Good response to introduction of online fee payment service
The online payment service introduced for 2004 Royal Pharmaceutical Society retention fees has been well accepted and is working well, the Society says. Despite unexpected delays in the postal delivery of retention
fee packs, more than 1,500 full-time and overseas members had paid
their fees online by 7 January. Thousands of other members have
also already made arrangements to pay their 2004 fees.
Pharmacists’ retention fee packs were mailed by 18 December 2003
in the expectation that most members would receive them before Christmas.
However, feedback suggests that many packs had still not been delivered
by the beginning of January. The Society is investigating the reason
for this delay.
The Society would have preferred to have despatched the retention fee
packs earlier, but was unable to authorise the printing of the pack materials
until it had gained the Privy Council’s approval for the new fee
scales. Approval was not received until 1 December 2003.
Registration section staff have taken a number of calls from members
worried about being erased from the register for non-payment. Andrew
Gardner, Head of Registration, said: “Although retention fees were
due on 1 January, the Society does not expect every member to have paid
their fees by this date. Clearly it is unreasonable to expect members
to have paid their fees within a matter of days of receipt of the retention
fee form. Those who have not made payment by the end of January will
receive a reminder before any action is taken.”
The premises annual return and retention fee mailing has also encountered
difficulties. The external processing agent used by the Society entered
premises details incorrectly on some premises forms and duplicate replacement
forms have had to be sent to the premises owners affected.
“We are advising those owners of premises affected by the error
not to complete the first set of forms,” said Andrew Gardner. “A
second set will be with them shortly, and we are asking owners to return
payment with the second set of forms. I apologise on behalf of the Society
to all those owners affected.”
During the retention fee and annual return collection cycle, the Society
expects to collect 46,000 retention fee forms and payments from individual
pharmacists and 5,000 annual returns and retention payments relating
to 12,000 registered premises.
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