Registered Address.co.uk London Business Registered Office Address Mail Forwarding Review

By: N_Walayat

Registered address.co.uk is just one of many similar services that offer UK companies the use of business addresses for business correspondence purposes not just in some of Britain's prime locations such as central London but some even offer addresses across the worlds major cities, thus allowing companies to gain a postal address footprint worldwide.

This is review is of what one can expect as a real customer use of one of the increasingly popular services, registeredress.co.uk that currently focuses on offering 3 London addresses from East London, the City of London and Kensington. Addresses that can be used both for business and official registered office mail with extra bolt on services available such as a £10 charge for the receipt of parcels.

The core service works in terms of offering use of 1 of 3 currently available business addresses through payment of an annual subscription fee plus a further fee for x number of letters to be forwarded onto the businesses forwarding to address. The business letters allowance can be topped up at anytime during the year, and a log in control panel lists letters and any other credit balance.

The core service is usually supplemented by use as also the companies official registered office address i.e. for HMRC and Companies House purposes, as well as further bolt on's available such as for use as directors address, or as a virtual telephony service.

THE COST

The current cost (Jan 2017) for a company signing up with registeredaddrerss.co.uk for a typical service of say use for business and official mail calculates to a fee of £192 for an initial quota of 20 business letters and technically unlimited official mail forwarding though in practice this usually tends to be average under 10 per annum.

The price of £192 is BEFORE any discounts running at the time of signing up as registeredaddress.co.uk do tend to run periodic discount sales during the year, for instance during December the offer was for 15% OFF ALL SERVICES, whilst in January this has jumped to 30% OFF ALL SERVICES!

So today the £192 fee would convert into just £134.40 after the 30% January discount.

RENEWALS

Now, before you all go rushing off to join registered address or similar outfits, there is one major fly in the ointment that I should mention, and that is what happens at the time of renewal. So whilst the basic core business service as listed above would cost a new customer signing up today £192 before discount and £134.40 after the current promotional discount, however for the exact same service for a business renewing for a further 12 months then that fee jumps to £300!

Worse still is that the 30% discount that's supposed to apply to ALL SERVICES apparently does not work for existing customers at renewal, where on entering the code get a message that the "Discount code is invalid". Whilst logging out and doing the same as a new customer results in the discount code being accepted.

£300 amounts to a 40% increase on the existing new customer fee of £192 before discount.

£300 amounts to a 70% increase on the existing new customer fee of £134.40 after the current 30% discounts.

Something those seeking to use a third party address service need to be aware of that after making use of the new business address i.e. on business stationary and signage that at the time of renewal are going to be hit with sizeable unexpected price hike.

I contacted registered address 4 times by email for why they charge existing customers near double that for new customers, and finally got a response 10 days later stating -

- The renewal fees are different from the fees shown on the front page of the website. Those fees are introductory prices for the first year of the service.

However, the ONLY prices listed on the website are those that apparently only apply to new customers. Nowhere is indicated to expect a 40% price hike at time of renewal.

On the plus side contacting registeredaddress.co.uk and questioning their price hike has resulted in a 20% discount code that did work, so the actual renewal cost was reduced to from £300 to £240, but this is AFTER a 20% discount which may not work in subsequent year. So the cost at renewal is £240 against £134.40 for someone signing up today. However the cost at the very least should be the same as that which is quoted on their site as the normal price before any discount running at the time i.e. £192, so the effective price hike at renewal is 25% (after receipt of a 20% discount code).

In conclusion services such as registered address are great for small businesses that want a foot print in a prime location., However understand that use of such addresses can carry unanticipated extra costs at the time of renewal that need to be factored i.e. as this example illustrates to expect to be billed 40% more than the 'normal price' of that which new customers are likely to pay i.e. here the renewal fee was first £300, then after a 20% discount falling to £240 against £134.40 for a new customer signing up to the same service today.

Overall I rate registered address 9/10 in terms a of service reliability and 6/10 in terms of value of money due to the sharp unexpected price hike at time of renewal for which there is NO indication of on their website that customers signing up today are likely to be hit with such a sharp price hike at the time of renewal and there remains the risk that the such price hikes could continue at future renewals, i.e. the ratcheting up of the fee charged each year as the customer becomes ever more committed to the use of the address.

Also whilst this is a review of registered address, do expect similar from all such service providers in this unregulated sector.

By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

Copyright © 2005-2017 Marketoracle.co.uk (Market Oracle Ltd). All rights reserved.

Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

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Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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