Looking at buying a Sonder Camino for cycling to work and Royal Mail run a cycle plus scheme, Just looked on Alpkits site and there is a admin fee of 10% so 100 quid on a 1000 pound bike is this right and it has to be paid for outside of the 1000 I have to purchase a bike.

Rich

Alpkits loss 🙁

Hmmmmm yeah only the rubbish ones… Planet x / on one do to. Not actually that much involved at all but they are just lazy.

Many do. It’s because the shop has to pay an administrator fee to the scheme provider. Their margins will be tight and so they’re passing it on to you.

It’s not their loss. Selling it to you at RRP and then paying the administration fee themselves would be a loss.

so if I went for the 799 bike plus 100 in accessories the other 100 admin can come out of my 1000?

I guess so. They get £1000 and give £100 to the scheme provider? Might work.

Does work….. Did exactly that last year. Bike shops male more money on accessories than branded bikes (sometimes) so usually you can get extra kit like lights, locks etc thrown in. Plus the admin. My bike was 849 plus I got 150 squid accessories (and the admin).

For a direct manufacturer it’s a bit different than a shop. In most cases the shop will be buying in your bike from the distributor- your voucher for 1000 is worth around £733 after vat and the deduction by the provider. A bike that retails for £1000 probably has a cost of about £555. So you’ll sell a £1000 bike for £188 profit. For a shop that’s possibly ok as they just make an order, a bike arrives, they assemble it and make £188 risk free. However, for a company like Alpkit they spent that £555 a long while back in the expectation of selling it at £1000. They might have 100s of thousands of pounds tied up in stock that need to make a return. Selling it to you at less than a £1000 means over time all their bikes need to go up in price to cover all those c2w purchases – that makes no sense from a business perspective, so they charge you the difference.

No one forces the shop into the scheme. If it doesn’t make business sense then don’t join it. Passing the cost to the consumer sucks.

A bike that retails for £1000 probably has a cost of about £555

And the rest, that’s a huge margin on a bike!

And the rest, that’s a huge margin on a bike!

1000 is 833 ex VAT, removing store overheads a margin of 20-25% is not a lot considering the costs involved in stocking, and selling.

No one forces the shop into the scheme. If it doesn’t make business sense then don’t join it. Passing the cost to the consumer sucks.

So long as they are clear about it I don’t see how giving the consumer an option is a bad thing? If the consumer doesn’t want to pay the fee then go to somewhere else (if you can find them).

Likewise nobody forces companies to use the scheme. If the company runs its own scheme (or creates one with the LBS) then it won’t need to pay 10% to the corporate scheme managers!

Last time (long time ago) that I did my local shop who I knew well and was a regular customer of basically said my normal 10% discount wasn’t on C2W stuff as the fee ate that part of the deal – that is the bonus you get for interest free.
Likewise with other 0% purchase options the shop is normally covering the cost of the credit – that is your discount figure.
If you want to buy the bike for the quoted RRP then you can, just with 1 simple easy actual payment.

If the company runs its own scheme (or creates one with the LBS) then it won’t need to pay 10% to the corporate scheme managers!

This. An organisation the size of RM could do it in-house, but would obviously rather make it’s employees absorb the admin cost (realistic or otherwise).