ITGURU Posted February 20, 2020 Posted February 20, 2020 As the new £20 will soon be in circulation, what are companies charging to upgrade the note mech to support the new £20 note?
FragglePete Posted February 20, 2020 Posted February 20, 2020 From memory, Cunninghams will want £395+VAT to essentially come on site and swap the note loader mech with one that is pre-programmed. Alternatively, use a company like Micro Electronics (https://www.microelec.co.uk/) for a total cost of ~£40 with the postage. Send your Mech off and it's back within a week - holiday job. Have used them twice now when the new £5 and £10 notes came into circulation after being stung by Cunninghams on the Coin Loaders with the new £1 coin. You can buy various bits of kit and cables to try and do it yourself but this is hassle free. I think an engineer from Micro Electronics did show himself of Edugeek a while back - worth searching. Pete
DrBeaker Posted February 20, 2020 Posted February 20, 2020 How can they make money out of a currency change/update? I don't see how schools and orgs should be footing the bill when it's the govt who's decided to change things.
FN-GM Posted February 20, 2020 Posted February 20, 2020 How can they make money out of a currency change/update? I don't see how schools and orgs should be footing the bill when it's the govt who's decided to change things. Its just a cost of doing business. I'm actually surprised that some many schools are still accepting cash.
Norphy Posted February 20, 2020 Posted February 20, 2020 Its just a cost of doing business. I'm actually surprised that some many schools are still accepting cash. There’s the cost of doing business and there’s downright fleecing the customer. I can accept it might cost in the region of £20-£50 of an engineer’s time to do a firmware upgrade, depending on how long it takes and if they doing it on site, a call out charge for that as well. £400 though? That’s essentially half a day’s rate for a job that would take half an hour at most. 1
Edu-IT Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 There’s the cost of doing business and there’s downright fleecing the customer. I can accept it might cost in the region of £20-£50 of an engineer’s time to do a firmware upgrade, depending on how long it takes and if they doing it on site, a call out charge for that as well. £400 though? That’s essentially half a day’s rate for a job that would take half an hour at most. Cashless Catering in general seems very expensive for what it actually is.
FishCustard Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 Cashless Catering in general seems very expensive for what it actually is. Correct. While there is the obvious overhead of maintaining it yourself, you could piece together a system yourself for less than many cashless catering solutions.
DrBeaker Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 (edited) Its just a cost of doing business. I'm actually surprised that some many schools are still accepting cash. True - but how many of us would succeed in using that argument with getting new computers into schools? "Here's the bill for the new computers, it's the cost of doing education". Also denying students the ability to pay in cash (a legitimate method of currency) schools could potentially be in hot water by discriminating against students from poorer backgrounds. Their parents might not have access to online banking, internet, computers at home etc. I for one still pay for a lot of things in cash. Edited February 21, 2020 by DrBeaker
FN-GM Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 True - but how many of us would succeed in using that argument with getting new computers into schools? "Here's the bill for the new computers, it's the cost of doing education". Its how I used to do it. No quite that blunt but evidence the requirements, cost and benefits and I got the money. 1
Wubbalubbadub Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 "Here's the bill for the new computers, it's the cost of doing education". AHahahahahah. This made me laugh out loud! Would love to say this to someone!
ColonelPanic Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 Civica want the customary £350+VAT callout fee to upgrade/update ours
HarryMonkey Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 Why not simply inform parents that the school machines will not be accepting the new £20 note. Simples 1
robyholmes Posted February 21, 2020 Posted February 21, 2020 We got rid of our reval unit when the first new notes came and and haven't looked back. Parents were all told and our backup was you bring it to reception. Students or parents very rarely do this as most pay via Parent Pay online or use PayPoint (I think it's called) at the post office.
mavhc Posted February 22, 2020 Posted February 22, 2020 You can still accept cash, just not via a machine, a human would have to do it. Why they can't have firmware updates to download is a different question. Hardware people can't do software.
FN-GM Posted February 23, 2020 Posted February 23, 2020 Why they can't have firmware updates to download is a different question. Hardware people can't do software. If you look at the note acceptor (whatever its called) itself you usually can. When the new pound coins came out I figured how to make the machine accept them without a software update. I pulled it out of the machine found the people who make it and read the instruction guide. You can do get around 20 different coins press a button and feed them in to teach it the new type.
TLARWise Posted February 24, 2020 Posted February 24, 2020 I just emailed Cunninghams regarding updating our note readers and they responded by saying the following: Thank you for contacting us. There are a few options depending on what type of note reader you currently have onsite. An engineer will need to attend site to update the reader(s). The note readers in the reval will have a coloured label located on it to indicate the type. If the label on the note reader is blue or red: The upgrade will be free of charge if booked in and arranged for when we have an available engineer in the area. £195 if you require a site visit on a particular date If the label on the note reader is green: £190 for a new reader with updated firmware (Green labelled note readers cannot be upgraded with the latest firmware and will need to be replaced)
paulkerton Posted February 27, 2020 Posted February 27, 2020 Also denying students the ability to pay in cash (a legitimate method of currency) schools could potentially be in hot water by discriminating against students from poorer backgrounds. Their parents might not have access to online banking, internet, computers at home etc. Many of the cashless catering companies implement PayPoint, which would get around this issue.
Arthur Posted February 27, 2020 Posted February 27, 2020 There are a few options depending on what type of note reader you currently have onsite. An engineer will need to attend site to update the reader(s). The note readers in the reval will have a coloured label located on it to indicate the type. If the label on the note reader is blue or red: The upgrade will be free of charge if booked in and arranged for when we have an available engineer in the area. £195 if you require a site visit on a particular date If the label on the note reader is green: £190 for a new reader with updated firmware (Green labelled note readers cannot be upgraded with the latest firmware and will need to be replaced) At the start of this week my school had an intermittent issue with our reval note reader where it would accept £5 and £10 notes, but not credit accounts with the money. Only four students have been affected so far, but if it was left the issue would no doubt get worse over time. Cunninghams sent an engineer out today with a replacement note reader, but said we would have to pay to upgrade it to accept the new £20 notes. Why can't the engineer bring a note reader with them that already accepts the new notes? :rolleyes:
HarryMonkey Posted February 27, 2020 Posted February 27, 2020 Why can't the engineer bring a note reader with them that already accepts the new notes? :rolleyes: Because that way they lose out on £190 to upgrade. 1
Arthur Posted February 27, 2020 Posted February 27, 2020 Because that way they lose out on £190 to upgrade. They've actually lost out on a lot more than £190 since my school will be switching to a different cashless catering system soon. If more schools do this, hopefully companies like Cunninghams will learn that constantly fleecing customers is not a good long term strategy? 2
BrotherSidious Posted March 6, 2020 Posted March 6, 2020 Cunninghams offered us the same extortionate fee to upgrade our 3 revals at a per machine cost some years ago (we have the red ones that are upgradeable). We sourced a £15 cable off the internet from a company that also supplied the files needed to program that notereader. We removed the notereader, hooked it up to a power supply from science and a laptop and did them ourselves. Now looking to change provider.
synaesthesia Posted March 10, 2020 Posted March 10, 2020 Cunninghams are ridiculous. Haven't heard about a charge for the note yet, but today they've just told us it'll cost £300 to replace a fingerprint reader on a reval unit - £100 for the hardware and £200 labour! It's barely 10 minutes work and the reader will be 20 quid! Going to do it ourselves, they should be bloody ashamed of themselves. 1
TLARWise Posted March 10, 2020 Posted March 10, 2020 Cunninghams are ridiculous. Haven't heard about a charge for the note yet, but today they've just told us it'll cost £300 to replace a fingerprint reader on a reval unit - £100 for the hardware and £200 labour! It's barely 10 minutes work and the reader will be 20 quid! Going to do it ourselves, they should be bloody ashamed of themselves. We did the same thing a short while ago. The cheapest price we found online for a replacement reader was £90 (https://idency.com/products/authentication/fingerprint-readers/fingerprint-reader-hardware/digitalpersona-4500-fingerprint-module-nc-coating/). Have you found a cheaper supplier for the exact same model or are you going to try to retrofit a different model reader on the reval unit?
synaesthesia Posted March 10, 2020 Posted March 10, 2020 (edited) https://www.ers-online.co.uk/o20552/50013-001-103-crossmatch-uareu-4500-single-finger-fingerprint-reader-optical?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_Pa08aCQ6AIV2pTVCh2hyAGZEAYYASABEgL0dvD_BwE £63. Inside is identical. Standard USB so I'd be surprised if any other model doesn't work. Edited March 10, 2020 by synaesthesia
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