za4life:
crusher and i are very much in the same boat. however my system was down for about 6.5 hours, and it was in the middle of our rush. also after it was up it went down again 45 min later for about an hour. this is what makes me concerned about the reliability of arrow. I have had many hats in this industry and the one im wearing now is that of a roaming gm for a franchise(basically that means i go to whichever store needs me). Actually our logo is on the front page of the arrow site. The reason i say this is because not all of our franchisee’s use arrow. I was treated very poorly by the call desk. This may be petty but i was also annoyed that barry’s first response was to a positive comment and not to crusher or i who are obviously his customers. Also i was curious if crusher had heard from any competing pos systems. The first and only call i received was from a comnpetior who had heard about the crash and immediatly tried to sell his service. not that i would switch so hastily but i find it odd that arrow would let another company in the door like that. like barry said they shot themselves in the foot, but it should not be my job to bandage that foot(ie. I email THEM if i have concerns). you pulled the trigger on this accident and it should be you doing the bandaging.
Za4life and Crusher, I do sincerely apologize to you guys and meant no disrespect. And Please, drop me a line. My first response was an open apology to all our customers and an honest explanation as to what happened, certainly not an excuse or a denial. The anonymity of this forum makes it hard to decipher who I am talking to and I was hoping that anyone who wanted to discuss it further would email me personally with their contact info to call them.
Interesting you should bring up the competitor… Yes, quite a number of our customers were contacted by a competitor who obviously went through our website for the testimonials and logos. More than that, while this was going on Monday morning, I got a strange call from a guy in their area claiming to be opening a pizza shop and wanted information, plus our “account list.” Coincidence? Maybe, but the timing and request were really odd.
The reports from our customers was the competitor was spreading some pretty wicked, head scratching, scare tactic misrepresentations in an obvious attempt to cast doubt on our software and our company. Take this for what its worth… from what I have learned from various sources, this company will systematically pounce on situations like this, and they will also respond to any press release about a franchise naming a POS partner. They will start calling all of the franchisees in a last ditch effort to undermine the relationship. Allegedly, the program is called “Intervention.”
Royster is right. The tone of the calls was all over the map. We are used to even the most heated and will typically let the customer vent, hopefully calm down, and then be ready to work through whatever issue prompted the call. Its part of the landscape of working with passionate people. Instead of voice mail, we use a call center with a live person to back up our phones, and they may handle a handful of calls a day. In the period of the first hour on Saturday, they had to handle close to 800 calls. Keep in mind, they were blindsided and had no concrete answers. The best they could do was say something along the lines of, “we understand and Arrow is working on it.” In the first half hour, they must have been thinking, “WTH!!!”
Even so, hanging up is unacceptable. The only time they are warranted to do so is if the call is threatening in nature, or a profanity laced tirade.
Regards,
Barry
