Latvian Post urges customers to keep mailboxes in order
Latvian Post is urging its customers to ensure their mailboxes are in good shape and their dogs are under control in order to help mail carriers carry out their work.
Read MoreTag: Mailboxes
Mail Boxes Etc, The UPS Store Reach 6,000 Centers
The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. chains announced on Tuesday that the two brands together have expanded to 6,000 locations worldwide. The first Mail Boxes Etc. store was opened in 1980 in southern California.
Read MoreUPS Franchisees protest during Annual Meeting
As some 50 UPS franchisees from around the country picketed in a light rain outside Wilmington’s Hotel DuPont Thursday (May 10) during UPS’ annual meeting, several shareholder-franchisees directed questions about their concerns to CEO Mike Eskew.
During the question and answer period, Joe Wightman, who owns a Mail Boxes Etc. franchise in New York, asked Eskew why it is that UPS’ 4,000-plus-store retail franchise network of UPS Stores and Mail Boxes Etc. (MBE) is invisible in the UPS annual report and in the presentation Eskew made at the shareholders meeting May 10 in Wilmington. Wightman suggested that it is due to the “abysmal” failure of UPS’ effort and the unhappiness of its franchisees.
Eskew’s response, which Wightman said appeared rehearsed, was that he (Eskew) checked the source for Wightman’s report last year claiming that 60% of the UPS network is unprofitable, and Eskew replied that the information is not accurate. He did not say what his “source” was. Platinum Shield Association (PSA) Board member and UPS shareholder Glenn Sturgis then pointed out to Eskew that the 60% figure came from a written report by UPS’ Franchise Advisory Council, which includes UPS and MBE management as well as its UPS Store franchisees.
Read MoreLifeline for post offices threatened with closure
When the elderly postmistress in the Kent village of Sutton Valence decided to sell up in 1986, Gary Coyle was probably not on her list of target buyers.
Having left a tough comprehensive school in Northampton at the age of 15 without any qualifications, he became a chef and began an extraordinary journey. It took him from the Queen Eleanor hotel in Northampton to a head chef at the Mark Warner company, cooking at the exclusive ski resorts of Verbier and Meribel.
But after catering, he became attracted to the mail business when the village post office went up for sale near to the home of his in-laws. That was more than 20 years ago. He has never looked back, but many other postmasters have not found the going so easy.
As the only shop in the village, his business is thriving, but other rural post offices are not so lucky. About 2,500 are under threat of closure and Coyle is now leading a mission to save them.
He is aware that it will not be an easy task. The 14,200-strong post-office network loses about Pounds 4m a week and is propped up only by government subsidy.
Post offices that make money tend to be the larger ones in busy urban areas.
Coyle has tried a post-office initiative before, and failed – the Postmasternetwork that aimed to boost the average income of a sub-postmaster by Pounds 5,000 a year by finding new revenue streams. When he pulled the plug on the operation in January, he cleared all its debts, but lost Pounds 100,000 of his own cash in the process. That venture was backed by high-profile City figures, who prefer not to divulge their identities.
Coyle remains undeterred. He has now teamed up with Mail Boxes Etc, part of United Parcel Service (UPS), the international courier-services giant, in a plan to set up new post-office franchises under the Mail Boxes name.
Mail Boxes already has 105 post offices in the UK and Ireland but is desperate to expand. Coyle is leading the initiative on their behalf and being paid a retainer.
Read MoreUPS franchisees to demonstrate outside annual shareholders meeting In Wilmington
Franchisees representing United Parcel Service franchise outlets across the United States under the Mail Boxes Etc. (MBE) and The UPS Store brands will demonstrate at Thursday’s (May 10) meeting of UPS shareholders in Wilmington, Del.
“All of us in the franchisee organizations believe UPS shareholders should hear our concerns and understand UPS’ total failure to live up to promises and projections made to us – and to UPS shareholders,” said Joe Wightman, who operates a UPS (Mail Boxes Etc.) store in New York City. He is also an official in the Platinum Shield Association (PSA), which has some 131 members, many of whom will be in Wilmington Thursday.
Wightman said an equally disturbing concern is profitability. “Last year at the shareholders meeting, we asked UPS CEO Mike Eskew what percentage of the franchises were profitable for the franchisee, and he professed not to know, despite the fact that UPS’ own Franchise Advisory Council had informed management that 60% of the franchises were not profitable,” he added. “As a UPS shareholder I believe management has issued misleading statements and needs to ‘come clean’ with all UPS shareholders.”
Echoing Wightman’s concerns over UPS’ treatment of its franchisees are members of three other franchisee organizations, the Brown Shield Association, IAMCO and the Brown Board Owner’s Association, whose members will also appear at the UPS shareholder meeting in Wilmington.
Wightman said a measure of UPS’ failure to take steps to improve the company’s relations with its franchisees is the spate of lawsuits brought by his organization and others in recent months. “Just last week a class action was filed in San Francisco over UPS practices in weighing and measuring packages,” he said, “and virtually every franchisee who will be in Wilmington this week is part of a lawsuit or arbitration against UPS.”
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