The purpose of my communication to you is two fold. Firstly, to explain and outline the current Affinity agreement that exists between the IRHA and O2, including procedures for insuring you receive your annual rebate. Secondly, to share with you how O2 are working for the Irish haulier in terms of delivering real benefits to your business.

In a recent meeting between the IRHA management team and myself, it was brought to my attention that a number of hauliers were still having problems receiving their annual rebate, and indeed some hauliers are still not familiar with the benefits from the affinity. It was agreed that a re-education of how the affinity and rebate works was required and the best way to communicate this to you was through the Knights of the Road, in Fleet Management Magazine.

“The Affinity”
The Affinity or “Partnership” that exists between the IRHA and O2 has been in existence since March 1997, almost 8 years now. The purpose of this affinity was to introduce value for money mobile services and real cost savings to the members of the IRHA. In return the IRHA would encourage and promote O2 as the preferred mobile partner within the haulage industry. To date this has been a tremendous success, with the IRHA, O2 and most importantly you the members benefiting. The Association would also benefit from strategic sponsorship of various events e.g. the Annual National IRHA Conference, of which O2 is proud sponsors. The actual details of the benefits to the members I have highlighted below and would welcome any enquiries relating to them.

“The Rebate”
The rebate is just one part of the affinity, which rewards every fully paid up member of the IRHA (on the O2 network) with an annual rebate. Basically, what this means is any costs (with exception of rental) generated from January to December in a given year are subject to a 5% rebate. This rebate is credited to your O2 account in March/April of the following year. You might ask, “why does it take 3 or 4 months to apply this rebate?” Well, the answer is simple. Our accounts department have to run many checks on our billing platform to insure we credit the correct amounts to the members. Another delay is when we have to confirm with the IRHA that the members are fully paid up. Every year there are a number of members that contact us to say they did not get their rebate. This is not a problem and we can quickly correct it for them. It is usually down to the account detail not showing that the customer is question is an IRHA member and as soon as we have you membership number we can calculate what is owed and credit accordingly. If a member were in any way unsure about the rebate I would encourage them to make contact with our customer care centre in Limerick. They would be delighted to assist and update your account detail and can be contacted by calling 1909 from your mobile.

“O2 Delivering not just promising”
O2 regards its relationship with the IRHA as being on a special footing. As mentioned above, this partnership between our two organisations has been in place now almost 8 years. An element of the success of this relationship can be attributed to O2 delivering a range of products and services relevant to your specific industry. I have outlined below some of these products and services that some of you may not have been aware of, and would welcome the opportunity to discuss these in more detail in the near future. All of these products and services are intended to increase efficiency and reduce costs both of which I know are very dear to your heart!

Fax Minder

• Sometimes things just have to be done by fax. And now, faxing can be done via your mobile. With Fax Minder, faxes are sent to your mobile Voicemail mailbox number. So your fax number is, in fact, your Voicemail number. The fax is then received on your mobile. Then you can forward the fax on to the fax machine closest to you, wherever you are, and print it off. When you receive a fax, we let you know by text immediately. You can store up to 20 faxes. Each fax can be up to 5 pages long.

• Simply give out your mobile number with the digit 5 after the prefix - i.e if you're mobile number is 086 1234567 then your fax number is 086 5 1234567. When you check your voicemail, follow the prompts to send it onto a fax machine quickly and easy.

Business Call Saver

• Business Call Saver provides O2's business customers with a special rate of 10c ex-VAT on selected voice calls. This includes all calls between your company's O2 to O2 mobiles and up to 4 of the most frequently dialled national landline numbers.

• Savings of up to 54% on calls to as many as 4 landline numbers of your choice.

• Savings of 20% on all calls between your company's O2 to O2 mobiles.

• Calls from 10c ex-VAT per minute.

Mobile Line

• Mobile line is for smaller companies who want to save on calls between the office and a mobile.

• Mobile Line gives you your own dedicated O2 line. So, if you call one of your company mobiles from a landline on your desk, you call will travel via your own O2 line, rather than traditional landlines.

• Save on average up to 40%

Other products such as Blackberry, O2 Instant, Desktop Text and Vehicle Management can make a difference to your business and are worth looking into. A representative from O2 will be attending (where possible) the various AGM’s and council meetings in the coming weeks to outline these products in more detail so perhaps we will see you there. I will also keep you up to date through the Knights of the Road on a regular basis, with future products and services we introduce to the market.

Stephen Hibbitts

For more information, contact our dedicated Business Team on 1850 86 86 86 or e-mail us at info@commercialwireless.ie