EPOS Support

[party_pete]

Picture the scenario........the shop using Actinic EPOS. On Saturday the girl's in the shop get an error on attempting to open Actinic EPOS at 9.20am, it's the busiest day of the week, i'm not in the shop to help and we only have one till system.

The error is;
Unrecognisable database C:\checkout\Checkout.mde

I try and solve via the forum but there is no problem like this listed and of course there is no support out of Monday to Friday.

Maybe this is a wish list item, where I'd like to see a Premium Support contract to include Saturdays & Sundays? I'm sure you'll agree that this is a huge problem with support not being available on a weekend. Obviously it not as important for the ecommerce side but essential I would have thought with epos.

This same error has occured twice before, during weekdays, that resulted in two different fixes via a telephone call walk-through with support.

As it happens, after 3hrs of hair pulling, I installed the latest EPOS upgrade and it opened with no apparent loss of data

[cbarling]

This was caused by a bug which we had known about for a bit but had been hard to track down. As you discovered, it's been sorted out in the latest release. Hopefully, now that you've upgraded you won't get this problem again.

Your points on support hours are noted. We do review the hours that we provide support based on user input such as yours here, so thanks for that. Of course, there would be a substantial cost involved if we switched to weekend working.

Chris

[grantglendinnin]

Though not strictly EPOS related and more of a general Support issue - I sit firmly on the fence.

Does Actinic increase the workload, staff costs, etc, and offer phone support at the weekend? This would therefore slow down development which would lead us back into the vicious circle of bugs being found but never getting fixed.

Or do we see it from Pete's point of view. I know there were a few days last year where things screwed up and we couldn't even accept orders on the website. I'd put a guesstimate of that costing us a four-to-five figure sum, but what else could we do? So if we were able to access Support out of hours (ie. weekends) this may not have happened - but then, we're back to the former point - back into the old routine, stuck in the circle.

You win some, you lose some - that's how it'll always be.

[Duncan Rounding]

Perhaps a member of support could be on call on over a weekend and after hours for those who pay a monthly fee for the facility plus a minimum call fee and a rate per hour. That means Actinic can pay a support person a retainer for being available on call and extra money should they be called.

[party_pete]

Personally i'd rather pay to have a 'safety net' for the 'odd' occasion these things happen. The lost sales would far out-weigh the costs IMO

[Jon 1095]

This was caused by a bug which we had known about for a bit but had been hard to track down. As you discovered, it's been sorted out in the latest release. Hopefully, now that you've upgraded you won't get this problem again.

Your points on support hours are noted. We do review the hours that we provide support based on user input such as yours here, so thanks for that. Of course, there would be a substantial cost involved if we switched to weekend working.

Chris

Surely therefore if this was a known bug there should have been a knowledge base article or support statement somewhere on this site which Party_Pete could have found and used to solve his problem?

[party_pete]

The same error occured this morning at 8.50am

This resulted in me having to pay £360 for an annual support contract to get a software issue fixed

As I said before, a support contract is great for peace of mind but for the same problem to keep occuring, to a largely still 'out of the box' EPOS set-up, is not making me a very happy chap.

The problem was again fixed by Support remotely 'taking control' of the computer to correct the problem. Had I of filed a 'free' support query via email, we would more than likely not be sorted by the weekend.........

[Darren]

Hi Pete

Sorry to hear about the problem, and I am very keen to get to the bottom of it. We did fix a potential cause of database corruption in version 3.0.7. if you do think of anything please let us know, it would very much aid with the investigation.

Also do you have any automatic virus scanners on the network, I have seen an issue (not with EPOS I must admit) but a particular virus scanner kept corrupting a shared database. The solution here was to exclude *.mdb files from the scan and just scan them manually when the system was not in use.

In the meantime development are investigating, I'll keep you posted

[party_pete]

Absolutely nothing was changed. The computer has ESET (NOD32) installed and had exactly the same when Actinic staff came and installed the EPOS software originally.

Also, you mention 'shared database'. As far as i'm aware the database isn't shared

[Darren]

Some more questions from the team:

1. What is the version of the following file WINDOWS\system32\varOSButton.ocx - you can find out by right clicking on it and selecting 'Details' for Vista or 'Version' for XP, please provide the 'File Version'.

2. What Operating system are you using?

3. Do you use EPOS Link?

4. Can you send me the databases, I'll deal with this part offline please mail dlsupport at actinic dot co dot uk and I will provide instructions

5. Just to confirm no other software has been recently installed or updated, e.g. Windows, Office etc.

[party_pete]

I'll get Jo to email you directly.

Thanks.

[Darren]

Thanks Pete, I haven't receieved a mail as of yet, just checking that it hasn't gone missing.

Thanks

[party_pete]

She'll be in touch tomorrow Darren when she's back, thanks.