enjay Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 We're looking at implementing cashless catering so I'd like recommendations for companies to speak to and avoid. Also - does anyone have a phone number for ParentPay? Their website only has a "request a demo" form, which they are either ignoring or slow to respond to (which isn't a good first impression!). Thanks!
NB9457 Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 Live Register seem good when I've spoken with them and they have a lot of good praise on here
Shadow_Walker Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 Avoid Cunninghams at all cost! If you have the money go with Nationwide Retail Systems - Cashless Catering and Hospitality Solutions
enjay Posted December 7, 2017 Author Posted December 7, 2017 Avoid Cunninghams at all cost! If you have the money go with Nationwide Retail Systems - Cashless Catering and Hospitality Solutions Are you willing to say why you advise that re. Cunninghams? 1
Notperfect Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 We use Cunninghams and have no issues at all.
AJWhite1970 Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 We went with NRS over Cunninghams. Both are your best friend with pre-sales but Cunninghams solution just looked old, almost Windows 3.1 old whereas NRS was a bit better (and the new interface roll-out should make it even better) The NRS back engine works but takes some serious setting up, the Biometric server needs to be separate from the catering DB server and although the main tills are fairly bomb proof, the "portable" tablet tills are a bit temperamental at times. After sales is a bit hit and miss, sometimes they can fix you in 5 minutes, sometimes it's easier to cancel the Readers Digest than it is to find someone who can give an answer. NRS also plays nice with TASC Insight re reporting lunchtime eating habits to parents. After 3 months of using the tills the calls have dwindled down to zero and the system works well Andrew
Shadow_Walker Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 Are you willing to say why you advise that re. Cunninghams? Had so many issues with them regarding tolls we purchased then wanting more money to sort bits out. Support were terrible in taking calls and they always were reluctant to come to site when there was a problem. Just a number of bad experiences with them.
nadeem Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 We use NRS, sales and support have been very good over the years
robyholmes Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 NRS here and as above, support is very hit and miss. Very costly support and if your not careful they will charge for calls out because the issue is intermittent (IE it didn't fail for the 30 minutes they were here). The system seems overly complex for what is it making it very hard to solve problems without the hit and miss support. And XP tills installed in 2014 for me is a big mistake.
enjay Posted December 7, 2017 Author Posted December 7, 2017 So, it seems NRS is widespread but unpopular. Good to know!
NewFormz Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 the "portable" tablet tills are a bit temperamental at times. Andrew Do they just blame this on your network? We are using NRS for our cashless and although most of it works well I have found their portable tills to be rubbish. We've tried lots of fixes to get them working with no joy, they just constantly disconnect from the server. I've tried telling them that we have run lots of tests and have no issues with any of the 800+ devices on our wireless other than these tills, but they insist the problem is with the network! I've generally found the support to be a bit hit and miss like others have said.
bossman Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 @enjay We use Cunningham's for our cashless catering and have been for the past 6 years, been on a VM server for the past 2 years and we have had a good relationship with them, we don't have hardware support as we can rebuild the tills as they are only computers with touchscreens and then we pay to have the software installed by them and they then maintain the software as for the biometric readers these too can be purchased if they fail and we don't use the reval units anymore which is where most of the hardware support used to go. If you don't intend using a physical server plus reval units and team up with ParentPay online services then you only need the software support which is peanuts compared to hardware support which is in my opinion overpriced and we hardly ever used it once our reval units were taken out of the equation.
AJWhite1970 Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 Do they just blame this on your network? We are using NRS for our cashless and although most of it works well I have found their portable tills to be rubbish. We've tried lots of fixes to get them working with no joy, they just constantly disconnect from the server. I've tried telling them that we have run lots of tests and have no issues with any of the 800+ devices on our wireless other than these tills, but they insist the problem is with the network! I've generally found the support to be a bit hit and miss like others have said. For us the wifi is fine, it's the USB devices (biometric reader and pin code devices) that are hit and miss. USB on the tablets clearly isn't plug and pray, if either device is even fractionally out of it's socket the till doesn't recognise them unless you reboot. Annoying yes but over time just something you check before turning it on
enjay Posted December 7, 2017 Author Posted December 7, 2017 I'm really not liking the sound of NRS - what other companies are out there?!
BFCIT Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 I would recommend LiveRegister - great so far, no complaints, support is of high quality and responsive, their staff assisted with internal biometric process, we moved to them Summer 2017 and have not looked back since.
fiza Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 I'm really not liking the sound of NRS - what other companies are out there?! We are with Cunninghams but are looking to move away. NRS too expensive. BIOSTORE seem like a good option. Worth a demo from them if you can. https://biostore.co.uk/solutions/cashless-catering/
AJWhite1970 Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 If you can get down to BETT then they will all be under the same roof on the same day at the end of January. That's what I did last year when I was evaluating cashless catering and could compare like for like, bounce questions off each other.
enjay Posted December 7, 2017 Author Posted December 7, 2017 If you can get down to BETT then they will all be under the same roof on the same day at the end of January. That's what I did last year when I was evaluating cashless catering and could compare like for like, bounce questions off each other. Possibly. I'm not sure there's enough else I'm looking for to make it worth the trip, though.
Sibrows Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 We moved from Cunninghams to BioStore 18 months ago. It hasn't been without its issues but they weren't anywhere near the impact of the outages we had with Cunninghams. Examples of issues with Cunninghams; Multiple days of being unable to track (i.e. charge the students) for what they were eating after actions carried out by Cunninghams. Issues taking 3+ days for an engineer to attend site just to dust the RAM in one of the tills with a toothbrush!!! and disappear without fixing the issue. Support took a long time to get through to and even then trying to get the call escalated was painful. Issues being pinned to our network which ended up being faulty hardware in the server they provided and thus supported. We have had some issues with BioStore but nothing where we haven't been able to track what the students have been charged for. Most have been issues with topping accounts up and incorrect balances between the cashless system and the tills.
enjay Posted December 7, 2017 Author Posted December 7, 2017 NRS here... no issues. As the complaints about NRS seem to be around their support provision, can I ask whether you've contacted them and not experienced the difficulties others describe, or is it that you've not had cause to contact them for support?
Chris_Cook Posted December 7, 2017 Posted December 7, 2017 We've had LiveRegister here for the last year or so. No problems so far with their system. Haven't had to use there support other than for initial setup. They seem very helpful. So much better than our previous system, where we had problems at least weekly if not more often.
rad Posted December 8, 2017 Posted December 8, 2017 (edited) As the complaints about NRS seem to be around their support provision, can I ask whether you've contacted them and not experienced the difficulties others describe, or is it that you've not had cause to contact them for support? Yes I have contacted them, each time I call my issue is dealt with swiftly and if needed they remote in and sort it. If I need an engineer, I normally get one that day, sometimes within a few hours. We are a large school, Service times run smoothly without any issues and we rarely get called. Happy to speak to anyone via PM. @enjay - I am not sure I would take my view of NRS from what is written here. Its a bit like a car review, people only report issues, never praise. It all depends what setup you want, we run 6 tills that are hard wired. Moving to NRS from cash tills was a struggle with the staff, but now they would not go back. Edited December 8, 2017 by rad
ITBadger Posted December 10, 2017 Posted December 10, 2017 I can recommend BioStore FasTrak. Modern, responsive and with great support. Like a breath of fresh air after Cunningham's. 1
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now