Cunninghams.. Don't pay for the new notes!

[abillybob]

So I've been told by the NM here to post this as it's something we found out and don't think many schools no much about.

 

Basically we needed to make our re-valve machines work with the new £5 notes and called up Cunningham's and asked them to come out and sort it for us. Long story short they quoted us around £400 to do this. All the note machines needed was a firmware upgrade which seemed a ridiculous amount of money to just update some software.

 

Anyway we eventually found the company who manufacturers the note readers called Innovative Technology and to our surprise the firmware is FREE yes FREE from their website!! We did although need a cable to do this and a Windows laptop, the cable is proprietary that has to be bought from them for around £5 and after following the instructions it took 10-20 minutes to update the firmware!!!

 

So just in case you all want to save a bit of money, there's a small tip for you. It's quite important because eventually £10, £20 notes will all eventually be updated and it's ridiculous to be spending £400 a time just to get a guy out for 10 minutes.

 

We all in the office thought it was naughty to rip schools of like this! If you need any help just contact me and when I have a spare second I'll help you!

[neonetman]

Does this apply to the coin-mech as well as the not reader?

 

If you could send me some info, I'd greatly appreciate it as we've just paid nearly £1000 to do all our re-vals

[abillybob]

Does this apply to the coin-mech as well as the not reader?

 

If you could send me some info, I'd greatly appreciate it as we've just paid nearly £1000 to do all our re-vals

 

I presume so, we haven't tried it with the coin reader but the same thing should be allowed to be applied.

 

If you go to Home and give them a call they're extremely helpful and will talk you through each step! I know £1000 is ridiculous. It cost us all in all 30 minutes of our time and a 5er!

[bigjb]

Does this invalidate your support contract with them?

[Achandler]

This has been spoken about before, someone mentioned it ages ago. The company are based in Oldham Manchester and will even do the upgrade for you for about £20.

 

We used the cable but our reader won't work properly, so we are payign them to update it instead of Cunninghams. As for if it invalidates our support contract? Who knows there support is pathetic at the best of times and they just replace bits of the reval if its broken anyway.

 

The coin readers in the devices are NOT from Innovative Technology, we have already asked. However, we are currently invesitgating the manufactuer of the coin readers and have every intention to contact them and ask a similar question about updating them, i'll let you know if I have any luck.

[abillybob]

Does this invalidate your support contract with them?

 

Probably... But if it costs that much I would say it's probably worth it.. Also how would they know?

[Edu-IT]

Probably... But if it costs that much I would say it's probably worth it.. Also how would they know?

When they stick a new £5 in and it works?

[abillybob]

When they stick a new £5 in and it works?

 

Where's the proof I did it!? They'd have to intensively research the invoices to every school and test the machines to see and let's be honest they CBA and neither could most others!

[gumbygaz]

We did the same last week, and the support from Innovative Technology was brilliant, they couldn't believe how much they wanted to charge us (not cunningham but ami education). He also says you can send the loader to them and for £10 they'll recode it for you if that's easier for you (wasn't for us as needed the device up and running asap) However, could time them for during half terms/holidays etc. But tbh once you've got the cable and follow the instructions it wasn't too bad - although I did need a couple tips from Innovative Technology to get it going fully and as abillybob says you've got it ready for new notes etc.

[abillybob]

Has anyone confronted companies such as Cunninghams about the extortionate pricing?

[mattstevenson2005]

You think them doing the upgrade for you is extortionate? I've been in talks with them regarding moving to a pay as you go support contract as we pay almost £4,000 per year in support and I called them 2-3 times last year, I have been told for pay as you go support it's £795+vat per call out (which includes 30 mins of work, then £95 per hour) and for them to just answer the phone it's £195 per call!!!!!

[localzuk]

£400 for a call out from a tech company isn't extortionate I'm afraid. Sure, its only a few minutes work on-site, but they

 

a) Have to pay their staff

b) Have to train their staff

c) Have to buy equipment (ok, in this case a £5 lead)

d) Pay the travel costs for the callout

e) Pay for a vehicle for that engineer

f) Pay taxes on the service provided

g) Have an engineer taken up with a small task for however long it takes to get there, do the job, and get to the next job.

 

Those costs soon add up.

 

Realistically, this sort of thing should be included in your service contract, and it is something you should have demanded before buying in to the service.

 

Cunninghams could give themselves some good PR here by providing an alternative - they'll send you a kit, including instructions, a cable etc... for £10 or whatever and you can do it yourself, along with a clause saying if it doesn't work then it'll be a callout.

[abillybob]

You think them doing the upgrade for you is extortionate? I've been in talks with them regarding moving to a pay as you go support contract as we pay almost £4,000 per year in support and I called them 2-3 times last year, I have been told for pay as you go support it's £795+vat per call out (which includes 30 mins of work, then £95 per hour) and for them to just answer the phone it's £195 per call!!!!!

 

*Shakes Head* License to print money!

[Edu-IT]

Where's the proof I did it!? They'd have to intensively research the invoices to every school and test the machines to see and let's be honest they CBA and neither could most others!

I was just suggesting that if they come out and find the machine has been upgraded beyond what they've supplied, that would be the point at which they could end the service agreement. It would be irrelevant who did it. They could just argue its been modified outside of their support agreement and that is that.

 

I'm not saying I agree. I'm just saying how it *could* come to light.

[Love_Sausage]

It depends on the age of your revals, they updated us for free because ours were only around 4 years old and only needed the firmware. Much older than that and they would have had to change the note reader, which would have incurred a charge. Seems fair enough to be honest, although we were with CRB before the merger who seem a lot more even-handed than Cunninghams.

[Shadow_Walker]

Which cable did you buy?

[Liam]

Ours are four years old and we paid for new! They were exactly the same model. I'm convinced it was just recoded readers!

[ITGURU]

Vericool sent us the firmware free of charge for one of our note loaders. Just had to purchase a cable to be able to plug usb stick straight into the mini usb port.

 

however the second one was older so we either had to pay around £350 for an engineer to come to site to upgrade it, or pay £65.00 to send to them to upgrade so we chose that option.

[ataylor]

Vericool sent us the firmware free of charge for one of our note loaders. Just had to purchase a cable to be able to plug usb stick straight into the mini usb port.

 

however the second one was older so we either had to pay around £350 for an engineer to come to site to upgrade it, or pay £65.00 to send to them to upgrade so we chose that option.

 

Unfortunately cunninghams don't provide us with that, they need to come out and change our note reader, I asked about doing this my self but this invalidates our maintenance plan.

[JRA]

Yes we're moving away from them. Their support team (JW and GB I've dealt with) as professionals and people I've found to be absolutely fantastic. ANYONE AND ANYTHING ELSE I'VE HAD TO DO WITH THEM IS ABSOLUTELY GOD-AWFUL. We've been quoted daft money to re-fit the whole outfit. It seems they're dying off now and doing desperate things for money.

 

abillybob you lifesaver! Could you walk me through that? I'll msg you.

[ataylor]

We had them out for a review as we had a number of concerns, basically said they have been taken over by new management (they have been Acquired by Jonas Jonas Software acquire Cunninghams EPOS Solutions) and that they previously got "comfortable" with the position they were in as one of the market leaders and that they are making changes to improve their service.

 

We are still looking at alternative solutions.

[howartp]

Anyone looking at Impact Fusion?

 

I've hated the old Impact (sub contracted from CRB in Scotland) for years but the newly written from the ground up product looks better.

 

I don't condone CRBCunninghams pricing but don't forget they were bought out or brought under group control of Jonas last year so some of the changes might be out of their hands.

 

(Posted same time as above post)

[Achandler]

You need a DA2 cable from Innovative Technology. Check the model on the reader first needs to be USB0009 or something

[benbanks1]

Hello,

 

I just heard back from our Regional Sales manager with regards to the firmware upgrade and the team here was astonished to hear of the cost! £400?! We protested this amount and suggested that they send us instructions and I can implement it myself. Only problem is; if I come to a problem and require their assistance, they'll charge me the same installation charge; even if it was just a small bit of advice! However, the RSM referred me to Edugeek and bam! I found your post, what type of cable do you have to use?

 

Regards,

Ben

[Achandler]

You have to buy a DA2 cable, and you also need a power (borrow one from science) that gives out 10V (I think) and about 1.2Amps.

 

The cable is £30 or so. We followed the instructions on the website but our note reader kept flashing us an error, and it was because the power supply we had only had 1amp of power. We did in the end send ours off to Innovative Tech to do, its taken 2 weeks which is annoying but cost us £20, we dropped it off in eprson but obviously you can post it to them.

 

Either way, if you have multiple revals get a cable and power supply, if you only have 1 note reader reval then the choice is yours, £60 total for 3 reflashes from Innovtive or buy a cable and do them yourself (about £30-£50)