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Jonboy

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Posts posted by Jonboy

  1. Frankly they could be difficult enough in person when based in Abingdon.

     

    A memorable one was the proprietor moaning to another customer about slow trade and people not dropping in anymore, and then immediately not being prepared to reserve, pre-sell or even simply confirm when a specific item was due in, or agree to call/email when it came in.

  2. 6 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

    That assumes Hornby's boxes are actually routed via Felixstowe. Given their location, I'd suggest at least two other container ports they might find more convenient even without the disruption.

     

    John

     

     

    Southampton and London Gateway are both starting to fill with rerouted vessels from FLX so will likely get congestion quite quickly .
    They also apparently have form for helping for a short while in periods of disruption and then inviting the Lines to sign up for much longer contracts, or they will stop taking the overflow.

     

    Liverpool looks like it could go out on strike shortly as well…

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  3. At the moment it’s becoming less the issues in China so much as the disruption from the Felixstowe strikes, we have just lost 20 days on a container as it was due in the last strikes and the vessel made all its other European stops and came back.

    (Another earlier shipment recently got dumped in Germany due to congestion at Felixstowe and took 30+ days to get back to the uk as no direct services).

     

    If not resolved soon these will start to cause havoc with Xmas stock….

  4. Working for a wholesaler the number of trade customers who cannot follow a simple instruction to add an order number, invoice number or account number to a bacs payment is astonishing…the number of payments we try to reconcile that have come from “current account 2” or “Lloyds” etc without any trace of a recognisable customers name is bizarre…

     

    Not sure I would want it at a retailer level.

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  5. 7 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

     Anyone who remembers the old NEC orange gloom and trying to look at stuff in that when on a crowded stall might agree.

     
    Bear in mind that lighting and electrics are a significant income generator for the NEC. You don’t generally see change from £300 or so for a basic 500w socket and three strip lights over a stand at a three day show (not that I have attended as an exhibitor for around 5 years)….A cynic would think the poor lighting is deliberate….

  6. The problem is the requirement in almost every EU country to have an in state fiscal representative who shares liability for VAT payments and compliance. This costs to implement and then further ongoing reporting (often in a different language) etc etc. and is likely not viable for many small businesses.

     

    (Of course you only need to register in one EU state, for sales to all states but it’s still an onorous requirement)

  7. 6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

    I think it a bit unfair to call shipping a sh** show. For sure conditions are exceptional, but these conditions weren't caused by the shipping sector, which has responded as well as anyone could reasonable expect to a sudden unanticipated surge in demand which was pretty much unprecedented in scale and how quickly it happened. Shipping lines and container terminals have been operating at capacity and any old boat which can carry boxes has been able to secure day rates which would have been crazy three years ago. Here in Singapore the old terminal at Tanjong Pagar/Brani Island was meant to be winding down but is still busy as the new terminal at Pasir Panjang is maxed out and the even newer port at Tuas has limited container capacity at the moment. Once boxes are offloaded getting them out of terminals to customers is a nightmare in some countries. In some countries shippers are causing problems by demanding that containers should not be sent to Asia empty whilst also complaining about delays caused by shortages of containers in Asia because they can't be repositioned quickly enough. And container shipping reduced speed (which effectively lowers capacity) to reduce GHG emissions after governments demanded such and introduced regulations which can only be complied with by reducing speed. That shipping has done as well as it has is a remarkable achievement given the problems faced over the issues of the last couple of years with a humanitarian crisis at sea, disruptions to its own supply chain and ever increasing backlogs of repair and docking work, all sorts of legal and compliance problems.


    Its interesting because that flies in the face of the weekly/monthly newsletters we receive from multiple freight forwarders talking about the number of vessels tied up in Asia and blanked sailings seemingly designed to keep prices artificially high…

     

    The two points that do tie in with the feedback we get when booking freight are the humanitarian cost on the crew of pandemic restrictions, and the slower steaming speeds that should have been apparent years in advance as legislation progressed through various legislators.

     

    The point about empty containers has been communicated to us as shipping companies refusing to wait in port whilst empty container are loaded onboard as there is no revenue in them…

     

  8. The problem for us as a wholesaler was that any capacity we had to absorb any energy related increases was already taken up by the Sh*& show that is the shipping world at the moment.
    Between the far higher container rates, (Still 2.5 to 3 times the rate at the start of 2020) and the delay after delay after delay (containers scheduled for 33 days taking 65 isn’t unusual at the moment) meaning we need to have higher stock levels on hand and in transit….

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  9. Thing is the same rules in use for exhibition are born out of theatres and also cover the venues used by amateur dramatics groups etc, who use often use school or village halls/mixed use venues. They cover all soft furnishings such as seats, and in particular curtains that are often over fire exits.

     

    I suspect that like the railway rules and regulations they are often reactions to events past.

  10. can’t speak for Hornby but in my line of ordering arts and craft items the production slots work around full shipping containers…one production slot equals one shipping container, the slots are booked at the start of the year and then the orders need to meet minimum order quantity for each individual product, whilst also fitting the complete mixed order in a 40’ container….


    This sometimes leads to compromises between what I want to order and what fits production bookings made up to 8 or 9 months, before the final order is submitted, luckily we don’t have preorders to contend with…

     

    The factory don’t do less than container slots so small overflows are a pain in the backside and involve $100’s of extra cost shipping loose pallets to the port ex-works and then LCL shipping, rather than the FCA (FOB in old money) terms the main container is shipped under.

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  11. 10 hours ago, John M Upton said:

    I am just astounded by the panic "National Emergency" nonsense at the perfectly normal fact its the height of Summer and its hot weather...


    Just thinking back to July 2007 almost to the day, when I as part of a first aid organisation was assisting at an emergency evacuation centre, full of the residents of an old peoples home due to the flooding…the home in question hasn’t been evacuated since (at any other time of year)….good old predictable Consistent summers…

  12. 11 hours ago, DY444 said:

     

    That's actually a non-trivial issue.  The glib answer to the problem of the time it takes to recharge an EV compared to the time it takes to refuel an ICE vehicle is usually something along the lines of "just have a coffee while you wait - what's the problem?"  Well the problem is that what the railway would call dwell time is going to increase at service areas.  The oldest service areas unsurprisingly tend to be on the oldest motorways which also tend to be the busiest roads, like the southern end of the M1, and the oldest service areas tend to have the smallest car parks.  Watford Gap being a good example.  Longer dwell time in small car park equals trouble. 


    But obviously we are just going to string overheads on the motorways between the variable speed limit gantries they are are erecting all over, fit trolley-bus style pantographs and charge the hgv’s on the move for the final miles off the cables???

     

    Why do we need technology when there are 140 year old solutions out there???

  13. 44 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

    It would take amazon just a few days to change that, and probably starve off many model shops doing so. However they obviously do not see it as a worthwhile investment of time for the return.


    Amazon actually make the suppliers do a hell of a lot of the work in listing items, to upload a new product the spreadsheet template has around 100 columns of data of which around a quarter are mandatory.

    The more you complete the better the listing. Then you have to submit images to their specifications and named in their preferred format…then anyone else that sells it reasonably legitimately can piggyback off the suppliers efforts…

  14. 5 hours ago, JohnR said:

    I wonder what the cost of the legal side was, and whether it would be reported in the next set of accounts? I would imagine it would also include the cost of SC's lawyers. 


    Had experience of a similar situation a few years back, with a far larger company than Studio Canal involved as the opposition, and the legals were less than £5k for both their and our legal costs.

     

    (It admittedly helped that their side presented their initial claim with all their evidence, and straightforward resolution requirements to clear it all up in the first communication).

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  15. 18 minutes ago, DY444 said:

    As for the strikes, if they do put Royal Mail off then they probably weren't serious about it anyway.  This will be a long term strategic decision if it happens and won't be influenced by the prospect of periodic squabbles with the rail unions.


    There would be irony there…my workplace reformed procedures and reduced our use of (letter) post by circa 90% due to Royal Mail strikes…

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