Is anyone else experiencing trouble with customer services for Mercury Mobile? We have been waiting for 2 pda's to be repaired since March and whenever we phone no-one is available and they don't seem to interested in getting back to us.

Just a quick update on the system, basically it's a bag of crap. It was OK at first but now everything has gone tits up, the plots are all over the place, it keeps crashing, it goes down more times than a prostitute, the PDA's keep dropping. All the drivers are doing more miles and earning less money than they were before the system was installed. Trying to get Excel to do something about it is another matter, they are 1 mile down the road from our office but continue to be the epitome of useless. They came yesterday to upgrade the software and guess what?? The system crashed and was off all day. Now before we had this system in I championed Excel but after 7 months on their system I am of a different opinion of them. I've worked with some [edited by admin] systems but this one is sh!ter than [edited by admin].

I sense displeasure

CC

Just a quick update on the system, basically it's a bag of crap. It was OK at first but now everything has gone tits up, the plots are all over the place, it keeps crashing, it goes down more times than a prostitute, the PDA's keep dropping. All the drivers are doing more miles and earning less money than they were before the system was installed. Trying to get Excel to do something about it is another matter, they are 1 mile down the road from our office but continue to be the epitome of useless. They came yesterday to upgrade the software and guess what?? The system crashed and was off all day. Now before we had this system in I championed Excel but after 7 months on their system I am of a different opinion of them. I've worked with some [edited by admin] systems but this one is sh!ter than [edited by admin].

What i can not understand is why your plots are all over the place cuz i thought once you you set up your plots they shud be the same unless someone from the office tinkers with them also is it ur gprs connection that fails or is it that the system just crashes? I must agree with Mr thumb that many mercury customers av been complaining abt their service levels also the whole system to me is in the stone age i had a look at it & it is very basic compairing it to many data despatch systems it is very very poor

I sensed all was not well the day I visited them.

If you ever delve into their customer base you will find Nigel's experience almost totally supported.

Last night for instance I was the only car free in an area of Sutton, there was a job in that area I thought it was going to give me that job because I was round the corner from it, instead it gave it to another car in another plot and gave me a job in the plot where the other car had come from so basically we crossed each other when we were going for the jobs.

When I got back to the rank I asked the driver where he was? He was 200 yards away from the job I went for which only went about half a mile up the road, we both shock our heads and turned the system off and worked the rank for the rest of the night.

Not wishing to defend Mercury but...

You have to remember that a computer system can only make decisions on the information it has at the split second the programme asks it to act.

For example the job in zone A may be due for despatch at 10.21.00, at that second the only car free may be in Zone B, where it is programmed to look as a back up. It will despatch that job then. If a car pops free in zone A at 10.21.01 then it is too late for the system to reconsider its decision of a second ago.

That is why, in my opinion, a despatch system is not required for fleets under 20 vehicles (on the road at a time) unless you do lots of account work.

If you are managing high amounts of account work a system will be justified because it reduces administration post the job being done.