Retail Express recently featured a letter from Reading retailer Munir Butt asking why Camelot and Paypoint both provide free ticket rolls, but Payzone charge between £10-12 a box.
Mrs Butt described this as “grossly unfair”, and explained that the cost builds up quickly when you are a small business.
“I don’t see why small retailers such as myself should have to bear the brunt for offering Payzone’s services in-store, particularly when similar services can provide free ticket roll,” he said.
It’s an interesting problem, and one that has received an incredible reaction. I spoke with Retail Express editor Stefan Appleby who said that this letter had received one of the largest responses from other retailers he had seen in his time in charge of the title, so there is clearly a great strength of feeling on the issue.
Indeed, in our recent article on the launch of the Health Lottery we had a comment from Rohit Patel asking, “How can you give a lottery ticket that is nearly 10inches long? Who will compensate the number of rolls that this will take as Camelot give the ticket rolls free of charge?”
Payzone responded to Mrs Butt’s criticism explaining that their “policy on till rolls has been in place since 2009, with very little criticism from retailers. We believe this is because our customers are happy with our service and value the added earning potential a Payzone terminal provides.”
What do you think? Are companies such as Payzone being unfair by charging for ticket rolls, or is the earning potential they provide adequate compensation for this cost?
We’d love to know your thoughts.
Raj Mistry
16/10/2011
It very unfair to charge for till rolls as Payzone has been cutting commission on everything but making profits for themselves. we provide service to customers and if we started charging say 2p for every transaction to cover expenses customers will stop coming to the shop. I would like Payzone to reconsider their policy regarding charging for till rolls.
M kumar
26/10/2011
I have both pay point in one shop and pay zone in another, I have compared the usage on both and to my surprise it’s 3 pay point till roll to 10 pay zone,
Mainly because,
Pay zone not way to stop duplicate receipt, topups receipt longer than pay point if pay point don’t have adverts (but then it’s free I am to promote that), z report is almost twice long, need to do end of day banking (another long report), DD report 10 times longer than pay point and the main one there every night synchronization and update (haven’t got a clue what they update everyday.
Come on lads (pay zone) get you act together.
Shailesh
04/11/2011
I kicked Payzone out when they started charging for rolls. We make next to nothing on transactions and then to charge for rolls was the last straw. If payzone thinks that retailers are “happy” with less money in their pockets then clearly they simply do not have the grasp of the level of ill feeling most retailers have with payzone. Have payzone actually asked each reatiler whether they are happy at paying for the paper rolls? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to answer that question. As for increase in footfall, I would say retailers now have a choice, payzone are not the only outfit in town who can generate footfall. Perhaps Payzone are oblivious to that fact…
Gary
06/01/2012
complete rip off and we are looking at getting it out of all our stores, time will tell.