Text Alerts?

This happens already.

 

How can we give you one free text message for every 5 sent? You you mean we pay you 12p for every 5 messages you send?

 

We're going to be launching a new website over the Christmas holidays.

You will notice loads of new and improved features,
Link your account with FaceBook.
Live GPS Tracking of your chosen RailTour.*
Watch your tour travel along our own live maps.*
Earn money by bringing new members to us.
For every 5 messages you send us, we'll give you a free SMS.
Extended 256-bit encrypted site. Checkout the green bar!
GZIP Compressed pages, making the site load faster.

We are also going to be increasing the costs per SMS message. From 12p per text message to 15p per text message a rise of 3p.
This is to combat the rise is costs from our hosting providers and SMS suppliers.

Existing credits will not be affected by the rise in costs.

I hope you all understand.

 

An increase of 25%!

 

My hosting is going up by 2.5%
My SMS text supplier is going up by 2.5%
Advertising costs will go up by 2.5%
Service costs will also rise by 2.5%
Server costs will rise by 2.5%
Yearly domain costs will rise by 2.5%
Accountants costs will rise by 2.5%
Company costs will also rise by 2.5%

And properly a whole load of other rises that I have forgotten.

And this is all just the VAT rise, not including any potential base rises in costs from suppliers.

Also the fact being that if we do not make the rise, we'd be loosing money on every text message. Currently, charging 12p per SMS, we are currently making about 1p per SMS. Taking all the costs into account.
If there was to be a problem with hosting, or the server costs increase we would have no money to restore the service.
Part of running a company is to be able to future proof it. And improving the service making it better is also high on the list.

So this is my basis on making a 3p cost rise in each SMS.

 

It sounds like excellent improvements, and well worth the extra 3p. But.....

How will you charge for the GPS tracking? If we can see all the tours live on a map on our smartphones, doesn't that mean there's no need to subscribe for update texts......

 

My current thinking on this is,
Each time you top up your account, you will get x amount of days access to the GPS section, the amount of days would depend on how much you topped up.
Either that or a monthly cost from your account.

The GPS idea is to allow access for both smart phones and normal text systems. You can also use the map on your home computers etc.

 

Once the new website goes live, I will be adding 25% of your credits to your balance. So if you have £5 credit on your account, you will receive an extra £1.25 to your account.
This I believe will equal out the price rise with your current balance.

 

That reminds me, must top up my account!! :bounce:

 

Erm. Percentages don't add together. If all the services rise by 2.5%, then surely the overall cost should rise by 2.5%, not 25%. I can only assume that the additional 22.5% is to pay for the new services? It certainly makes receiving the info via email increasingly attractive. I'm not sure if there's a specific mainline steam gen group, but if not, it would be straightforward to set one up. Personally, I can't see this being a long-term service anyway as it won't be long before the majority have email/internet access on their phones. It might be worth having a word with the scot-rail chaps as they manage to provide their SMS gen service for around 7p per message received.

 

No. If each bit rises by 2.5%, the total cost rise is 2.5%.

For example, if you bought three items costing £10, £20 and £30 (total £60), the first item will increase by 2.5% to £10.25, the second item by 2.5% to £20.50 and the third by 2.5% to £30.75 - total £61.50, an increase of £1.50 i.e. 2.5% (not 7.5%).

If this were not the case it would not be a good idea to do a "big shop" at Tesco!

 

Ok, my take on the text system and if we want to talk percentages 1% of a quid is a penny, 1% of a tenner is 10p, I'm not trying to be condescending but the more people who sign up to the system means the actual cost per text should go down and I am sure that Glyn would pass the overall reduction in costs to the users when it actually shows a profit... 'Nough said there.

How many subscibers on here have found out info first hand about changes to times, cancellations, early running etc by the service?

How many have had info recieved off others lineside/on the train confirmed and sometimes an explanation recieved by the SMS system?

How much 'dodgy info, irrelevant stuff' have you recieved?

Thanks, Neil.

 

Thanks Malc. That's exactly what I was getting at!

Ralph, I'm not begrudging the service. I think it's an excellent idea and it would be useful for me as I currently don't have internet access on my phone. I just haven't got around to trying it out yet. The point I was making is that it won't be long before all phone packages come with internet access as standard and then the gen could be obtained via an email download in the same way that most of yahoo gen groups operate at the moment. The cost to download an email is considerably cheaper than 12p or 15p per message to the point of being essentially free if you're on a contract that includes internet access. The days of this type of SMS service are numbered, so I believe the service has a limited shelf-life. I know that the numbers using the email to SMS service on the scot-rail group are dwindling rapidly as most people get internet enabled phones. As I see it, the future is more likely to be some kind of mainline steam gen group (if there isn't already one) which feeds the gen directly to peoples email accounts accessed on their phone. While I agree that 12p or 15p a message isn't a big sum; are people going to continue to pay it if they can get the same info essentially for free on their internet-enabled phone? I doubt it.

 

Right Say my server costs £60 , this increases to £61.50 Thats an extra £1.50
My Accountant costs would go up by £11.25
Just with the three items above, my costs will go up by £12.75 or 2.5%


Raising the text messaging price by 2.5% would of raised the price of the SMS by 0.003p
Now with the price of each SMS I buy in also being raised by 2.5%, just raising the cost of the SMS by 2.5% would not cover any of the other costs that has risen.

Therefore, I have raised the price to cover all the other costs generated by Nat Pres Ltd.

 

You're in big danger of losing my trust here. If you initially worked out the cost per text to cover your expenses and make a little bit of profit and *all* of those expenses rise by 2.5%, then the text fee also needs to rise by 2.5% to continue to cover those costs. Not only that, but if you do this, your profit will also increase by 2.5%.

Now, if your accountant and some other services take the VAT rise as an excuse to raise their costs by an amount greater than the 2.5% rise, then I can understand a greater rise in the text price. Similarly, I can understand it, if your new services require more cost.

The only other reason for raising the cost of the text price by more than 2.5% is if the current system isn't covering the costs. In which case, don't fob us off with pretending that this is due to the VAT rise, when that would only lead to the text price needing to be increased by 2.5%, not the 25% you are raising it by.

Taking your above figures, which I'll assume are for a certain period, whether monthly or annually:

If your server costs are £60, they increase to £61.50.
For your accountant fees to go up by £11.25, that means you currently pay your accountant £450 for this service.

Now for sake of argument, lets assume it presently costs you exactly 7p to send out a text via the system, this then leaves the remaining £450+£60 to be covered by the remaining 5p that you charge for providing the service over and above the 7p it costs you. Therefore, you require £510 / £0.05 = 10200 texts sent out by the system during the period in order to cover these costs.

After the VAT rise, the text cost will increase to 7.175p and the accountant and server costs following the VAT rise will be £522.75. So, at 12p per text you'll now require £522.75 / £0.04825 = 10834 texts to cover the new costs. Now if you raise the text cost to 15p you only require £522.75 / £0.07825 = 6681 texts to cover the new costs. So, essentially what you seem to be telling us is that either the current system isn't working and you aren't receiving enough texts to cover the present costs, or you wish to increase the price so that you can make more profit and use the VAT as an excuse to do so.

Now, I don't mind if you want to make more profit from the system, or that you might not currently be getting enough texts to cover the costs, but I do object to being told that the 25% increase is due to the 2.5% VAT increase.

 

I have tried to explain this as best as I can Paul.
Call me and I might be able to explain this better?

The current system is working, after a short time running a new service we are adjusting or costs to help cover expenses. I don't have enough money per SMS to cover the rise in costs, as the profit margin is currently pretty much nothing.
I tried to make it as cheap as possible, maybe that was the wrong thing to do.