The roll out of the Opal Card to people using Sydney Public Transport shows how little the Liberal State Government cares about small businesses like newsagents.
The margin being offered is tiny, not fairly or reasonably respecting the time, space and financial comitment to be made by newsagents in offering Opal.
Further, it is being rolled out by epay, a company with a poor customer service track record with newsagents. Plus you have to have extra equipment from epay for topping up Opal cards.
Newsagency competitors like c-stores including 7-Eleven will embrace Opal as it fits their model of tiny margin traffic generating business. This will encourage and force some newsagents to chase it.
If I owned a newsagency in NSW I’d say no to offering Opal. The margin offered by the state government is disrespectful. Plus, my experience is that transport ticket customers are inefficient, they rarely purchase other items no matter how good a deal might be.
The O’Farrell Liberal Government is showing that it is the same as any Government we have seen in Australia for decades when it comes to small business. They treat small business with complete disrespect. We ought to expect no more from hypocrites.
They’d want as few newsagents doing top ups as possible.
Surely their main aim is to have as many people as possibly on auto-top ups to keep the cash flowing in. I’ve been stuck with newsagents not having their terminals working so now mine just tops up by itself from my card.
Hence my dislike of the “newsAGENCY” shingle.
We need to divest ourselves of this word
and move on from agencies.
I still have Ticketek and Lotto but I have
cancelled bus tickets, and the stand with bus timetables, Western Union, and
all billpay.
I also refuse to keep any forms for the Tax dept (after they stopped sending income tax forms to newsagents).
We have to take a stand against those people (and I include paper companies now) who demand our retail space for little or no compensation.
I open every Sunday to sell about 100 Sunday Mails (and a few interstate papers)
so if I sell them all I make $31 which is a paltry amount when one considers the wages (we don’t have any on Sunday because we can’t possibly afford them) and the overheads to open.
We need to value ourselves and our retail space more and I am gradually doing this
albeit probably too late for us to benefit.