It seems that every day I receive a call or email from a newsagent with another story about frustration at the behaviour of Bill Express. The latest is from a newsagent who advised Bill Express / Dialtime that they had sold their business and that the incoming newsagent did not want the Bill Express service. Here’s the rest of the story the newsagent in his own words:
The very next day our system was turned of by Dialtime and was not able to be used for the next 3 weeks of trading. I called about the system being turned off and Dialtime stated that we requested the removal of the equipment and we owed $12,000 on our rental agreement and this put our account into overdue so Dialtime shutdown your system till your dept is paid. All the equipment was removed and new owners took over and installed a new system. Now Bill Express is saying I need to payout there rental agreement of approx 12,000 for equipment I don’t have anymore and the fact that I lost approx 25,000 worth of sales over the 3 weeks I was without Dialtime and eftpos.
The newsagent did not request that the equipment be removed. Based on what I have been told, Dailtime’s action was unwarranted and denied the newsagent the opportunity to earn an income. A smarter move by Dialtime would have been to discuss the situation of the change of ownership with the newsagent.
Now, the equipment has been taken and the newsagent is being chase for $12,000.
On the back of everything else newsagents are experiencing at the hands of Bill Express, this reinforces the view of a company stumbling badly.
Sure, I am involved in a product which competes with part of the Bill Express offering. Since it’s free, it’s not competing in the true sense of the word. Also, no one is making Bill Express behave badly – they are mucking this up on their own.
Mark, sorry to hear all this, but is there a clause in the contract that you all signed for the recovery of fees for the early termanation of the aggrement??
Clem, I’ve asked the newsagent involved. On the face of what I’ve been told he’s been fed a raw deal. Mark
I am in a similar position but not quite so far down the track. There is a clause about early termination, the only cost effective way of terminating the contract is if the new owners take over the bxp system.
But with bxp costs as they are now why would they? Even if the rebates were reinstated bxp have lost trust, who would take the risk and sign a new contract with them now?
Brian C thanks for the info in the early termination clause with bxp.
Maybe this blog will make others aware that in the real world you don’t just tell business partners to stick it.
Get the contract out and read it.
Mark, if you have a bxp terminal you would have read the termination clause in the contract, and your actions are inciting an emotional response to what is clearly stated in the contract.
Now I understand what the ANF did not do at the start. It did not inform the members of long term consequences. It was all a big fun free party, now it is serious.
People are getting financially hurt.
Clem I have Bill Express in two of my newsagencies. At the time of handing out the contracts Bill Express made plenty of noise about subsidies to ensure newsagents were never out of pocket. People, including myself, trusted them.
For the record I note that the decision to endorse Bill Express was made prior to my joining the ANF Board.
This is from the bill express brands website:
“DialTime has a network of over 8,000 retail locations with terminals currently processing in excess of 1 million transactions per month, and generating revenue of $55 million plus per month.
Merchants are located across Australia in retail outlets including Coles Supermarkets, Kmart, Target, Myer, Caltex, Harvey Norman, IGA, and many other independent stores.”
Newsagencies obviously not important enough to make the list hey. There would be many many more out there than the big names promoted.
I have found the document provided by BE in 2003 to promote the network. It provides certain guarantees including one about change of ownership. The case outlined in my post above breaches the BE commitment.
I get that it was not your decision, but amongst the fan fare someone must have sat down and read the contract. Verbal assurances from reps probably on a commission for signups isn’t going to stand up. I still say the ANF board, at the time, should have been making it clear what the terms were. They were the go betweens. They negotiated the partnership with bill express and the newsagents, and if they heard that the reps were saying nobody would ever be out of pocket, they maybe needed to make it clear that some of the smaller newsagents may be struggling by the time the subsidy was out of time.
I think what happened was everyone expected that there would be enough profit turning over by now for the technology fee to be covered.
Since the start however the percentage of commission on phone vouchers has dropped across the board for all sellers in the industry. This was something that could have been forseen as it was already happening in Europe. Also as someone said earlier in another thread, people are moving to internet for billpay etc.
I think personally that if the company had stayed with just being dialtime (which by the sound of Daniel’s post is what they are now concentrating on) and doing phone vouchers that they would be ripping in huge profits now. The amount of money spent on this bill payment technology and all the screens has brought the company to its knees.
While I am very sympathetic to the newsagents, there are a lot of shareholders out there that believed in the whole idea too, and there is a lot of money being lost by a lot of people. Sad all around.
I also understand bill express is being hard about their dealings with the newsagents, but isn’t there something the ANF can do to help smooth out the situation? Do all the newsagents have to fight their battles by themselves, one by one?
Mark, this document you have found. A promotional flier or something actually legally binding? I hope you can use this anyhow to fight them on the intent of the agreement. Something in writing is better than verbal.
Isn’t anyone from ANF interested in what their members are facing in this seemingly losing battle with Bill Exp’s bullying tactics?
We all do know one should always read any contract b4 ever signing up, but caught up in the midst of selling hype, some good bits eg initial low eftpos rental/fees, rebates to offset, opportunity for extra income stream and finally endorsement by ANF took all caution out of our hands.
Therein lies truth of an old adage of what sounds too good to be true is indeed too good to be true!!!
Salesmen talk is indeed “salesmen talk” ie only point out positives not negatives that may not be financially sound.
We certainly did not hear the salesman tell us about the early termination clause about being financially responsible if new owners did not want to take up Bill Exp. This would definitely have made us think twice about taking on Bill Exp. contract
bcos given the inherent nature of a newsagency business long hours taking its toll, we may not have survived the long term contract.
We certainly learn the hard way.
We newsagents are truly sucked in big time!!
I am sure there must be a legal way of dealing with this unfair contractual agreement put out by Bill Exp from the beginning.
What I am seeing at the moment is a fight between sole individuals and the corporation.
Surely ANF or other newsagent associations have the means/capacity to do something about this situation.
What will it take for them to take up this case, I wonder?
Or are their hands tied down too?
News Letter (follow up Newsagency Auburn meeting)
Re: Bill Express
We will take this opportunity to express our thanks to everyone who to took part in Auburn Meeting to show their support for the action against Bill Express.
1. We will go to ACCC next week
Until now, we have more than 50 newsagents who has signed up to complain Bill Express through ACCC and 30 of them want to take legal actions.
We consulted a lawyer about procedure of ACCC and court action. It is far complicated than our imaging. At ACCC, after they received complain, they will collect information first, talk with other party and negotiation with them. If fail, ACCC can take court action if they think we have a good case.
We collected a lot of evidence in the meeting. We will organize them and sent to ACCC with new newsagents list at next week.
2. NANA invited us join the legal actions.
NANA board invited us for a meeting last Tuesday and discussed the join together for a legal action against Bill Express.
Different with ANF, most board member of NANA are also newsagents. They have same problem as us.
NANA is an association who have expertise and more experience. They consulted with good layer and were advised that newsagents have a good case. They will set up special fund for this legal case. According to the chairman of NANA, legal cost for each newsagency will be around $250-500. But more newsagents sign up, the cost for each newsagency will be lower.
NANA told us there are no ‘FREE RIDE’ which means if you do not sign up, NANA won’t represent you in the court.
3.What you need to do now
1. We encourage you to give us your e-mail address. It is hard for us to send fax to each one of you. You can leave your e-mail address to camperdown@gmail.com
2. The court action is the base on evidence. We need to provide to NANA with more evidence. In the Auburn meeting, you already showed a lot of evidence but we need more. Open our mind to find more. For example, yesterday board member of NANA sent us an email attaching a newsletter clearly showed that Bill Express had misled us in market subsidy. If you have good evidence you could send a copy to us at following address.
Camperdown Newsagency
150 Parramatta Road, Camperdown. NSW 2050.
3. More newsagents needed. Please send this letter to your friend newsagent and ask them to join us!!!
Please register and sign up!
Name of the N/A_________________________________
Address _______________________________________
Bill Express Merchant ID ________________________
Tele _______________________Fax__________________________
e-mail address _______________________________________
I want to join with other newsagencies to talk legal action against Bill Express.
Please fax or email to follow address;
Jim Zheng. Camperdown N/A 02 95162151 camperdown@gmail.com
Clement Deng. Asquith N/A 02 94762968 asquith@live.com.au
All of BE, I think BE will lose if our newsagents stop use their terminal for 1 or 6 months. BE will not be survive for sure. Let us see what happen. The reason is easy that be could not loss their revenue. Newsagents are biggest part of BE.
James, firstly BE has according to their own announcements have over 11,000 terminals, and about 2,200 are newsagents. So I think there is a lot of petrol stations and corner stores with dialtime doing a very big part of BE’s turnover. The way it is told here nobody is doing many transactions or making money so I don’t see newsagents as the biggest part of BE. Maybe a newsagency would like to come on here and actually admit they are making something? Mark Fletcher says he is 35th ranking in newsagents and he has stated he makes makes about $5 on top of the unsubsidised fees you are now getting slogged with. His words.
I think the gambling with BE shares in brokerage firms like Opes Prime is what is going to sink BE. That they apparently owe $50 million to ANZ and $12 was owed to Optus, and ONQ owes BE $18 million. I think their problems with newsagents, while a big issue to all of you, is not a big issue compared to all of their other headaches. I could be wrong on this, but there are some huge debt figures being talked about. The terms stripping the company and jobs for the family have also been bandied about.
So just have a good look at the long term, and get some legal advice before stopping your direct debit authorities. When the debtors list gets sold to a collection company you may find you are put on a bad debtors list and buying your next newsagency or house may be compromised.
Be realistic about how mad this makes you all. I fully understand that part, but think of YOUR OWN future credit ratings. What is that worth to YOU. Yes, get together and fight, but don’t just follow what others are doing in the heat of the moment.
I believe these other Dialtime Terminals are provided at no cost. The corner shop next door to us has one.
So why should we end up having to fork out $500plus per mth to BE. It only costs around that much +/- couple hundred $ to bring in eftpos/telephony from any of the banks.
Do please explain, Bill Express, why do we have to pay premium for your facility which is a venture gone wrong? I hope to GOD, that you/the expert advice you are seeking now see the sense of not continuing with the current situation with the newsagents.
As for the plasma screen for advertisements, by right BE should be paying rental for our space and display of their ads on normal business terms.
But what can we expect of directors who gamble their own way with shareholders/stakeholders’ money, lose it and then take it out on all sundry or perhaps just selected targets?
With BillExp saying OnQ owing them money, both of them are the same stick split in two, one being a parent company.
Even Technology Business International, the one now drawing out the mthly $500 plus, it was formerly OnQ International, so obviously one of the various company vehicles in the Bill Express conglomerate.
So how can they say to the authorities that they not know what the left or right hand is doing to each other. It’s all #!%b—s—*%@! set out to con the public.
To console myself now about having to pay out of my pocket to the undeserved,I believe in karma, that what comes around goes around eventually.
To qualify my above blog, we only need to use what we pay one mth to BE for the whole year’s worth of fees to other banks for getting eftpos/telephony. and I am sure BE knows it very well!!!
what credit ratings? BXP didn’t seem to have trouble having none.
Even if the debt collection agency is appointed they will be lucky to collect a fraction of the $10k ‘purported’ to owe, if any at all.
That’s just how it works, 60 days+ debt = dead debt
As for credit ratings:
Yes I am sure today’s cash starved banks will turn down proven customers / business owners such as newsagents, they got cash to burn dontchaknow, and the next housing boom is just around the corner with cherubs singing praise for the credit binge
But what is with the bank deposit ads being bombarding public from all angles…