Aloha Upgrade Amnesty

[POSgeorgia]

Does Radiant still have an amnesty program in place for Aloha upgrades? If so, what are the details of the program?
Thanks!

 

[AdamDR]

Radiant extended the amnisty program. They are doing this because of the CISP compliancy. They just want everyone to upgrade to the compliant version. Basically it's 1000 bucks to get back onto maintenance.

Adam

 

[AlohaWahini]

LOL @ amnesty. Here is the defintion of the word amnesty: The word "amnesty" means forgiveness, pardon or leniency.

What exactly are you "forgiving" people for? That the software you distributed, in some cases as little as two years ago, requires an expensive upgrade for something you failed to include??

LOL. No offense to you Aloha techies, I am one of them too. I think the software is decent, more a product of good marketing than anything else. Radiants stance on this just cracks me up though. I could understand them telling ver 4.2 owners they have to upgrade. But by the release of 5.034, this stuff really should have been compliant with the basic ability to block the credit cards numbers out xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-1234, on both copies.

On a side note, does anyone know if they plan to distribute a utility to de-crypt the TXNs? I can't tell you how many times being able to go in those, and retreive info has bailed one of clients out.

 

[POSgeorgia]

The CISP standards go way further than just reciept masking. The standard calls for this as well as masking with no full card numbers anywhere other than encripted or on the card. Won't that be a kick in the groin, corrupt transaction and you have to write off the charge in order to settle!

Thanks for the info Adam. Does Radiant still insist that only the authorized dealer in the area can get upgrade numbers?

Thanks again folks!

POSg

 

[AlohaWahini]

I can tell you from experience that Radiant is fiercely loyal to it's dealer network. Ibertech/Aloha Technologies was too, but not quite to the degree that Radiant has been. In the cases I've seen, when someone complains to Radiant about their dealer (which happens more often than I'd like to admit), the RSM will usually try to be the peace keeper, and cajole the customer into using the dealer. If not, then I have seen them give in, but not too often.

I understand both sides. Radiant uses it's dealers to distribute it's products, and it needs to make sure the dealers are able to make their money in their own territories.
On the other hand, the dealers need to make the customers happy, and when they are not, Radiant has a duty to protect the Aloha name. Sometimes the customer is reasonably happy with the software, but so fed up with their local dealer, they demand to buy the software from someone else. I assume something like that is going on with you?

The trend I had seen in more than one Aloha dealer around the country, was that in the late 90s/early 2ks, the software took off like a bat out of hell. Dealers couldn't keep up (or didn't really realize) the sky rocketing demand until they were being crushed by it. New sales are usually top priority in any business, and when you're getting more than you can handle, the service is bound to suffer.

Sorry for the book here. But anyway, my experience has been whether or not you can buy outside your territory is pretty much dealt with on a case by case basis. If the customer makes enough noise, and depending on who they end up getting a hold of at Aloha (and maybe even depending on how the brass at Aloha is feeling that day), I have seen it happen from time to time. But as a rule, you have to buy from the reseller.



Hope this helps!