Missing: One rant

I posted a really long rant about Royal Mail here mid-week and it seems to have disappeared. The gist of it was that I was annoyed they wouldn't let me open a business account - I meet the minimum volume requirements but not the minimum spend requirements. They suggested SmartStamp as an interim measure, which costs £4.99 a month (rather than the 8p per item saving I'd have made with a business account), so I downloaded the trial version of the software and it won't work on my PC despite the best efforts of the SmartStamp helpdesk. Looks like I'm stuck with the Joe Public version until I get a bit bigger then, and it's SO SLOW at the moment!

I screwed up with an order from Supplier #2 on Tuesday - I've had a lot of people asking for the 4-10mm SP cuff and I'm out of stock, so I ordered 50. Or at least I thought I'd ordered 50. 50 of a different bangle turned up and I was about to ring them up and tear a strip off them when I thought I'd better check the email I sent them first - and I'd put the wrong computer code in. Oh well, they'll still sell I think, they're nice enough. And Supplier #2 is getting the correct ones to me ASAP, hopefully they should arrive this morning. Had to pay for them straight out of the Abbey account since I'd maxed my credit card out paying for the order.

On the plus side I now have 5,000 chains of various sorts stacked underneath the chair in the bedroom. 16" & 18" medium trace SP and 16" medium curb SP have been out of stock for a while and still are, so I went for fine trace and fine faceted curb, which are a bit more expensive. Seems that people are willing to pay the extra though - not sure whether it's just because it's coming up for Christmas and everyone's desperate to get their hands on components or whether this will be an all-year-round thing. I think I'll keep stocking them and try and find out.

I had a polite call from the credit card company yesterday pointing out that I'd gone a teensy bit over my card limit on statement date (£93 to be exact) and would I care to make a debit card payment today? Gave them my Abbey Visa Debit, remembering too late that I'd put the extra cuffs on it and there wasn't enough cash in there. Fortunately Abbey declined it and I paid £100 off from my current account instead. The weekly Paypal transfer arrived this morning and I've paid off another £1000 which will give me some wriggle room. It's my own fault for getting over-confident and paying myself a £500 bonus last month, it's stymied my cashflow!

Anyway, once that £1000 has cleared I'm going to buy some torque bangle bases and bangle boxes from Supplier #1 and make up some with blue abalone. I have a jewellery selling ID from last year that didn't really take off, I'm going to offer them at £9.99 or Best Offer and see what happens. The bead selling will slow right down in December, hopefully I can keep sales up this way.