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Post by johnc on May 17, 2024 10:51:12 GMT
Something is going to have to be done about unreasonable price increases.
Our costs for accepting credit cards has just been increased by about 80% overnight - they have lumped in admin charges and other charges and tell us they should have been charging them before but didn't (we have used them for about 10 years now). The contract has all the woolly wording that allows them to charge additional costs which they couldn't foresee at the commencement of the contract. I think I will now be using my right to cancel their service and find cheaper elsewhere.
However we have software which allows payrolls to be run for clients and instead of there being 100 separate entries on the bank account for each payment, there is only one payment in total and the details are hidden. It is a very valuable service because it prevents problems in some workplaces where people have access to the bank transactions and could otherwise view what everyone got paid. Today we got notification that our costs are increasing by 398%! A phone call later we have been told that the justification is that they haven't increased their prices since 2020. When asked if they thought a 100% increase per year was reasonable we were told that's just the way it is. My suspicion is that the owners of the software are priming themselves for a sale and are looking for a massive increase in revenue to boost hugely the offer they might receive. Across the board our software costs increase by about 20% annually and we are expected to see this as good value. Inflation isn't going to settle down unless this price gouging is stopped. Car manufacturers are just as bad.
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Post by PG on May 17, 2024 11:43:37 GMT
What absolute bar-stewards. Sadly, it's rife across the board. Companies hide behind their contract when it suits them - increase prices, change service levels unilaterally - using the "oh but you agreed to it in the contract" defence. As a consumer the phone / IT companies "CPI + 2 or 3%" price rises term is an outrage. When inflation was 1-2% they got away with it but now - oh, that'll be a 14% increase in your bill...
When I was working, a major IT company forgot to charge us support on a system we used. For four years. We didn't remind them. When they realised, they invoiced 4 years, with backdated price rises and a penalty as we had not paid in prior years, citing their contractual rights.
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Post by Tim on May 17, 2024 14:23:33 GMT
We've had a lot of increases for software subscriptions but they've normally been in the 10-15% range, nothing like 400%!!
Have you looked at Sage payroll?
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Post by johnc on May 20, 2024 9:26:32 GMT
We've had a lot of increases for software subscriptions but they've normally been in the 10-15% range, nothing like 400%!! Have you looked at Sage payroll? We gave up using Sage payroll about 4 years ago and now use Brightpay which has much better integration for auto-enrolment. It's not the payroll software that's the issue (although that increased 18% this year) but the software which takes a payment file from Brightpay and generates a single deduction from the employer's bank account and individual payments to all the employees. It is extremely valuable where management do not want anyone who might have access to bank transactions to be able to see individual salary payments.
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Post by Tim on May 20, 2024 10:16:37 GMT
Ours is a single withdrawal in the bank but that's simply because I have a template in the preferred RBS format (something from the dark ages on a TXT file format) and manually input the new salary for each month. It'd be a pain in the ass to do that for multiple client companies but easy enough to do for our own.
A company I worked for years ago used IRIS but I think that listed individual amounts sadly.
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Post by alf on May 21, 2024 8:41:58 GMT
Blimey I'm pretty shocked about the software increases - having worked for software companies most of my aduly life I've never seen increases like that. We used to have as a USP on our Telematics software that we never increased prices, we have done a handful of times in the last few years (to massive grumbling from our dealers) but that's been in the 2-3% range, and not at all for people within their first 2 years initial term.
I was thinking about this in a motoring sense yesterday after the insurance discussions, but the fact is pretty much everything is well up. Travel/holidays, eating out, going out, motoring, energy, food - its all pretty bad. I do feel privileged and I just don't know how people on average or below average wages ever do things like family excursions, or holidays.
It does feel like price gouging is going on, and a lot of company profits are up as a result. There are sadly a lot of genuine factors at play too - the end of cheap credit, natural disasters, wars, the cost of decarbonising, and I think the reliance on "just in time" production with no resiliance built in. Now everythign costs more, it feels no one I know is being paid much more. It just goes to show how things are cyclical - cheap credit was supposed to be here to stay, not long ago, wasn't it?
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Post by johnc on May 21, 2024 10:36:25 GMT
Our main accounts and tax software has increased at least 10% per annum for the last 15 years. They offer 3 and 5 year deals which guarantee no more than a 5% increase annually but at the end of the term, you have to sign up to another deal based on the current prices (which have increased by 10%pa). I am now paying more than 3 times what I was paying 15 years ago and I have along the way, dropped a few of the services to reduce costs. 10 years ago you could buy Sage 50 accounting software for about £500 for a licence which would last you 3 or 4 years minimum before you needed to upgrade. Now it is around £75/mth on a subscription model for basically the same software. A lot of this has been driven by Making Tax Digital which HMRC estimated would cost businesses an extra £168 a year when they made their case to push this through!! It's a pity they can't be done for mis-selling.
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Post by Martin on May 21, 2024 10:45:23 GMT
I'll add commercial rent to the list of crazy cost increases, having just had a mid contract review come through for one of my Warehouses. Current rent is £3.1m per annum and their 'fair market rate' proposal for the next 5 years is £4.8m!! Still a big % and £ increase, but our view is it should be no more than £4.1m
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Post by alf on May 21, 2024 11:37:55 GMT
I'll add commercial rent to the list of crazy cost increases, having just had a mid contract review come through for one of my Warehouses. Current rent is £3.1m per annum and their 'fair market rate' proposal for the next 5 years is £4.8m!! Still a big % and £ increase, but our view is it should be no more than £4.1m I'm interested to see how this plays out for our fleet customers when they electrify said fleet. If they are renting the land, are they going to want to pay (potentially more millions) for upgraded electricty supplies and high speed chargers? If they do, will their landlord then massively uplift the rents because the land is more valuable? Will people operating fleets (especially of heavy vehicles) in a way whereby they will depot charge, be more likely to buy the land now, and/or club together with other operators for charging hubs? Our telematics data is increasingly being used for electrification planning, but it seems many fleet managers (often ex drivers and not young) are just planning very little and assuming they'll retire around the time the sh*t hits the fan.... Because suddenly fleet has got a lot more complex, involving the people running facilities, power, and so on....
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Post by Martin on May 21, 2024 12:01:26 GMT
I'll add commercial rent to the list of crazy cost increases, having just had a mid contract review come through for one of my Warehouses. Current rent is £3.1m per annum and their 'fair market rate' proposal for the next 5 years is £4.8m!! Still a big % and £ increase, but our view is it should be no more than £4.1m I'm interested to see how this plays out for our fleet customers when they electrify said fleet. If they are renting the land, are they going to want to pay (potentially more millions) for upgraded electricty supplies and high speed chargers? If they do, will their landlord then massively uplift the rents because the land is more valuable? Will people operating fleets (especially of heavy vehicles) in a way whereby they will depot charge, be more likely to buy the land now, and/or club together with other operators for charging hubs? Our telematics data is increasingly being used for electrification planning, but it seems many fleet managers (often ex drivers and not young) are just planning very little and assuming they'll retire around the time the sh*t hits the fan.... Because suddenly fleet has got a lot more complex, involving the people running facilities, power, and so on.... That's an interesting point. Most of my sites don't have the capacity to charge more than a couple of HGVs and upgrading the substations is expensive, so range/weight capacity etc is only part of the problem. I've got my first EV HGV being delivered in the next couple of months, a Volvo eFM Globetrotter. We've got a great deal as they want to get some vehicles into us, still a lot more than a conventional truck but about 2/3 of the cost of a Mercedes. Funny how perceptions are, it took ages to convince the customer it was the better option as they were stuck on a Mercedes being more aligned to their brand. A Mercedes truck is mid range at best. It will be capable of pulling a 40ft trailer and we'll use it for factory clearance (only 30 miles each way) and local deliveries as the range isn't great.
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Post by johnc on May 21, 2024 15:09:49 GMT
I'll add commercial rent to the list of crazy cost increases, having just had a mid contract review come through for one of my Warehouses. Current rent is £3.1m per annum and their 'fair market rate' proposal for the next 5 years is £4.8m!! Still a big % and £ increase, but our view is it should be no more than £4.1m I am sure they are just trying to get you to pay the additional interest they will have been charged on their loans after rates went up. However if rates came down there isn't any chance they would allow you to benefit from any of the savings!
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Post by PG on May 21, 2024 19:54:22 GMT
I'll add commercial rent to the list of crazy cost increases.... All during my working life, commercial landlords are some of the first people I'd put up against a wall and do us all a service. I see them as no more than financial loan sharks with property as their cover. The list of sharp practice is endless - upward only rent reviews; making rents look higher (so they can borrow more) by giving you rent free periods rather than cheaper rents; full-repairing leases (I mean WTAF!); redecoration / refurb clauses; dilapidations clauses; crazy service charges for common areas; trying to include tenants work in the rent reviews (as referred to above re EV charging); etc etc. But as there seems to be so little sensible commercial property available for purchase and they all operate the same way, it's just one massive cartel designed to fuck over the poor tenant.
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Post by Big Blue on May 21, 2024 19:59:15 GMT
Funny how perceptions are, it took ages to convince the customer it was the better option as they were stuck on a Mercedes being more aligned to their brand. A Mercedes truck is mid range at best. Woah there! An old school friend of mine* is an HGV driver of some 30+ years sitting on high. Don’t start that lot on which traction unit is the best: I’ve seen arguments about which has got the best sounding voice synth! * on reflection this guy is the one that grew up doing what he loved since childhood. Only ever wanted to learn how to drive; would drive to the coast for fun after the pubs shut and despite being a few farthings short of a tanner never had an accident. He’s also the cousin of a Porsche-loving friend in the same profession as me who bought a flat in Old Street about 30 years ago…….
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Post by LandieMark on May 22, 2024 13:56:19 GMT
I'll add commercial rent to the list of crazy cost increases.... All during my working life, commercial landlords are some of the first people I'd put up against a wall and do us all a service. I see them as no more than financial loan sharks with property as their cover. The list of sharp practice is endless - upward only rent reviews; making rents look higher (so they can borrow more) by giving you rent free periods rather than cheaper rents; full-repairing leases (I mean WTAF!); redecoration / refurb clauses; dilapidations clauses; crazy service charges for common areas; trying to include tenants work in the rent reviews (as referred to above re EV charging); etc etc. But as there seems to be so little sensible commercial property available for purchase and they all operate the same way, it's just one massive cartel designed to fuck over the poor tenant. Oi! I am a small commercial landlord and do my very best to look after my tenants with reasonable rents, service charge at cost and no rent reviews written into the lease. We aren't all massive commercial bastards out to make as much money as possible. If my tenants do well and pay on time (I have no current deliquent rents), then I have an easy life.
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Post by PG on May 23, 2024 12:02:09 GMT
All during my working life, commercial landlords are some of the first people I'd put up against a wall and do us all a service. I see them as no more than financial loan sharks with property as their cover. The list of sharp practice is endless - upward only rent reviews; making rents look higher (so they can borrow more) by giving you rent free periods rather than cheaper rents; full-repairing leases (I mean WTAF!); redecoration / refurb clauses; dilapidations clauses; crazy service charges for common areas; trying to include tenants work in the rent reviews (as referred to above re EV charging); etc etc. But as there seems to be so little sensible commercial property available for purchase and they all operate the same way, it's just one massive cartel designed to fuck over the poor tenant. Oi! I am a small commercial landlord and do my very best to look after my tenants with reasonable rents, service charge at cost and no rent reviews written into the lease. We aren't all massive commercial bastards out to make as much money as possible. If my tenants do well and pay on time (I have no current deliquent rents), then I have an easy life. Sorry for the hurt! By "commercial landlords" I meant the big boys.
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Post by LandieMark on May 23, 2024 19:41:03 GMT
My indignation was a little tongue in cheek.
I've a friend in the village who is big in flooring and he has just moved his warehouse into the local area.
It's not a small building and he was having murder getting the lease sorted and was getting the major run around from the landlords agents (one of the big ones).
He ended up contacting the landlord direct for negotiations and things were sorted in no time. I think a lot of the time, the big land agents are more to blame than the actual landlords themselves - they promise the earth to the landlords and rake a huge commission out of the deal.
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Post by Tim on May 24, 2024 7:55:07 GMT
Just on the subject of landlords..
At work we recently considered a change of phone line/internet provider. However memories of the last time we had to do this - when we moved to the current office - changed our mind. We needed a wayleave to run a new cable to our bit of the building and this had to be granted by the building owner. After several months the person to sign this was eventually tracked down to Hong Kong but then took another 3 months to sign. This all to run a cable along some sections of common areas that already had numerous phone/internet cables starting in the same place and going to adjacent wings and floors above and below.
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