phone recharge

A newsagent-only meeting about Bill Express has been organised for Thursday of this week. The purpose of the meeting is to provide newsagents with information and a forum through which a course of action can be considered. The meeting details are:

Thursday June 19 at 11am
Crest on Barkly Hotel, Barkly Street St Kilda

The planned agenda for the meeting is:

1. Update on Bill Express’ current situation.
2. Update on action being taken by NANA, QNF, ANF and other groups of newsagents and consideration of whether joining any of these is appropriate.
3. Discussion about the costs, risks and possible outcomes of Victorian newsagents commencing their own, independent, legal action.
4. Likely cost, structure and timelines of group or class legal action.
5. A vote on a resolution to establish a trust fund for the purpose of briefing legal counsel to advise and, if considered appropriate, commence action against Bill Express and any other party considered to have a case to answer in this matter.
6. Vote on a steering committee to liaise with legal counsel if point 5 is passed.
7. Discussion and vote on timelines newsagents require from the steering committee.

The meeting is anticipated to run for 90 minutes. While everyone has their own stories about Bill Express, this meeting will be focused on achieving group wide consensus and moving forward collectively as quickly as possible on the best outcome for newsagents.

As this is a newsagent only meeting, attendees will be required to register on arrival.

Newsagents are asked to bring to the meeting photocopies in a folder marked with your details evidence which we could provide to a lawyer should the meeting decide to proceed: Bill Express related agreements, promotional literature, of notes of conversations with anyone who recommended Bill Express to you.

For more further information, please contact: Adam de Jong, Romsey News and Lotto. Mobile 0417 383 730 or Mark Fletcher, newsXpress Forest Hill. Mobile 0418 321 338.

While the ANZ and other Bill Express creditors and stakeholders are, I suspect, working through the weekend on a restructure for the business, Newsagents are looking at how they can get out of their Bill Express contract and the associated lease for the equipment Bill Express installed in newsagencies.

When newsagents signed on for Bill Express, they signed up to pay $495 a month for four years to get access to equipment worth around $3,000. This was a nice earner for the company – having newsagents provide working capital for their under-capitalised business.

While the two agreements newsagents are with separate entities and cover separate functions, I would have thought that newsagents could have them considered as one since one relies on the other and they are with related parties. If this is the case, the contract (the two agreements) could be challenged, in my view, on several fronts:

• Outage. The level of network outage over the last two months has been unacceptable. Not being even able to process eftpos means customers go elsewhere and impedes our ability to drive revenue and fund lease/rental payments on the equipment (which is not working).
• Product unavailability. Optus has often been out of stock over the last six weeks. With Optus being the top selling mobile recharge brand, newsagents not having stock disadvantages their businesses. The lack of performance of Bill Express on this ought to, of itself, be grounds for challenging both agreements.
• No customer service. Bill Express / Dialtime help desk people are never available and do not return phone calls. This lack of support means individual newsagent outages are prolonged and these limit our ability to achieve revenue necessary to service the rental/lease agreement.
• Ad screen failure. My Mi_Systems ad screen and many others are not working and the company does not respond to requests to get them active. The outage of this screen is denying me a revenue opportunity and therefore impedes our ability to service the rental/lease agreement.
• No marketing. In February, when announcing the removal of the subsidy, Bill Express committed to using around 30% of what they should have paid for bill payment commission to better market the service on behalf of the network. I have seen no such activity. This makes me a creditor of Bill Express along with thousands of newsagents.

Given the near collapse of the company and its services over the last six weeks I suggest that Bill Express is incapable of performing under the terms of the Bill Express / Dialtime agreement and that this failure is grounds for terminating the TBS equipment leasing agreement.

But I am no lawyer. These are issues lawyers ought to be considered by lawyers along with other matters relating to how 3,500+ newsagents got into this mess in the first place.

A customer loaded their BOPO card here in Australia with cash. Their friend overseas tried to withdraw cash from the BOPO account, as they have done previously, without success. Several calls later, the customer has been told by BOPO representatives that the platform is down. This is just another challenge for Bill Express – the BOPO operation is a subsidiary of the company – in what is a very difficult time for the company.

UPDATE: The withdrawal has now worked. So, the customers remain nervous but are happy they could access their cash once again.

Newsagents angry at their treatment by Bill Express are closing bank accounts in order to stop the company sweeping their account for the lease payment on the Bill Express equipment. Newsagents I have spoken with tell me they are taking this drastic step because of the lack of a response from the company to their request to terminate the lease agreement on the basis of a breach by Bill Express.

Bill Express was already losing revenue through newsagents leaving their network for ePay terminals or the PC based eziPass (established by me). The loss of equipment lease revenue will hit harder.

The company is also losing revenue because of network downtime. Around 500 newsagencies were down for most of this last weekend. Calls to the Help Desk went unanswered.

Yesterday, the company emailed newsagents with what can only be described as a big stick communication about various contractual issues. Here is an excerpt:

Q. This is illegal and unfair!

A. At Bill Express we gave very careful thought to the changes before making them. In the end, we simply couldn’t continue to run a sustainable business without them.

When the subsidies and rebates were put in place five years ago, they were only ever intended to be temporary.

The agreement terms have been in place for five years. They are well understood by the ANF who have consistently reviewed the agreements. The facts here are simple: you entered into Rental and Merchant Agreement with TBI and Bill Express respectively for a period up to five years. This is much like a mobile phone contract. If you wish to prematurely terminate the contract, there is obviously a cost associated with doing so.

Our legal advice is that we are acting within the terms of the Merchant and Rental Agreement(s).

You are welcome, of course to get independent legal advice.

Today’s Australian Financial Review has a story which does not add to knowledge of the situation as it primarily regurgitates the Bill Express ASX announcement. FN Arena, a financial news outlet has more in their online report yesterday.

With most newsagents losing money from Bill Express, it is no wonder they are angry at the company, those who recommended the service and themselves. Their actions as a result of this anger are a story the media ought to look at.

The media interest in the difficulties of Bill Express is growing. I did three interviews yesterday with journalists writing pieces about the history of the network and the impact of the current situation on newsagents. This follows the Herald Sun and News Ltd interviews earlier in the week. I am finding journalists confused about how newsagents became involved with Bill Express and why we agreed to lease the equipment for $495 a month. There is also confusion in their minds about ePay, eziPass and even, for one chap, Ezipin.

The journalists are more interested in writing about the future of the public company than the impact on the newsagency channel and this is disappointing. Right now we have 3,500 outlets unable to sell Optus recharge vouchers. That is a huge story in my view – along with the story about the impact on country towns and in other locations where the newsagency is the go to place for recharge. This is one reason I am not so sure that Optus will stay off the Bill Express / Dialtime platform forever.

The other aspect of the interest from journalists which is interesting is about bill payment. Well, their lack of interest actually. They see it as yesterday’s news. I asked one journo and she said what’s the deal – I pay all my bills online.

I am surprised at some of the reporting on the Bill Express situation. Take today’s Australian Financial Review – nothing other than a rehash of the ASX announcement re the suspension of shares. Given that 3,500 retail outlets have had Optus recharge turned off and others are reporting issues with Telstra recharge I would have thought journalists would be investigating and reporting.