Big W offers 10% off for mobile phone recharge. This discount is greater than the commission newsagents receive from Vodafone and what they are about to receive from Optus. I suspect than Big W is on around 16% which newsagents are on 5% and, I suspect, falling.
There are 3,500 newsagent outlets offering phone recharge. If we cannot leverage that footprint and what must be considerable sales for a better outcome I expect newsagents will start to withdraw from offering the service given the considerable infrastructure cost.
This appears as to be latest trend in the mobile phone recharge market. Newsagents need to be able to get onboard with this before it’s too late.
This is just another area that Dialtime, the largest provider among newsagents, is not performing well in. They simply havent bargained the best deals for recharge voucher, EFPTOS or bill payments. And the question i want answered is why?
I agree with both comments; there could be only one reason now to continue with these recharge vouchers, customers purchase other products from your business while in the shop.
Its appears the Newsagent stream has been shut out by the various service providers using electronic services, the outlay versus the reward is not good for a balance sheet.
This will never change as you very well know until all are united as one. Until this occurs many small business’s will continue to struggle and dissappear. History is the best evidence of this.