General News

Since 2017 Purchase Direct has committed to make a fixed charitable donation each month to Save the Children, which this month has reached the grand total of £120,000.  As a business, we are pleased to be able to provide continued financial support for vulnerable children in the UK and around the world – and it’s thanks to the hard work from all our staff which enables us to make this contribution.

Alicia Wiltshire, Senior Regional Corporate Manager at Save the Children, commented: “Thank you so much for the incredible generosity and compassion Purchase Direct have shown through their support, reaching an incredible milestone of £120,000. To put this into context, this could help over 375 families survive the winter with warm clothes, heaters and fuel.

“Purchase Direct’s donations help children in the UK and around the world get the food, medicine and education they need to make it through the toughest times of their lives, so they can go on to fulfil their potential. It’s with children’s endless energy and the determination of supporters like Purchase Direct, we’re helping create a fairer world and change the future for good.”

Last Summer, the Government announced changes to ESOS (the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme) in its response to the ESOS consultation which had been conducted.

We were delighted to recently donate £3163 to Welwyn Hatfield Women’s Refuge & Support Service, an independent local charity who provide services for women and children who have experienced domestic violence or abuse.

As the UK transitions to a fully digital communications network, with BT Openreach switching off traditional landlines in 2025, now is the time to assess your current communications set up so that you aware of the upgrades required.

We are delighted to announce that we have achieved both ISO 14001 Certification and Carbon Neutrality status in line with PAS 2060:2014.

Raising funds for worthy charities and supporting the local community is important to the Directors and employees at Purchase Direct and we were delighted to recently donate over £1,850 to Hearts Milk Bank.

Purchase Direct has been appointed by BMW Group UK to provide a one-off energy consumption audit for all BMW Retailers and Authorised Repairers in the UK and Ireland.  

Purchase Direct has a reputation for finding innovative ways to reduce the cost of doing business and, after researching the opportunities the new open banking regulations meant for processing payments, we knew we could find a solution to help businesses save thousands on debit and credit card payments.

Our team at Purchase Direct recently supported another worthwhile charity and were delighted to raise the grand total of over £2,100 for Mind in Mid Herts during Mental Health Awareness Week.

With climate change becoming an increasingly hot topic, it is more difficult for businesses to ignore their own corporate responsibility and we have committed to achieving carbon neutrality status, in accordance with PAS 2060. 

Open Banking is the revolutionary way for consumers to pay for products and services, utilising the Faster Payment Service alongside ‘Pay by Link’ technology.

Purchase Direct has committed to a further 10-year lease at our head office in Welwyn Garden City and the 8,935 square foot open plan office is currently undergoing major refurbishment to provide a superior working environment for our team of 90 staff to return to post COVID-19.

Vodafone and Three are following EE’s lead by introducing extra charges for some of its customers using their phones in Europe from next year, following the UK’s departure from the EU. 

Our procurement services are continually evolving as we strive to generate additional cost savings and improved service levels for our customers.   

A new Waste Brokerage Scheme has recently launched through our sister company Outsourced Waste Ltd, enabling us to offer new and improved waste pricing with better controls on pricing, reporting and management information. 

We have been made aware of a text message scam that is affecting Android phones on any mobile network (iPhones are currently unaffected). The scam texts are known as ‘Flubot’ SMS Malware and pretend to be from legitimate businesses. 

Following the Supreme Court decision in June 2020 that Visa and Mastercard’s multilateral interchange fees (MIFs) were restrictive of competition, Purchase Direct and chartered accountants UHY Hacker Young have joined forces with Freeths LLP to create an insurance backed scheme for eligible retailers to seek compensation for credit and debit card interchange overcharging.  

Mobile users are being defrauded of £millions using SIM swap fraud.  SIM swapping provides a way for cybercriminals to gain access your personal data and accounts by hijacking your mobile phone number and having your calls go to a SIM in another device.   

Purchase Direct is celebrating its 25^th Birthday this year having been in business since August 1995.  Back then, most businesses still used BT for their telecom, their local electricity company, British Gas for gas and mobile phones were quite a bit bigger. 

There has been a consistent increase in card terminals being stolen from car dealerships to perform refund frauds. It has been reported that criminals are entering dealerships, distracting the salesperson and taking the PDQ terminal to process refunds.

Credit card firms could face significant damages running into billions of pounds in claims after the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Visa and MasterCard, in favour of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains; ruling that fees the credit card companies were charging retailers restricted competition. 

The team at Purchase Direct have been providing critical support to GP Surgeries by procuring essential PPE for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whilst Purchase Direct is prioritising everyone’s wellbeing, including our staff, customers and suppliers, we’re still working remotely from the safety of our homes.

Purchase Direct recently supported The Outside Project, the UK’s first LGBTIQ+ Crisis/Homeless Shelter and Community Centre, by raising a total of £2,244.52 for the charity.

O2 has switched on its 5G network, the last of the UK’s mobile operators to do so. The network will initially be available in five cities for O2 customers – Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds and London – followed by a further 20 towns and cities before the end of the year. 

Following the drone attacks at the weekend in Saudi Arabia on their largest oil processing plants, oil prices initially surged 20% at the start of trading on Monday with the Brent Crude benchmark seeing its biggest jump in about 30 years.  

We were delighted to raise the grand total of £3,472.14 recently in support of Essex & Herts Air Ambulance and London’s Air Ambulance.

In June 2017 mobile roaming charges in EU countries were abolished and mobile phone users have since been able to use their minutes, texts and data on their mobile phone tariffs when travelling in most EU countries

We were delighted to raise funds to support our local community in November and recently donated £2,473 to Pinewood School, a state special school in Ware for children aged 11 to 16.

Purchase Direct recently attended ‘Management in Practice’, a series of events across four major cities for practice Managers, GPs and those involved in primary care business management. 

BT has announced its plan to completely shut down the ISDN network by 2025 so it is only a matter of time before businesses must upgrade their telecommunications and plan their move to SIP.

We were delighted to donate £2,112 to Herts Young Homeless, an independent charity supporting vulnerable people in Hertfordshire since 1998.

The Payment Services Directive (PSD2) will make it illegal for any business to charge extra for using a debit or credit card in the EU.

Purchase Direct has committed to make a fixed charitable donation each month to Save the Children and it’s the hard work from all our staff which enables us to make this contribution in the first place.

Mobile roaming charges in EU countries come to an end on 15 June 2017 but we still advise caution due to the possible application of fair use charges and the exclusion of certain European countries and Crown Dependencies, such as the Channel Islands, on some mobile tariffs from different networks.

New EU rules on debit card transactions, which came into force on 1 September, penalise automotive retailers and will have a significant impact on already squeezed used car margins.

Fix Auto UK has just appointed Purchase Direct to run their Fix Auto Cost Optimisation Programme. This is an important initiative as they seek to develop their longstanding ambition of building the most profitable bodyshop network in the UK.

It is possible to cut spending in practically every area of a business – marketing, stationery, courtesy vehicles, utilities etc. However there is a fine line between reducing operating costs to the point that it becomes inefficient and costly and ensuring a company is well resourced to deliver maximum profits.