Cashless Catering - Note Reader

[THERADIOTUBBY]

Hi

 

We have two Cunninghams Revaluers that were installed in 2010 and are owned by the school but supported by Cunninghams

 

We have been told that the note readers cannot be firmware upgraded to cope with the new polymer £5 notes

 

It is also unlikely that the coin reader will work with the new £1 coin out in March 2017 - no firmware is available apparantly for any machines??

 

What are other schools doing?

 

Upgrading the note readers on two machines is going to cost £400 labour...

 

Do I bite the bullet and have 1 labour charge and upgrade both note and coin reader over the summer.

 

Do I just have the note reader done.

 

If I buy the parts is it easy just to plug them in myself??

 

Can any other supplier than cunninghams supply compatible readers??

 

I would ideally like to to do it for as low a cost as possible but be sure that the system will be compatible with all coin changes for the next few years

 

Any advice???

[pcstru]

Any advice???

Pay up or if your school can deal with handling cash in other ways, choose not to upgrade ... yet. £400 isn't outrageous and if you are on a support contract, I doubt you can DIY.

Edited June 30, 2016 by pcstru

[rad]

What would I do? Simple... block off note reader and not change the reader so it only accepts £10 or £20 notes.

 

The future is cashless.... its the way to go. We dont accept coins, notes only

[Achandler]

I'm going to try a firmware update myself and see what happens

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/bad-experiences/171951-cashless-catering-reval-upgrade.html

[localzuk]

We decided that from the beginning we wouldn't have reval machines. Cashless means cashless here. We've now instigated a total "no cash" policy in school too, with ParentMail providing PayPoint barcodes for those that really want to use cash instead.

[Linfit]

We are in the same position: we have 2 revals. We still get a lot of money through them and due to the nature of our intake it would be very difficult to go 100% cashless. We haven't decided yet but I think its likely we will pay for the upgrade, although we may have one machine removed: we have found them increasingly unreliable (they are both 5 years old) recently, requiring constant re-starts, and we have had a steady increase in using the cashless side over the years, so I might be able to justify only having one. We also need some new tills, as ours are knackered, (also 5 years old) its going to be an expensive summer on that front I think.

[ITJS2015]

Cunningham's will have to come and installed a new reader for new notes or coins. There is no way of updating firmware as they have to import there readers from a distributor.

 

Can you not use parent pay for this ? Im not to sure if it goes on the student accounts but if this is the case then maybe an admin permission will have to alter the balance on the cunninghams pc.

 

Or just pay up for new readers lol

[ITGURU]

We have 2 cashloaders with vericool.

 

One they can send the firmware over for us to do, but the second 1 we had 2 options:

 

Return to vericool for them to upgrade

Per Unit: £35 + VAT & £15 + VAT postage

 

On-site visit:

Call out charge: £350 + VAT

Upgrade per unit: £35 + VAT

 

Not bad for an 2 hour drive round trip!

[IrritableTech]

Live register has just sent us new note readers today - just swapped them out ourselves. No mention of any charge for hardware. :-)