is often a difficult thing, given ...
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News
Protect yourselves
The Data Protection Act has been in force for a few years now – long enough for the crooks to get their brains around the various opportunities for scams. The most common scams take the form of companies demanding money from retailers for registering them under the Act – and ...
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News
Congestion at the till
It seemed like one of life’s rich ironies when Carol Smith had to put the customer transaction for congestion charging through the PayPoint terminal 13 times. “Eight times is the norm,” she says, “and it’s the same with telephone top-ups. Error 2061 pops up.” This apparently means no lines available ...
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News
Passable petrol profits - just nostalgia?
Don’t look back they say. Those who do are often accused of viewing the good ol’ days through rose-tinted specs. But as Chris Cundall points out, he was operating on better profits 10 years ago. He runs two petrol stations with Londis stores in West Yorkshire. He’s been a Texaco ...
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News
Sometimes you get what you wish for
I had rather wished that DVD supplier Deal Direct would just go away. Sylvia Brudenall, who runs a Murco service station at Taunton, agrees. “I got a load of unwanted stuff last October from Price Slasher (another of the company’s incarnations). I kept asking them to pick the DVDs up ...
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News
Give us a break
You wouldn’t have wanted the mini break I’ve just had. Most of the self-catering shopping I did on a four-day break in Cornwall involved visiting various Safeways, which seemed to have the supermarket monopoly in most places. We were offered leaflets at every entrance – cheap petrol etc. This didn’t ...
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News
Have you been dealt with yet?
The number of calls I’ve received from retailers about DVD supplier Deal Direct is now just shy of 60, so here’s an update. One of Deal Direct’s recent tactics for delaying payment of sale-or-return money was the excuse that the accounts lady was off sick. It had been offering therefore ...
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News
Screw the customers - a bank’s charter
Banks are hardly the most loved of institutions and when you read the following, it will remind you why.Dave Moss runs Alfington Stores and Service Station at Alfington in Devon. It’s a small business with costs nailed down tight. He’s had a business account with Barclays for 15-plus years. In ...