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So I work at a convenience store. We have two registers.
Monday we got a scheduled upgrade to a new kind of pinpad.
This involved, among other things, replacing the ethernet cables that connect the pinpads to the store network.
Shortly after the installation, the pinpads stopped working. Then they started working intermittently. then they stopped working again. Lather, rinse, repeat. At most one worked at any given time, rarely for more than one transaction.
The Help Desk was notified, and immediately began trying the things they can do remotely to fix that kind of issue. For example, they reset some device with a name like "EDH", which shuts down the gas pumps while it is rebooting (takes like half an hour). That kind of fun.
They try to guide a sales associate through rebooting the pinpads only to discover that they don't know how to manually reboot the new pinpads (they only have the procedure for the old ones).
They managed to find the reboot procedure and walk somebody through it, and that gets them both working for several hours. Then they both failed again.
When they were not working, the register would report "pinpad offline" while the pinpad showed whatever the last transaction that actually worked
This went on all week.
Friday morning they sent out the tech who had done the original install to see if he could find the problem, and he had correctly guessed what the problem was before he even got to the store.
Can you guess?
The ethernet connectors on the cables he'd made were bad.
Yep, in order to make sure the cables he put in were exactly the right length, they had him make them custom. He had noticed sometime later that some of the connectors he'd been given had manufacturing defects.
So, newly installed equipment starts dropping connection almost immediately, how does it take four days to come up with the idea "maybe the equipment or the install was faulty".
(Answer: because the tech coming to the store gets paid for by the equipment manufacturer not the store or the company, and they insist that you prove the problem can't be fixed any other way.)
Only a company could be this stupid.
Monday we got a scheduled upgrade to a new kind of pinpad.
This involved, among other things, replacing the ethernet cables that connect the pinpads to the store network.
Shortly after the installation, the pinpads stopped working. Then they started working intermittently. then they stopped working again. Lather, rinse, repeat. At most one worked at any given time, rarely for more than one transaction.
The Help Desk was notified, and immediately began trying the things they can do remotely to fix that kind of issue. For example, they reset some device with a name like "EDH", which shuts down the gas pumps while it is rebooting (takes like half an hour). That kind of fun.
They try to guide a sales associate through rebooting the pinpads only to discover that they don't know how to manually reboot the new pinpads (they only have the procedure for the old ones).
They managed to find the reboot procedure and walk somebody through it, and that gets them both working for several hours. Then they both failed again.
When they were not working, the register would report "pinpad offline" while the pinpad showed whatever the last transaction that actually worked
This went on all week.
Friday morning they sent out the tech who had done the original install to see if he could find the problem, and he had correctly guessed what the problem was before he even got to the store.
Can you guess?
The ethernet connectors on the cables he'd made were bad.
Yep, in order to make sure the cables he put in were exactly the right length, they had him make them custom. He had noticed sometime later that some of the connectors he'd been given had manufacturing defects.
So, newly installed equipment starts dropping connection almost immediately, how does it take four days to come up with the idea "maybe the equipment or the install was faulty".
(Answer: because the tech coming to the store gets paid for by the equipment manufacturer not the store or the company, and they insist that you prove the problem can't be fixed any other way.)
Only a company could be this stupid.
I AM the evil bastard!
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