What is a postage deposit and why do I need one?
When you have any service with OfficeServ that involves physically forwarding items that arrive for your account, we need to hold a postage deposit! This is a fully refundable amount of money that we hold as a deposit on your account. As items are physically forwarded to you, that cost of that forwarding is added up and invoiced to you at the end of every month.
The reason we hold a deposit, rather than invoicing either for every item or just taking payment at the end of the month is because. The amount sometimes can be very small, as little as £0.90p if you were to only have one normal letter sent that month. It is not cost efficient for us to process payments that small, after paying any fees we would receive less than the postage costs! On the other hand, sometimes shipping costs, like for sending large items, overseas shipping or services that provide enhanced compensation can be expensive. So we need to know we have the deposit on your account to cover the cost of the shipping we pay for in advance.
How much deposit is required?
The amount of deposit required depends entirely on your forwarding requirements and sending volume. It is also assessed on a monthly basis by our accounting department. We have no intention of holding more deposit than is required. It's important to hold the right amount though so there are not unwanted delays on any forwarding.
- First Deposit - When you sign up, no deposit is taken, this is because you might not need one! It could be that your not expecting a lot of mail or that your using our Scan & Email services and wont need to pay for postage. When the times comes to physically forward your first item we take a £10.00 postage deposit. £10 is the minimum amount we will take due to payment processing costs. If the first item we are sending uses a service for which the cost is much greater, say £9.90 for a Royal Mail Special Delivery a deposit of £20.00 would be taken, so that after sending there is enough deposit left to continue running your account.
- Subsequent Deposits - Any subsequent deposits are taken as required or at the start of each month after the previous months postage and shipping has been invoiced to your account. We try to keep the deposit level above £5.00 at all times. So if your deposit amount is for example £5.20 at the start of the month we will take another £10.00 deposit. If its say £8.40 no deposit will be taken. If your account is using £5-10 postage or shipping a month, a £15 deposit may be taken and held, of course if your account is using more each month a larger deposit would be required.
How is the deposit amount taken?
The deposit amount will be charged to the account billing method that was set up to pay for your services. If you would like to pay by a different method, please contact our office about adding an additional or new payment method to your account.