Comments on: Royal Mail OBA (Online Business Account)

By: John Pemberton

John Pemberton — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:25:40 +0000

I use dispatch express – and concur with previous (positive comments) about the system.

Speak to Kim Bergin (Royal Mail sales) on

She really helped me alot get the system up and running. The discounts are more than 20% by the way! more like 30-35%.

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:39:04 +0000

Well, got a response regarding a second installation. They confirmed that we need to be hitting 10K of barcoded services per installation not per account.

So that’s 10K of specials, recorded, airsure etc per installation.

Peter, who is your contact at Royal Mail, would be interesting to talk to them.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:14:54 +0000

I know, we had an issue with our first installation, the barcodes were unreadable and we had to install a few different fonts. Also the MySql is a real drain on system resources.

I logged a call this morning, someone is getting back to me. Now I just need to find the original CD??!!

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:18:51 +0000

Pete call the Royal Mail and ask them for despatch express support, support is done by an outside company, they will give you the extra activation codes and also help with the insulation as it can be a bit tricky on some PC’s.

By: Lino

Lino — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:11:00 +0000

Thanks for the information Pete (and Peter), really appreciate it.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:50:25 +0000

That’s interesting, when did they change that? If you’re correct, which you most likely are…I’m going to get another installation up.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:28:45 +0000

Pete

It’s not 15k ( which has been reduced to 10k ) of business PER Dispatch Express installation, it’s now per account.
I have it running on 3 machines and my total spend is around 20k.

They just provide a new activation codes for despatch express and link it all to the same account.

It is a fantastic bit of software although it did take a bit of training to get it up and running, I don’t know why the royal mail don’t promote it more.

You never need to log into OBA with despatch express as it’s all automatic.
A the end of the day despatch express sends all the data to OBA without having to log into the site.

For more info on it see
http://postcode.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=22700528&mediaId=22700584

This has been a real time saver, it halved the time it takes us to process postage.

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:49:41 +0000

#5 Dispatch express is the name of a piece of software, it’s issued to us from Royal Mail.

Your are invoiced when your account reaches a certain level, for us we get an invoice when we hit about £1300-£1500 around every 2-3 weeks.

Basically you get a 20% discount on all postage costs and free thermal labels for your new printer (the one you have to buy, not from Royal Mail).

You can also have Saturday guaranteed Special delivery added to your account, you are charged about 5p on top of the normal special delivery charge for ALL specials (so the average covers the extra charge).

You have to sign a contract saying that you will process around 15k of business PER Dispatch Express installation. So for example, if you only want to process your postage on one PC, you will only need one installation. If you are very busy and need 2 PC’s churning out postage, you will need to commit to 30K of postage costs.

Royal Mail send you everything you need, the software, labels, tags etc. You have to buy the thermal printer (around £170)

If you are already using OBA, speak to your account manager and they will get you started.

By: Nick Talley

Nick Talley — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:21:54 +0000

We have been using the OBA for a couple of years and I can confirm that it is a Royal pain in the arse. Slow, always crashing and cumbersome.

By: Lino

Lino — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:25:11 +0000

@3 Pete, could you let me know some more information about dispatch express? Any additional postage discount we can get would be great.

By: Tim Watt

Tim Watt — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:15:43 +0000

I think you miss the point… Royal Mail do not offer a choice in my experience.

I think I sent roughly 6000 items of mail last year – which isn’t 15K of business but deserves some discount.

The one and only only service I was offered had some (at the cost of ridiculous bureaucracy and paperwork – which could easily be simplified if Royal Mail Business had a clue). Now, with one day notice, I’m offered a premium cost for bulk or in reality no service at all other than going back to a consumer one.

Royal Mail deliveries are a shining light and should be a source of pride for our nation. But their business services, the management at least, must be among the worst examples of business stupidity out there.

Tim

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:55:17 +0000

We use dispatch express, has it’s faults but generally a great system. You have to commit to at least 15K of business a year but get a 20% discount on all postage costs.

By: ebuyerfb

ebuyerfb — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:34:40 +0000

In the US all we have to do if send one item priority or express and we get free pickup on everything (which is like a $4.95 minimum). On the otherhand USPS just lost a little under $2 billion last quarter.

By: Toby

Toby — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:44:21 +0000

We have a Prepaid RM OBA account & we have to call in to get the daily order confirmed
They’ve just stated as from today the minimum order value they can confirm is £20 aswell