Alert Settings Advice

I signed on to MTVan on 16th December and have been looking through the forum. I've been in the business for about 15 years now.

In the meantime, I have received 22 emails with tiddly little car "jobs", Sameday Retail, all next to no mileage. I see there has been a lot of grumbling about it and the way to stop getting them is to change my settings. I already have set to get notifications for car, estate car and small van, because I have a small van - is that wrong? Does a car or estate car "job" not fit into a small van? Every job I've seen give mileages of e.g. 3 miles, but they start maybe 15 miles away, go away from there, so for a 3 mile job I would drive about 40 round trip. It would also tie me up for more than an hour. So what would I be charging? I have tried to analyse the work, to see if it's possible to get a bunch together all for one trip, but that doesn't seem possible. These jobs don't offer a rate, so I presume it's down to me to offer a price at auction - lowest gets it. So there's no money in it.

I have seen that it would be possible to exclude these from my notifications - from what I can see, there's no other work on offer. So I could stop such notifications. If I do that, the evidence seems to be that I wouldn't get ANY notifications!

I can't get full details of these jobs - it says upgrade to PRO membership to see what and who the vendor is. But for £45 for a month, or £75 for 6 months I can't see any work that would even repay my upgrade fee, never mind make me any money.

What am I missing?

Hi Dennis same day retail is: Fred buy, s a TV or some other consumable item from stores such as curry's, pc world etc You as the delivery person are charged with the task of delivering such item to the address supplied by Courier Expert or another company that deals in "same day retail",

As a personal note :I used to be the landlord of the railway inn and keynsham R f c in my past life,

Dennis said:

---

I signed on to MTVan on 16th December and have been looking through the forum. I've been in the business for about 15 years now.

In the meantime, I have received 22 emails with tiddly little car "jobs", Sameday Retail, all next to no mileage. I see there has been a lot of grumbling about it and the way to stop getting them is to change my settings. I already have set to get notifications for car, estate car and small van, because I have a small van - is that wrong? Does a car or estate car "job" not fit into a small van? Every job I've seen give mileages of e.g. 3 miles, but they start maybe 15 miles away, go away from there, so for a 3 mile job I would drive about 40 round trip. It would also tie me up for more than an hour. So what would I be charging? I have tried to analyse the work, to see if it's possible to get a bunch together all for one trip, but that doesn't seem possible. These jobs don't offer a rate, so I presume it's down to me to offer a price at auction - lowest gets it. So there's no money in it.

I have seen that it would be possible to exclude these from my notifications - from what I can see, there's no other work on offer. So I could stop such notifications. If I do that, the evidence seems to be that I wouldn't get ANY notifications!

I can't get full details of these jobs - it says upgrade to PRO membership to see what and who the vendor is. But for £45 for a month, or £75 for 6 months I can't see any work that would even repay my upgrade fee, never mind make me any money.

What am I missing?

Hi Dennis,

If you're looking at the Courier Work page, work that is closed or sold, or too old is hidden by default so you may not get an accurate representation of what has been going on on the site. As a pro member, filtering by job and vehicle type will hide appropriate jobs.

Excluding the Sameday Retail jobs that you mention there has been 28 jobs posted today from 9 different vendors. Bear in mind that this is the tip of the iceberg as more work is traded between members (once you get to know them) without posting the job.

Most members have a minimum charge that seems to be somewhere between £15 and £50 (please search the forum as it has been discussed many times), which means short jobs can work well too.

Dennis said:

---

I presume it's down to me to offer a price at auction - lowest gets it. So there's no money in it.

Just to add, price is far from what it's all down too. Vendors are just as interested in timing and your reputation: Whether they know you and can trust you to do a good job.

Rapid Movements Europe Ltd said:

---

Hi Dennis same day retail is: Fred buy, s a TV or some other consumable item from stores such as curry's, pc world etc You as the delivery person are charged with the task of delivering such item to the address supplied by Courier Expert or another company that deals in "same day retail",

As a personal note :I used to be the landlord of the railway inn and keynsham R f c in my past life,

Thanks for this. Does the "more details" tell me what it is (if I upgrade to PRO)? Humping a TV or similar doesn't appeal to my specialism - I like to specialise in Small and Light - envelopes are really good! LOL.

The Railway Inn has changed its name (many times) and gone bust (many times). I can't remember since a few days ago whether it's currently for sale or in use as something - look it up in street view - I know the woman who bought it at the time it was for sale then (2012). And she's gone bust since then.

Website Admin - No, I'm not looking at the Courier Work page, I'm talking about the "jobs" which I get email notifications for. I've now had 29 of them since I joined 4 days ago and none of them are suitable for sameday courier (in my opinion). I consider "sameday" to be a job which will probably take me all day and, most importantly, pay me a rate I can earn a profit on.

There are jobs on here that you will have to "fiddle " with the parameters of the page to see Switch off same day retail and there is work about. I. M. H. O for me it, s not essential for me to receive the work on offer, Sameday and otherwise, I my self use other sites and have a client base that puts work my way also I don't do U. K work only Europe so for me it isn't workable, Courier expert supplies work also on a long distance basis also and you shouldn't dismiss this would suggest that if that's the work you are after then to stand better chance of getting it join direct and preference will be given as this site is for the overspill from their own site. Dennis try to remember work is work be it for you or not

The railway used to be a great pub in my day but times have changed and the industry is failing faster than it can keep up, with 50 retail outlets closing weekly and the rents from the holding company's going up at the price that is unsustainable to the landlord, Hope this helps

There used to be thousands of great pubs, I used to run a few of them (successfully). Like all trades its greed that kills and the little guys die. Back to retail jobs I have them marked off but still get them sent to phone especially when passing the midlands. Still wont upgrade while the work is all CE (sorry Andy). The amount of 'other' work does not justify £150 annually.

BusinessBuddy said:

---

There used to be thousands of great pubs, I used to run a few of them (successfully). Like all trades its greed that kills and the little guys die. Back to retail jobs I have them marked off but still get them sent to phone especially when passing the midlands. Still wont upgrade while the work is all CE (sorry Andy). The amount of 'other' work does not justify £150 annually.

The filtering options do not apply if you're not a PRO member. At any rate, you're quite unlikely to receive a text as a non PRO member as we only send a few out when we're thin on members with a good reputation/trusted status. Once members have worked together it's worth pointing out that a lot of work is traded between them without the job being posted on the site. It's building business relationships, and it generally only takes 1 or 2 jobs to cover the subs.

I will try to make them apply regardless of PRO/non-PRO today as I can see that it'd be useful to you (and I'll post back here).

Dennis said:

---

Website Admin - No, I'm not looking at the Courier Work page, I'm talking about the "jobs" which I get email notifications for. I've now had 29 of them since I joined 4 days ago and none of them are suitable for sameday courier (in my opinion). I consider "sameday" to be a job which will probably take me all day and, most importantly, pay me a rate I can earn a profit on.

Hi Dennis, please see my reply above with respect to what work you're alerted to. You're probably aware that the site-wide filtering of job types is quite recent and doesn't extend to all areas if you're not PRO. I'll make sure that it does for you and other non-PRO members and report back here today.

BusinessBuddy said:

---

Back to retail jobs I have them marked off but still get them sent to phone especially when passing the midlands.

Are you referring to the iPhone app alerts or SMS alerts?

Website Admin said:

---

I will try to make them apply regardless of PRO/non-PRO today as I can see that it'd be useful to you (and I'll post back here).

For info this should apply now, looked like it already applied to the SMS alerts.