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25th of April 2001
Ok, so it has been a while since I last updated this news page, but that is not to say that there has not been site updates during this news break.
For example the currency rates were updated very recently once again. And only a few days ago I got a new claim in my Global Domination Plan. This time it is now Luxembourg which has fallen under my friendly dictatorship control, which is sad new for any new Luxembourg customer.
As to what has been going on recently then my new fast franking service has been going quite badly, which is solely the fault of my local post master or maybe some Post Office Counters Ltd totally evil master plan.
What I mean is that over the past year dealing with stamps I have been taking over most of the jobs that my local post master does, which is mostly weighing items and sticking stamps on them.
One key fact from this stamp era is that my local post master due to all the time that I have been visiting this post office on a near dailey basis has trusted my dispatched enough to not even check the receipts that they were stamping. In fact several times I had to grab back my dispatch receipts in order to ensure that there was one for each parcel.
And as No1 often handled the actual dispatch then I can recall at least one case where they stamped a receipt for one item that was never actually dispatched (as the customer changed to DHL delivery at the last minute).
Why I am pointing this out is to show you how much my post master has changed since I got a franking machine. And as that would make his job the easiest seen for months, then I just cannot understand his dailey protest over handling these franked items.
To begin with then ever since I got it he has been very reluctant to handle any recorded franked mail, and he almost insists that I have this collected. However as I live virtually next door to a post office then I have never seen the need to pay large sums to money to have a post office van travel an extra 30 meters.
My plan was a simple one. As if I handed him for example a sack full of Inland Recorded items, then handling it no different to stamped mail then I could just hand him all the receipts to be stamped.
His first lame excuse was that he had to personally stick the normally attached labels to each package. This is of course total rubbish when the very Inland Recorded instructions tell you to do this yourself. And it certainly would not change just between stamped and franked mail.
Now his next very lame excuse was even worse when he now said that he had to check each receipt number to make sure that they matched the packages. And while there was me going "please do" this excuse is just two-faced, when with stamped mail he had been trying several times to stamp receipts while I have been trying to check them myself.
In fact I have no lack of desire at all for him to check each and every package number, but even while this still makes a fast dispatch compared to stamped mail it still seems too much for him.
Also during all the time that I have been bringing both large and small sacks of Inland Recorded items to him NEVER ONCE HAS HE CHECKED THE DISPATCH NUMBERS. And that was certainly turned down even when I requested for this to be done, which was even bringing him a second sack to put them all in once checked, which clearly makes a case of saying one thing and doing another.
While wondering why on earth he wanted to check the numbers in the first place to this question he give the excuse of "when he is on holiday and someone else has to deal with it". Hell although I would even consider taking off those days he was away, this is clearly a problem with *him* handling my franked mail. And of course post office workers are not morons, as anyone else can certainly check the dispatch numbers (I even sort them all ready) if desired.
Even yesterday he caused great pains just handling some International Recorded items, when he turned a simple case of stamping nine dispatch receipts (and entering them into the book) into a major hassle.
As for some extremely strange reason he desired to take all my weighed and franked mail and weigh them all over again, which just happens to have matched all my weights and prices.
Also while I gave him a sack to put my Inland Recorded items in he only went and put them in with the stamped items. And I told him that he could not do that (when franked mail needs to be kept separate), but he said this time he would.
Indeed clear proof that he breaks the very own clearly known franking rules just to get back at me. However no need to worry when those Inland Recorded items would be handled correctly by the Royal Mail once their stamp handling machine goes and spits them out.
Now at his request I also looked into Business Collection, but as I do not quite meet their level to get free collection, then I was sure that if I wanted it then I had to pay for it. And as this would be little different to just handling them at my local post office (minus the constant agro), then I have seen little need for this extra expense.
Indeed in all the time that I had been dispatching vast amounts of stamped items never once did he mention Business Collection. And as his job is now vastly easier then I still cannot see the true reason.
Anyway after hearing his total Bollocks [tm] on how the Royal Mail do not care about the postal value when you are dealing in large numbers, then I decided to phone the Royal Mail concerning business collection.
And while I clearly explained all aspects to them including what my postal master said about "free collection on lower values" they quite fairly refused to do free collection. I even spoke to their manager, but the supposed free collection was not even a starter.
So currently my local post master is being a complete pain in the behind for not even close to valid reason.
However as he clearly does not desire to handle my franked mail then I plan revenge. As since he loves stamps so much then I am going to give them to him in vast volumes.
What I mean is that a sack full of Inland Recorded items in their franked state currently takes him about two minutes to stamp all the dispatch receipts. And even had he the slightest desire to check all the dispatch numbers, then this would only take him about 5 minutes.
Now should I move back to stamps following the correct procedure for them, then him having to weigh each one and handle the stamps for them I well know would take him 20 to 25 minutes.
And while I moved to handle these jobs myself to make the job easier for him, with a wait much less for other customers. I certainly now feel that he deserves a big reminder on how nice I have been to him when having to deal with my large volumes of mail.
So one day soon I am going to tell him that I am using my franking machine no more, which means that he has to weigh and stamp a vast amount of mail.
Unfortunately the truth is that I have now been forced into having a business collection that I do not really need. Which I should say breaks the "franked mail costs no more than stamped mail" and the so called franking fact of "franked mail can be dispatched at any post office".
Maybe I was correct two weeks ago in my estimate that the Royal Mail do not pay the Post Office to deal with franked mail, which I believe is a matter between these two parties alone if so. As if I pay the Royal Mail the requested postage, then they should certainly pay the Post Office for the quick job of handling them (which I would assume that they already do).
And so I am most upset that my simple and basic plan has been screwed up for one reason alone, which happens to be that my local post master for whatever insane reason does not wish to handle them. Easiest friging job he has had to do for months, but he has zero desire to do it.
Makes me wonder what I am paying the Royal Mail such vast sums for, when I cannot even dispatch them without additional cost.
Still I have no choice but to arrange business collection at my expense, which must be the greatest joke ever when instead of living miles out into the country I live next door to a post office.
Anyway as I know that some of my customers work in this postal area, then maybe they can explain to me why my simple plan is not working. When it says in my own franking machine manual that it should, take it to a Post Office, quick dispatch, no problem.
On to other news then within days I have to pay a VAT bill so large that not many years ago I would have been shocked. In my opinion that is more expenses where I do not get value back out of the system, but anyway those high ELVIS and other sales since the start of this year leaves me with a VAT bill this quarter larger then what many people earn in a year.
As that is more money then what I earn from my own business, then these tax people are on to a good thing. And it is not even like in this Value Tax aspect that we even have a decent national service to handle my franked mail.
The final aspect is that ELVIS is out of stock for but a few days. This should have been an unnoticed restocking event, but the manufacturer just happens to be out of stock himself at the moment.
Well to be honest I do have a few left, but those won't last until more arrive around the end of this week or the start of next week.
To finish up then my life has been all doom and gloom recently. Cardman needs to be extra loved at the moment, but my local post master does not love me or my franking machine. Boo Hoo.
Never got my most desired present either this Christmas (female, young, healthy, and extremely friendly), but I guess Santa keeps those special presents for himself. :-]
Maybe a little rude, but I prefer to end my news page on a smile.
11th of April 2001
I have been very busy recently dealing with extra work besides orders.
The first of these is that my franking machine arrived as expected, but until my coloured dispatch packets arrive from the Royal Mail then this could cause a delay with a few orders.
Also despite now saving my local post office lots of work, by no longer having to deal with stamps, my local post master seems upset now dealing with easier franked mail. This seems to be based around that now the Royal Mail gets my postage payment directly, which could mean that the Post Office no longer gets their share.
Leaving out the politics on that subject then just trying to dispatch half a sack of Inland Recorded franked mail proved very difficult, when this took two trips to the Post Office to sort out.
The problem here is that normal franked mail goes in nice coloured mailing bags, when of course franked unlike normal mail cannot go through "the machine". And while one of these coloured packets can hold one hundred franked letters, they are not very good at handling dozens of much more bulky packages.
Indeed as some of my larger orders cannot even fit inside one of these mailing bags, then naturally instead of trying to do the impossible I just stuck them all in a mailing sack and No1 took them to the Post Office.
Unfortunately my local Post Master was having none of this, which while a good idea to me, was for him one good excuse to moan about my new franked mail.
Even at this point he virtually insisted that I have my mail collected at my cost, but as I live just around the corner from the Post Office, then I have never seen the need to pay about £600 a year to have the postal van travel an extra 50 meters.
Anyway I did persuade him to take those few orders when I paid him a personal visit (as he sent my worker home), even through he was making out that "the machine" would go bang if he did.
The following morning I contacted the Royal Mail directly to ask their advice about trying to stuff large packages into not very large coloured mailing bags. And to cut the story short just 2 hours after I called them a large truck delivered to me 30 large postal sacks in which I should put my franked Inland Recorded mail before going to the Post Office.
Well I guess my local Post Master does not deal with such volumes, when the Royal Mail themselves said to use the very method I had tried at my local Post Office the previous day.
Now I have to wait for my coloured postal bags to turn up for the less common postal methods like Special Delivery. Also I have to now purchase more franking label, when I used up all that came with my franking machine on the first day.
As to my franking machine, then as the scales are not very good, and it does not support rates like Inland Recorded, then I use my more accurate normal scales to weigh them, followed by entering the postal cost directly.
Anyway in a few days time I won't be using stamps again.
The second reason why I have been extra busy recently is because today I had re-carpeted both the sales room (aka hall way) and the server room (aka landing), which meant that for the past few days I had to move the contents of these rooms into other rooms and then back again.
Despite my nice new carpets I will now have to wait for my slightly overdue shelving to arrive. As my ever increasing high sales is causing a problem with storing the completed order forms. This in all means that as now five large box files currently do not have a home due to an already full shelf, then it is time to make them a new home in the server room.
Fortunately I was careful to find out complete shelving with all the bit and pieces to get them on the wall, when there is nothing more annoying when you are already busy having to find out the right sized screw. Just a shame that they did not turn up today as expected, but that is what you get when you order over the Internet instead of visiting the local store.
As to orders; then all that is here is due for dispatch tomorrow, when hopefully my boxes of franking labels will also arrive. If not then it is a choice of stamps (short-lived victory for the post master?) or trying to print postage values on standard address labels (if that is legal).
Anyway the point of all these changes is sort out bottlenecks resulting in delays when dealing with orders. This means that once these upgrades are soon completed then this will make dealing with orders even faster.
Back on the 5th of this month was a special day that I had been expecting for months. As what happened on that day was that my total number of blank cards sold in the last six months since September exceeded the total number of pre-programmed cards sold in the 27 month period between March 1998 and June 2000.
To give you an idea of the demand increase; then cards sold in the last three months when compared to the same period for the year before has now increased to 628% the former sales total.
That in all means that despite a certain European Directive becoming law at the end of May last year service providers should be concerned when my card sales have gone up by 628%.
I expect that increase is because that there is a whole lot more that can be done with them these days. And while that includes many valid uses, the service providers cannot be pleased by the number of cards entering the market.
Also I can thank this directive for allowing me to sell many more card programmers as well, but that is another story.
However while I am on the subject then I am almost certain that this directive has had the opposite effect from what the service providers had hoped. What I mean is that with pre-programmed cards people were happy with them, but not having to do the more complex stuff did not turn these people into experts.
These days I am selling loads of cards and programmers. And while I do not ask what people do with these fully legal items, owning such device in the hands of certain people will only move them fully into the subject. And once they are there then they are sure to bring their friend along, which I expect is where these extra cards could end up.
Anyway after this recent news it will soon be time to catch up on all my delayed email.
1st of April 2001
Well, well, well, have I not got some very interesting new changes for you today.
The news that most people would be interested in is that my GOLD card price is now half of what it used to be, which now means that trade customers could well now be interested in them as well.
As no doubt some of my customers would be slow to handle this price change, then the easy adjustment in case of overpayment is just to send two cards instead of one. While in the case of ordering cards at my old £10 price, then a longer to do credit note would be issued.
The news that happens every month on this day is that my March Special Offer is no more (some people this time left it until the very last minute before ordering), while April now has it's own new Special Offer just as interesting.
To understand my Special Offer for April then you would have to visit my Programmers page, which is where you can find details about my new GOLDMATE model. This one as it is not quite a programmer would be an interesting read, and no doubt would make a good second model for those people already owning a programmer.
Another price change is that as I did not like my higher ALIEN price, as mentioned last month, then while the rest of my ALIEN offer ended when March did I decided to lower my standard price from £19 to £17.
The final change on that page is that my ELVIS programmers will now come with a free GOLD card by default. And as only yesterday I used to sell those cards for £12 each, then my ELVIS programmer is now even better value.
Apart from my GOLD card price change my Cards page offers two other surprises.
The first of these is that my important card wiring diagrams are now in funky colours, when that did not take long when you actually decide to do it.
However the most important addition today is one new item which in time will reshape the entire market within Europe. As my new P62865 card being about three times better than my P8416 card, will mean that once my yet unnamed PIC16F628 + 24LC65B wafer card arrives, then this will make a card type which could in time even make the GOLD wafer cards obsolete.
Sure you may not believe me now, but as I already have seen what these cards can do in testing, then I know that this card type is what all you people will be using in the future.
Unfortunately as this new card type (having a totally new microcontroller and all) is currently not very well supported by programming software (that will certainly change), then I have a few issues to sort out before I am happy to sell these.
That should not take more then a day or two, when I have already seen that both my ALIEN and ELVIS programmers can program this card type.
To give you an idea of my problems, then while my ELVIS programmer will one day support the PIC16F628 + 24LC65B card type just like it currently does with the PIC16F84 + 24LC16B cards (auto-detect, through-PIC programming) in the MP software, currently the MP software does not support this new card type.
Instead you have to use the DOS version in order to program this card type, but as that still lacks auto-detect and through-PIC programming then sometimes you have to use a third program in order to program the EEPROM.
So while one day ELVIS will handle this type at a push of a button, currently the programming procedure can be slow and with non-fatal problems. And that is why I wish to be able to provide you with the exact and detailed instructions that you need, but as some people would already know how to handle these then that is why they can ask for my low price.
Anyway as I can assure you that while firmware authors are already drooling over this card type, things are no less important in the software authors eyes either. And that is why at this very minute nothing is more important to my ELVIS manufacturer then adding complete support for this new card type.
Give it time and that is the card type you will be using instead of your current card. And hopefully by now my visitors will believe this just because I say it, when already I have over the past offered you market restructuring items, which the latest example of was my still fairly new ELVIS programmer.
Well this new card type gets my total support, which as you will see over time then spreads to everyone else. And the doubters can always look around to see what other people are already saying about the PIC16F628.
Wafer versions of this new card type will be available at a currently unknown date, which will be whenever Microchip produces the PIC16F628 for wafer cards plus two months for the production cycle.
Anyway did I not say I had some very interesting news for you today, when this will no doubt affect your whole future. :-]