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The dark Bill Express screen

be_screen.JPGI was surprised when Bill Express announced their deal with the Swish group last month about in-store advertising screens. This was the day before Bill Express sought suspension because of a supplier dispute. The Bill Express / Swish deal trumpeted a combined massive network and talked up expectations. 3,500 newsagents knew otherwise. We knew that Bill Express had failed to get even close to the claims it had made to them around revenue from the in-store advertising screens. Many of us saw the ASX announcement as more spin to ignore.

(ASX:BXP) subsidiary, Xip Media Pty Ltd, to sell advertising onto its extensive digital signage network which operates over 5,000 video screens in approximately 2,200 newsagencies and convenience stores throughout Australia. The agreement applies to all existing Bill Express newsagencies and any future sites and will, when combined with the Swish Group digital signage network of approximately 1,900 screens in 1,800 venues, make it the largest digital signage network in Australia with approximately 7,000 screens in 4,000 venues. The combined Swish Group/Xip Media network will be more than ten times the size of its largest competitor in the rapidly growing digital signage / out-of home market.

Key to the Bill Express pitch to newsagents years ago was the revenue opportunity from the in-store advertising screen. More than four years on this screen is clearly a dud. We initially had the smaller screen.

Close to two years ago they installed the big screen in the photo. It has been down more than 50% of the time. When it was working the ads were, more often than not, inappropriate for our customers – promoting products not in Victoria or products which do not speak to our customers.

The earlier incarnation of the screen angered us as much as other newsagents because it was promoting the payment of bills for councils in other states – it made us look bad. Some customers even joked about this.

While we reported the new big screen not working, nothing happened.

Key to the screen pitch was the revenue split opportunity Bill Express pitched to newsagents. I am yet to meet a newsagent who made money from this. The company backed itself by providing a monthly rebate for in-store advertising. This was dropped a few months ago along with other rebates to newsagents.

The failure of the advertising screens to live up to expectations is just another problem for Bill Express. I’d be surprised if the Swish deal proceeds.

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  1. Michael

    Also advertising products we didn’t even stock.

    Our screens are turned off now.

    We’ve decided we could save on the power bill with having them off, which is very handy in helping to pay the $495 bill each month.

    I’m a businessman too!!

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  2. Kym

    Advertising screens, what a fiasco! It took 12 months for most of our customers to even notice that the large screen had been installed, these are customers that were in the store once or twice every week! They were positioned well to advertise to staff, but when customers were facing the counter being served they had their backs to it. Our large screen had a habit of freezing and our junior staff tended not to notice when this happened, so it would take a senior staff member to come on duty, notice the screen was down, call BillExpress / DialTime, sit on hold for 15 minutes to be told to try unplugging it and plugging it back in. All this wasted time, energy and power… Pretty much sums it up.

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  3. Stephen

    All i can say is I’m glad we never upgraded to the larger screen.

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  4. Lewis

    Well we did get a local business to sign up and advertise on the lg screen but never got a cent for our effort,
    Both our terminals are off but I will turn them on for $550.00 per month.

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  5. helen

    guess we should have seen the folly of accepting the big screen too in our store.
    our regular customers hardly notice it either, as most of them just want to come in get their papers and such and get out again in no time.
    besides you cannot really keep them for too long when you have a queue forming up to be served as well.
    prior we had the small screen fitted at the front facing the customers but that had no impact bcos of its size.
    Then we had the big screen fitted just above the paper stands, but again not much response either.
    we now have both screens switched off for a few months already as we don’t see the point of advertising Bill Express stuff any longer……

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  6. clement

    It is not worry me whether this customer’s notice it or not. The only thing worry me is that this screen cost me heaps. 12 extra months contract = $6600, with that I can buy a big LCD TV for my home.

    if you sign up and advertise on the lg screen but never got a cent for your effort, don’t turn them on. Go to http://www.accc.gov.au

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  7. Cameron

    Clement, I dont think you are right. What really matters is the waste of time and electricity. Personnaly, I would put that screen there if it was purely free. And your english is not good. Please improve.

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  8. clement

    Cameron is my son. (he is only 12) he don’t understand what we are talking here. He just played joke on me by typing above message on another computer near me. please ignore it

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  9. Anthony

    Years ago, I went to a POS user night. The person taking the meeting told us that if we gave him 30 pictures, he would make us an advertisement almost as good as bill express but it would be better as it would be tailored for our shop. We got them to make one but rarely used it but lucky as a result, we never went a head withh bill express.

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  10. clem

    You are better off making your own DVD or powerpoint slide show. Tailor it to your business.

    This idea should have worked like many BE ideas, but it appears they were so lazy they never chased up getting advertisers.

    Who knows what they did for their huge paypackets, except for splitting each company into new companies and pulling wages from each one.

    They made the Pod TV look profitable in their accounts with the subsidies I believe. Not actual income, just the subsidy paid to newsagents being shown as income for Pod TV.

    I could be wrong, but if there is one thing you could learn from BE it is how to move money around and cook the books while stripping your companies bare.

    How else could a company with a billion dollars of turnover lose so much money?????

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  11. Luke

    I understand that our rental agreements have been onsold to a third party, but can anyone tell me what happens to the terminal and screens once BE folds, which looks like happening? Will we still be able to get tech support for dialtime, will the screens be reposessed, do we own these once the rental term is finished? I’m one of the ones that believes that it was my fault for not looking into the contract in detail before I signed and am resigned to having a white elephant in my store for another couple of years but will we be able to use it once BE folds. Nice to know our rental debt has been onsold without even a notice to us to see if we wanted to payout the amount owing.

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  12. SHAUN STEPHENSEN

    HAS ANYONE WORKED OUT HOW TO GET OUT OF THIS CONTRACT YET
    .
    DOES CLOSING YOUR BANK ACCOUNT WORK OR DO YOU JUST END UP OWEING A LOT OF MONEY LATER

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  13. helen

    I believe those that have closed off their bank accounts are testing the waters.
    I have not taken such action yet but may well go down that path as we definitely could not sustain much longer given that the service does not generate any profit at all.
    Last night Bill Exp withdrew $544.50 for the 2nd time from my account.
    Our legal advice say we should not close off the a/c at the moment (even though it’s really painful). So we are awaiting the forthcoming results of the class action we joined with NANA.
    Hopefully we do get a quick decision from the courts.

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  14. SHAUN

    HELEN THANKYOU FOR YOUR REPLY

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  15. charlie

    i turned off my machine 4 weeks ago. Posession is nine tenth of the law so stop them from withdrawing from your account.
    Let them take one of us to court and when they do the rest of us can appear as witnesses to how they mislead us all with their contracts.
    You all know you have been ripped off so TURN THEM OFF!

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  16. Andrew

    Does anyone know how to turn the big screen on? I have made my own slideshow and cannot get the screen to work, has anyone made the stupid tv work without the bill express wireless box??

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