Sorry to correct mr Anon Guest.
You are totally wrong.
I am not going to get into any more mud slinging and speculation.
This has to be the last post on this strange circus I am afraid..
All our customers had a choice (They still do)
We do not force any of our customers or make them sign agreements not to contact the competition.. In fact some of them have visited Exel to see what is on offer.
Most of them chose to stay with us because they get good service.
Some data customers actually stayed with Exel so your assumptions about this are completely wrong about the split.
I am not sure how these data customers are doing, maybe they would like to comment on this forum??
Conversley we were asked to sign an agreement that did not allow us to contact certain "Protected customers" even though I am uncertain if this was legal we honoured it anyway.
We were also legally prevented from mentioning said agreement..
I wonder why??
You said that you did not know of any choice?? again I wonder why? Yet Exel chose to write to everyone of our customers declaring us finished and offering their services. !!
Fortunately that agreement was nearly a year ago and has now expired so the gloves are off and the gagging order lifted.
With reference to the sacked programmers..
Sacked is probably a bad choice of words on my part and technically incorrect as they were only subcontract programmers. As far as I know they are still not Exel employees now either (please feel free to correct me if I am wrong).
With annual salaries (agreed by Exel) of over 4 times that of direct employees it is difficult to justify sub-contractors when there are equally skilled and more dedicated staff and far better team players available.
The reason they were no longer required was that Diplomat had their own team of dedicated enthusiastic programmers, Exel however placed more trust in third party contractors that had never even visited a taxi office, let alone understood the business, which was primarily one of the reasons we chose to part company and develop the product at our own exciting pace.
Our in house full time programmers work on Navigator exclusively and have done for well over a year now which is why Navigator has so many more features than its predecessor Midas.
I don't quite know what you mean by Exel is the base of Diplomat Navigator.
Wrong quite the opposite.
Diplomat Navigator code is now very different to Midas.
Exel is not even the "base" as you put it of Midas
Please read the company announcement on our website
www.diplomat.co.uk
To further focus your attention I am the major shareholder in the company Windowview Ltd. that owns the intellectual property of Midas and like our customers I have a choice which code to use.
Navigator has had thousands of hours refactoring. It is very different and technically superior. Think about it has to be..
Even if Exel has the best subbies in the world they can still only work at the pace of a human being and even then they have loyalties to other projects.
Please take the time to visit a working Navigator site or download it for free from our website.
www.diplomat.co.uk
(I know you won't even though you have nothing to lose as you obviously have some hidden agenda we know nothing of.)
If you just want honesty why are you so keen to hide behing the name Guest ??.
Why don't Exel have a customers forum for the public to read surely that would be honest?
What about the ridiculous claims on the Exel website is that also honest?
I for one would like to see some more customer action on this forum..
Lets all stand up and be counted.
Now please can we stop banging on about historic hearsay.. and get on with our lives.
We wish Exel and their staff the very very best of luck on their chosen path.
If you have confidence in them then please stay with them and stop behaving in such a bitter manner. Otherwise kindly explain why if you have such a fantastic system that you are so negative towards our product and our customers, it just does not add up... Youv'e made your bed, now sleep comfortably.
Otherwise
Choose life.
Choose Diplomat.
I really must stress that this has to be the last grovelling post of explanation about company politics. I will do the grown up thing and ignore any further questions on the matter.
Please just let the products and the end users experiences do the talking.. As they say the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Now just to show there are no hard feelings and to see how many real businesses actually read this forum I am going to give away 2 free two seat systems of Navigator to the first claimants on this board.
TTFN
Stewart