AMI Cashless Catering - Having a laugh again.

[eddyc]

So on the 23rd of May an email came out to all customers as per below;

 

Hi,

 

Later in the year the Royal Mint is going to be releasing a new Polymer bank note, please find attached our technical bulletin for further information.

 

If you have any further queries please contact our support team at [email protected]

 

Today we receive an email from their sales team as per below;

 

Thank you for recently completing the Polymer Note Document.

 

Any machine that currently accepts existing £5 notes can be upgraded to take and identify the new style of £5 polymer notes.

 

For customers that want to accept the new style £5 note, we have put in place a process for upgrading any existing note mechanisms.

 

The new £5 note is a change by the Royal Mint that is outside of our control

To ensure we continue to support all of our customers with any aspect of your identity management and cashless catering system, we have had to put in place a specific Team to carry out the note mech upgrades.

Should you decide to upgrade the hardware so you can accept the new £5 notes, then there is a charge.

 

The price structure for the upgrades are as follows;

 

Engineer Site Visit - £200

Firmware Upgrade to NV9 USB - £FOC

Change of NV9 to NV9 USB - £155 p/device

 

Your School have 3 x NV9 USB Note Mechs that can be upgraded with the firmware.

 

Please find attached a quotation.

 

If you would like to start accepting the new £5 polymer notes, then please raise a PO against the attached quotation and send it to [email protected] where we will schedule and engineer to come out and complete the changes for you.

 

We aim to get the changes made as soon as possible so that there is minimal disruption to topping up of accounts.

 

Kind Regards

 

We are charged almost £6,000 a year for hardware and software support by AMI education which is supposed to include "free software for life". (Not really free if your paying £6k a year for support but still).

 

I have gone back and challenged the invoice - Why do we pay for support if they are they going to try and charge us £200 to come in to support us.

 

Has anyone else received this? Any thoughts?

[Steve21]

That's quite normal in all fairness for most vending companies. As it's a new currency (effectively to the machine) it's a hardware replacement and they need new readers that understand the money.

 

Same happened before when they change things.

 

Steve

[Joanne]

Can you not upgrade the firmware under instruction? I agree that the visit should be covered under your support contract.

[eddyc]

That's quite normal in all fairness for most vending companies. As it's a new currency (effectively to the machine) it's a hardware replacement and they need new readers that understand the money.

 

Same happened before when they change things.

 

Steve

 

There is no hardware replacement though - merely a firmware upgrade. Something that has been done before to resolve a different issue, for free, on a remote session.

[Steve21]

There is no hardware replacement though - merely a firmware upgrade. Something that has been done before to resolve a different issue, for free, on a remote session.

 

That's not how I read it:

 

Firmware Upgrade to NV9 USB - £FOC

Change of NV9 to NV9 USB - £155 p/device

 

Surely one line is the Firmware and one a "change"? Maybe should clarify that with them as might not be the case though.

 

You have NV9 ones, and they're upgrading you to NV9 USB ones with the new firmware. (At least how I read it again)

 

NV9 -No Update Available, Exchange with NV9 USB

 

Steve

[eddyc]

Beneath the pricing however Your School have 3 x NV9 USB Note Mechs that can be upgraded with the firmware.

[Joanne]

If I were you, I'd call up the support line and tell them you need the firmware upgrading. If they can do it remotely, then I imagine that they will do it FOC. Might just be a standard template that just happens to not apply to you!

[Steve21]

Beneath the pricing however Your School have 3 x NV9 USB Note Mechs that can be upgraded with the firmware.

 

Hmm missed that part, but maybe should double check with them what it was for then. As if there isn't a hardware replacement then nope shouldn't be a charge (Assuming your support contact includes on-site visits)

 

Steve

[SovietRussia]

It is supposed to cost the UK economy something like £200 million to switch over. All the self serve checkout machines in supermarkets, etc etc.

[DJ-1701]

I thought cashless catering was meant to make it easier so people don't have to carry around cash for transactions... not to actually make the school cashless.

[Achandler]

Think yourself lucky, Cunninghams have just emailed us.

 

£195 each for new note takers if you need them, and a £395 installation cost.

 

Or £395 installation cost for a firmware update.

 

I wouldn't mind if I thought the equipment was decent, but the re-val machines are probably the cheapest and nastiest piece of kit in the school. They have more callouts then anything else by a wide margin.

[bobsmith]

Hold on just one minute.

 

Have I missed something in the very first post?

 

We are talking about cashless catering, but in the same breath talking about a note machine (a cash collecting box of some kind).

 

So the students are bringing cash into school, the school is still doing banking of that money. Why did you go cashless precisely?

[Achandler]

Yes. When you have people without Internet Access or parents refuse to use online payment or simply can't use online payments for some reason. There has to be an alternative available is the mindset here and so it should be. That means re-val machines that students can use cash to top up their accounts.

 

We have enough issues getting students/ parents not to owe the catering company money through going into the minus, but at the same time the catering staff can't/ won't refuse to serve them any food. Not providing any machines to use cash in would only make this problem worse.

 

I believe the cashless catering was initially installed here to move the queues in the dinings halls faster as oppose to removing cash from the school. Which when it works, it is much faster then fiddling with change.

[dapaulio]

Hold on just one minute.

 

Have I missed something in the very first post?

 

We are talking about cashless catering, but in the same breath talking about a note machine (a cash collecting box of some kind).

 

So the students are bringing cash into school, the school is still doing banking of that money. Why did you go cashless precisely?

 

This was my reaction when senior management decided to go cashless at our school. All parents are offered parent pay accounts however they decided because of a handful of students parents who don't have home computers or the Internet at home the school spent £2000 on a reval machine. You would think that for those handful they could pay direct to finance (who have access to their cc account).

When it was installed the kids sae it as wow new shiny cash thing lets use it. We now take in more cash now then we did before we went cashless.

 

mind boggles