Quicksilver Messengers submit their demands. It was almost TOO easy.
Submitted on Sat, 07/15/2006 - 5:26pm
What happens when you have four dues paying wobblies, plus one treasurer of the SF Bike Messenger Association, plus one old wob from the 70’s, and a boss that could care less about the messenger division, all in one shop? In the case of Quicksilver Messenger in San Francisco—anything you want—and it was very easy.
We have just gone from being one of the worst messenger companies in the industry, to one of the best (and legal companies don’t count, since they charge their clients an arm and a leg). Actually, we haven’t gotten the paycheck to prove it yet, but it should be coming shortly.
We wanted our rates to be increased. We also wanted to change the zone map, because it was just not worth it to go to certain places. The fact that a delivery to Van Ness and Market gets you the same amount of money as a delivery to California and Divisadero is (I mean—was) completely ridiculous. And to add insult to injury, we were not even getting the 49% commission rate we thought we were getting because the company would first subtract a booking charge, making our rate more like 35-40%. That is illegal by the way, but we are going to let bygones be bygones, since from now on, we are going to be getting a straight 49% commission.
After figuring out what we wanted, our dispatcher went and talked to the boss—and that was it—we got everything we wanted. Your boss can’t quite argue with a plan that will end up making him more money, too.