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PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:18 pm 
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Recently we have decided to start a small firm of private hire vehicles (6) running in North Wales, we were approached by a company called Mercury and the sales guy came down to see us. A very nice guy i must add, and a cracking sales speech, has led us to at this present moment be considering his proposal. I have since logged on here and seen lots of negative comments about Mercury2 and was wondering what systems taxi companies out there are currently using ?

The system i want is a office based dispatch system with PDA in vehicles which has very good coverage in rural area's but is also able to offer the same sort of facility that mercury can such as Text back, Account Holding etc etc

Can you please advice ? thank you in advance

Regards
Chris


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 3:40 pm 
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premierbangor wrote:
Recently we have decided to start a small firm of private hire vehicles (6) running in North Wales, we were approached by a company called Mercury and the sales guy came down to see us. A very nice guy i must add, and a cracking sales speech, has led us to at this present moment be considering his proposal. I have since logged on here and seen lots of negative comments about Mercury2 and was wondering what systems taxi companies out there are currently using ?

The system i want is a office based dispatch system with PDA in vehicles which has very good coverage in rural area's but is also able to offer the same sort of facility that mercury can such as Text back, Account Holding etc etc

Can you please advice ? thank you in advance

Regards
Chris

Over to you Nidge. :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 3:41 pm 
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Whilst you are waiting for Nidge to give you the low down on Mercury, you may want top use the search facility. There are several threads on here that will be of interest to you.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 5:43 pm 
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Location: Twixt Heaven and Hell, but nearest Hell
It wont work down the Llanberis pass bach

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 8:34 pm 
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If you want a good system that wont cost you the earth, then I suggest you give DataMaster a call, or pm Bill on these forums. They won't bullshit you and you wont spend a fortune.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:42 pm 
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Location: Braintree, Essex.
premierbangor wrote:
Recently we have decided to start a small firm of private hire vehicles (6) running in North Wales, we were approached by a company called Mercury and the sales guy came down to see us. A very nice guy i must add, and a cracking sales speech, has led us to at this present moment be considering his proposal. I have since logged on here and seen lots of negative comments about Mercury2 and was wondering what systems taxi companies out there are currently using ?

The system i want is a office based dispatch system with PDA in vehicles which has very good coverage in rural area's but is also able to offer the same sort of facility that mercury can such as Text back, Account Holding etc etc

Can you please advice ? thank you in advance

Regards
Chris



If you want a firm at the end of it all "DON'T USE MERCURY." It's the biggest bag of shit I've worked with in 27 years of driving taxis.

If you've only got 7 cars pen and paper is good for you. Exel will have your pants down promising you the earth, they'll extract every £ they can from you then drop you like a stone.

We're only 1 mile from Exel's office and trying to get them to sort our problems out is like trying to find Lord Lucan.

More and more firms are ripping Mercury out and replacing it with a decent dispatch system because it's always crashing, losing signals, sending two cars for one booking, call back doesn't work, they'll also try and nail you down to have their dual sim set up, it doesn't benefit you because the dual sim system doesn't work they way they portray it to work, they say it connects you to another network if you lose signal, what they fail to tell you is, you have to reboot your PDA, choose network, choose sim slot 2 then choose network, turn your PDA off and back on again and log in. The only company the dual sim benefits is Exel because they get more £££ out of you.

Please please please don't have Mercury installed.


Here's a selection from some of the posts on here.

There can be a multitude of problems one being us kicking them into touch when this all singing and dancing so called mercury2 came out. We were the first firm to have it installed, because we were local they could iron out any problems before they introduced it, it nearly killed the firm over 4 weekends, at 11PM on the dot it went off for over 2 hours. We were promised that someone would be there to sort out the problems....there wasn't anyone there. They were told to come and take the new machines away and the old ones were re-installed. Since then they've dropped us like a stone.

In house financing They'll be taking your pants down with added charges.

I've worked with better systems that cost much much less. These systems don't work off a dodgy mobile phone network, you didn't need 4 sim cards to get a signal, it worked. How much have you paid Exel since the system was installed? The last time we looked it was over £70K and rising, £70K for a dispatch system?


You see, I wouldn't trust this crew, they are thief's. The next time they get in touch ask them how much they stole off the ex miners in this area? Ask him if he's paid any of the money back? Ask him how many times he's been bankrupt? Ask him about Connections Travel, Motovation Garages, Westminster Holdings, MDT Travel. Every one of the companies above went bankrupt with him at the helm. Ask him where he got the Mercury software from? He stole it from Stewart Harding at Diplomat It's called Diplomat Navigator.

Diplomat Navigator works a treat, Mercury doesn't work even though it's exactly the same. Get in touch with Stewart I'm sure he'll send you a free disc so you can see what Moore and his cronies stole.

Stewart gave him a hand up and this is how he repaid Stewart by stealing his software and customer contacts and renaming it Mercury, after all just a few short years ago Mr Moore was only selling Navman navigation systems on a commissions only basis on a stall supplied by Stewart at the Donnington Taxi Show. He didn't sell many because I was on the next stall telling people to avoid him

Ask Mr Moore and his gang why no Mansfield Taxi company will have his software installed despite there being some big companies in Mansfield? I remember him whoring his company to a Taxi proprietor in Mansfield, he let him do his sales patter and Moore thought he'd got a deal, the Taxi proprietor just said "no" while continuing to carry out his work.


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 6:21 am 
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Well Chris, There you have it.

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:30 am 
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Location: Braintree, Essex.
grandad wrote:
Well Chris, There you have it.



He did ask. :twisted:


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:41 am 
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Nidge2 wrote:
grandad wrote:
Well Chris, There you have it.



He did ask. :twisted:

But will he take note?

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To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:50 am 
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grandad wrote:
Nidge2 wrote:
grandad wrote:
Well Chris, There you have it.



He did ask. :twisted:

But will he take note?



Maybe; after he's shelled out the thick end of £50K.


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:09 am 
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Location: Braintree, Essex.
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AKTAXIS101


We as a company was offered the earth with Mercury 2 being in a small town in a rural area in Buckinghamshire the "Roaming sims" to jump to another service provider when in a non-reception area, " facility for our accounts " automatic pricing sat nav customer text back the ability to continue as before with our fair system of Local Runs Short Runs and Long runs on our track list etc etc: the promises where endless & the whole sales jargon extremely impressive... However from day 1 when they had arranged for us to attend the course at there old head office location in Mansfield for 2 days was a complete joke.. After forking out for hotel rooms for myself and 4 other staff travelling 80 miles to get there for the 9:00am start Found out half hour into the training course that infact we was at a Mercury 1 course and not the fantastic Mercury 2 Course.. ( at this moment in hindsight I wish I had wiped my hands with whole ordeal ) instead returned the following week... This was in August 2013, now almost July 2014 I can honestly say not 1 week has gone by without an issue its clear to me that we have been and being used as guinea pigs for this new software and certainly paying the price for it, not being a particularly big firm with just 16 vehicles the monthly bill is almost £800.. Due to system errors - PDA issues - Roaming Sim issues - Updates etc the system has been down for 33 days in total out of the 11 months we've had this AMAZING system... Technical support pass the buck alot blaming Vodafone for the 9 days none of my PDA's could connect to a network...and if truth be told even though they are a nice bunch of people not completely clued up nor have the understanding of this product to help with certain issues.. e.g Busy Saturday night / Sunday morning 1 of my PDA's was Sh****ing a driver floating in the sea up by northern Ireland, another in Wales and the other in Leeds, I called the technical out of hours support number who found it all quite amusing took a few screen shots and I hadnt heard anything back since. Rebooting and desperately trying everything I could think of that has helped in the past, taking battery out, wiped the SD card, removed sim card you name it and still nothing, fault was fixed Monday afternoon.. However it puzzled there team for a good few hours before they could rectify the issue... the list is endless with the faults to the system and the promises keep coming all I here is next month new update next month this next month that.. well I am sorry surely they shouldn't of Launched this sack of crap until they had ironed out all the issues and actually could offer everything it says on the tin... Rant over but my advice STAY WELL CLEAR I am tied into a 4 year contract and actively seeking a way out


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:24 pm 
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For a smaller company i can highly recommend Autocabs cloud version.
We moved from another system in dec to it and we are very impressed. Its even improved our profits.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:33 am 
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Thanks guys,

I have listened and decided to give mercury a wide birth, however this is now going to delay our launch so guys let's forget mercury now and please give me feedback on some good quality systems.

Company names, websites or telephone numbers would be appreciated.

Regards
Chris


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:39 am 
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Location: Braintree, Essex.
premierbangor wrote:
Thanks guys,

I have listened and decided to give mercury a wide birth, however this is now going to delay our launch so guys let's forget mercury now and please give me feedback on some good quality systems.

Company names, websites or telephone numbers would be appreciated.

Regards
Chris



Bill at Datamaster will sort you out, he's on here.

Some owners on here are running Datamaster and they rave about it.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:44 am 
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Location: Braintree, Essex.
Walkerscars wrote:
Don't go with Mercury you will hate it. It cost you mega money to put right.
I know I kicked them out. Now have Data Master iam happy as a pig.
No more jobs hanging up. No connection issues. No 2cars on same jobs.
No server crashing. No more its YOUR FAULT.



That's just one of the firms who are with Datamaster.


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