CHR,
The concern about 2 tier pricing is regarding the question of how to account for the cost of the wire service. The contract is read as a shop is suppose to fill the order as if the shop of order origin will be the shop producing and delivering the order.
A local order only incures the costs of the shop. A wire in order has additional costs related to the charges paid to the wire service for receiving and sending orders. At the same time, the language used is "fill to value". Value is based on cost incured.
For filling shops, based on the increase in wire service charges, local orders are now underwriting the wire in orders. There are only 2 offsets:
1. balance your wire business to favor sending (you can no longer refuse orders to accomplish this)
2. promote the brand of the service such that you benefit from the good will value of the brand. This means selling more of their stuff beyond what your shop's order volume would be without them at a great enough level to cover the costs of being with the service plus produce a profit. The question for this becomes: Does the brand drive enough business my way to make it worth it?
The pricing you refer to is up charging. The sending entity places additional charges onto an already wire service priced item realizing that the customer does not see the 20% the sender is keeping already. It's a sucker move by the sending entity. It also is a practive that will benefit the one, but harm the whole in that it further devalues the purchase of flowers.
The concern about 2 tier pricing is regarding the question of how to account for the cost of the wire service. The contract is read as a shop is suppose to fill the order as if the shop of order origin will be the shop producing and delivering the order.
A local order only incures the costs of the shop. A wire in order has additional costs related to the charges paid to the wire service for receiving and sending orders. At the same time, the language used is "fill to value". Value is based on cost incured.
For filling shops, based on the increase in wire service charges, local orders are now underwriting the wire in orders. There are only 2 offsets:
1. balance your wire business to favor sending (you can no longer refuse orders to accomplish this)
2. promote the brand of the service such that you benefit from the good will value of the brand. This means selling more of their stuff beyond what your shop's order volume would be without them at a great enough level to cover the costs of being with the service plus produce a profit. The question for this becomes: Does the brand drive enough business my way to make it worth it?
The pricing you refer to is up charging. The sending entity places additional charges onto an already wire service priced item realizing that the customer does not see the 20% the sender is keeping already. It's a sucker move by the sending entity. It also is a practive that will benefit the one, but harm the whole in that it further devalues the purchase of flowers.