From riders that have worked for them, i have gathered that you are never, ever likely to make more than 250 a week, and seems that you would be likely to get to know W14 and further pretty well
at courier systems at the moment your lucky to get more than £40 a day and thats if they pay you at all, which is quite unlikely. or maybe thats cos my controller doesn't like me.
In a year and a half working for them I broke the guarantee 3 times, with max earnings being 290... You get to pick up any variety of postcodes, no such thing as a run at Mercury. Half hour late and you lose the guarantee for the week and are probably looking at making 150-200 or worse (in summer)... If you get on with Dave (senior controller) it aint too bad, and it helps to be english... 250 a week for 4-5 jobs a day in summer is pretty good though (record standby time of 2.25 hours!).
Two and a quarter hours standby!! that beats my excel record.
Your question bill:
I always wanted more than £50 a day. What one wants and what one gets are two different things especially as I always settled for naff companies as I would usually end up "mending my bike" on fridays if I knew I'd earned enough to live off by thursday.
messengers are not paid enough simple as that, but companies know they can get away with it.
I'd be all for a proper wage PAYE system and all the extra insurance implications that would mean for the companies. I'm fully aware though that the huge cost to insure a waged bicycle messenger would probably mean that most companies would simply remove the bicycle service.
Is anyone fully independant in london?
I used to daydream about the logistics involved and with todays small laptops and wireless internet networks you could run a fairly comprhensive setup of account management.
Well, I left just last week. 250 quid is what you get, rarely a penny more. Also, they don't have many riders at the moment, so you'll be working hard for your 250. No two hour stand-bys, I'm afraid. But from what I've heard of the other starter companies, I'm not sure any of them are much better. Overall, I'd say that Mercury was a good way in for me. Just don't stay too long. Oh, and it's W11 that you become rather too familiar with, not W14.
oh i don't know about that. i've spoken to motorbikers that pay their tax. i wonder what the record for time on the road tax free would be. anyone want to open the bidding?
Yeah Scott, but not PAYE ie as an employee with employee's rights. Most everyone, mb, pb, van, passenger car driver is paid as self-employed sub (and afforded the same rights - no holiday pay, sick pay, no security of employment), but treated like an employee.
"employee rights? who 'av you been tawkin to mate? now piss of up to edgeware and pick up that run. oh, you're now sartin' work late coz of all this human rights bullshit so there goes yoyr 10% bonus. that'll learn ya." sound familiar to anyone?
Anyone know if CitySpr*nt in London are as bad as here in Brum? I got paid by mileage and would get sent as far as 22 miles (one way) for one drop, and an average drop would be about 7 miles. I'd always have to ride back to the centre with my bag empty, which obviously seriously limited my capacity to earn anything. I got hit by a car on the way back from the 22 mile drop and got my whole guarantee taken away for that week for taking the next day off. I didn't once hit my retainer for the day, and the most I earnt was £35 and that day I did 60 miles. Even when I had a guarantee I've never been paid properly, and am having trouble getting the money I am owed. Lots of inexplicable "charges" have been docked from my already measley pay checques. I finally told them to fuck off when they tried to tell me that I was taking money out of their pockets for not hitting my retainer so I would have to work an 2 extra hours a day for the same shit money.
Yeah, I'm with JP. Once Dave likes you its not too bad. If he doesnt, youre going to be on the phone to him a lot. It took me 8 months to make more than the 250 guarantee. I still remember being outside the bank deciding how to spend my extra 34p. Lose the guarantee and you can expect to make less than 200 in summer. I lost mine for things like being a few minutes late, taking lunch, being hit by a car and having to go to a bike shop..50 quid for 5 jobs is pretty good. I used to average 15-17, and once i managed to be given 34. still made 50 quid though..
theyre a good starter company, with an okay guarantee that beats more than a few other companies, especially in summer.
As for W11...theres a regular set of afternoon runs that all end up in w11. On a good (?) day I used to do Nw1-w11-nw1-ec3-w11.
You can tell if Dave's pissed off with you if you do the nw1-w11 one way and then get sent straight back empty for the nw1-w11 return. That's a lot of riding for two jobs.
I thought that meant dave liked me :) I didnt mind w11 that much, because its a straight line sprint all the way. The w/r only takes about 35 minutes. it used to take the scooter kids longer because they had to stop at lights..
before i left i was doing between 60-70 a day at reuters that was in 2005 and that was quiet! before that the average a day on the city channel(when it was a city ch!!) was about 95!
i'm happy with 75+ a day...though it's not easy in courier systems...especially now...but still if i do a whole week of work i'll get around 400 or sometimes more.recently i even started to like w2-se1 w/r. record stand by time 1.45h.