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PDA Dispatch is it all a con??
Over the last 5 years we've been Emailed, phoned, mail dropped, had leaflets shoved under our noses at trade shows offering amazing deals to install these all singing and dancing PDA dispatch systems.
These have come from firms offering you the earth when it comes to a super duper PDA dispatch system. Are they interested in you? Are they interested in how your system runs? Are they interested in how many miles they save you from travelling to you next job? Do they heck as like, all they are bothered about is how much they can squeeze from you in data charges. After all it's just a mobile phone giving you a job via a text message isn't it? (I thought it was illegal to use a mobile device wile driving a vehicle)? I’ll come back to that little gem later.
Now I've been in the Taxi Driving game for 22 years (I don’t look old do I?), I've worked on the old radio pen and paper systems where the Operator knew where all his cars were.
We then went onto Data via Digital PMR this seemed like a breath of fresh air coming into the trade, no radio traffic with base ops shouting for cars, if you wanted to talk you had to do a voice request then the operator would unlock you so you could talk.
After years working with a system that didn't crash when it was New Years Eve, didn't crash because it was foggy, didn't loose connection because you were in a dip, bounce you from one end of the town to the other for a £2.50 job, you could bid for your work, basically it was solid as a rock. The dreaded move to PDA's via the Mobile phone network was on the cards. Why move from a system that worked to one that was going to give us 3 years of hell and lose customers on a grand scale you might ask?
Enter a local company (just down the road from us) who will remain anonymous, they offer you the earth, they say it's the bees knees in PDA dispatch, if your tech savvy like me it's just a mobile phone with pretty colours on the screen and if you've worked with other systems you'll see it resembles a different companies software down south which will also remain annoymous as this time.
Anyway they offer you the earth, PDA's, computers, screens, ring back service, Credit Card payments (at a cost) and all the other add ons you'll need, they will also tell you that your current BT system isn't compatible with their software, you have to install another system provided by a company associated with the PDA company, (how convenient). They will tell you that they will be at your beckon call because they are only down the road, 2 miles to be exact .
You are taken in by their sales patter and sign up for the install.
Install day comes, new phone system is installed, computers are installed and the PDA's get put in the cars.
All is good for the 1st few weeks then the bugs start to appear, connections keep dropping, PDA's keep losing GPS and GPRS the list is endless. We get in touch with the supplier to tell them of the problems they tell us to take the battery and sim card out. How do you do this when your on the Motorway doing 70MPH??
After weeks of trying to find out what the problems were we decided to turn all the PDA's off and revert back to voice. When the company realised we weren't connected and they weren't getting any data charges from us they were soon on the phone asking what the problem was and could they solve the problem? We received new Sim cards for the PDA's and got new updates for the PDA's. Did this work?? Did it hell.
We'll move forward 10 months and after more problems losing connections, GPS and GPRS we have the added problem of it pulling cars from one end of the district to the other passing light cars going the other way to do a job where you have been pulled from because the system can't recognise which car is where and what jobs need doing on a priority basis. We suffer this for a few weeks then decide to turn Auto Dispatch off and dispatch work manually, this isn't supposed to happen with an all singing and dancing system is it? We've gone back to where we were 22 years ago with just an computer instead of pen and paper. We contacted the Company who said they will sort it, they haven't to this day.
The Company offered us phase two of this all singing and dancing dispatch system, I'm sorry but shouldn't you get phase one running right before you decide to offer Taxi Companies phase two?
We'll move forward another few months, all the PDA's are down, it's the buisest time of the year, we are told that there is a transmitter down local to us Orange are dealing with it. We contact Orange who tell us there's nothing wrong and all masts / boosters are in working order. A Taxi company down south are having the same problems as us, It must be a good local transmitter if a company down south are using the same one as us.
You might be sitting there saying, "why didn't you phone the support line? At £60 per hour plus VAT for support we swerved that one.
By this time the drivers and operator have had enough and are thinking about ripping the whole system out and reverting back to pen and paper, (it isn't before time in my opinion).
By magic we are offered new dual sim PDA's by the supplying company, we are thinking at last something might be getting sorted out, there's a little stumbling block coming up, we thought we were going to get the PDA's and new sim cards for free as a sweetener for all the trouble we've had with them, how wrong could we have been. They wanted us to sign up for another 3 years of hell at a cost of £70,000, add that to the £50,000+ they've already had out of us in charges we told them to do one.
In April the system is being taken out all together, it can't come soon enough in my opinion because it's been a sack of brown stuff.
The reason I'm typing this is, I've just read an article in a trade magazine about a company in London, they've got the same system as us and are praising the supplying company saying "nothing is to much trouble for them" our transssision to new offices was great because of this company. Excuse me but you are 120 miles away from their head office we are only 2 miles away, 1 mile as the crow flies. We couldn't get them to sort our connection issues out never mind an office move and we are only 2 miles away from their offices.
Further up this rant I mentioned something about using a mobile device whilst driving, now these PDA's are just glorified Mobile phones with nice coloured screens receiving a text message telling you where to go for your next job. A driver who will also remain anonymous at this time was pulled over by the Police, his crime was accepting a job and reading the information on the PDA screen. The nice Copper informed him that it was a mobile phone and he was reading a text message while being in charge of a vehicle, now I'm not one to defend the Police but this Copper was right, he could have hit him with a £60 fine and 3 points but he used his skills and informed the driver what was and what wasn't a mobile device. This driver has now taken his PDA out of his vehicle and is working on voice he doesn't want points on his licence and a £60 fine.
Why are these Data Companies championing these PDA's over Data heads working via PMR which are mounted inside the cars? I'll tell you, have you seen the amount of money they make from Data usage? It's no wonder they won't go down the old Data head route anymore the money they are making is astronomical.
It's about time these PDA companies stopped using the trade as a cash cow and if they supply something that isn't fit for purpose they should get out there and fix it, if they don't want to fix it they should expect all the flack and bad business that comes their way.
_________________ Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Believe me, don't get Mercury X2
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