Im with Bill on this one .Xda,s do interupt your flow and the amount ive dropped ,lost or got wet ahhhhh.They also make it easier for muppets to join the party without at least one month of total confusion, making the supply of couriers increase -not good in Adam Smith land.
XDAs are welcome from the controller's viewpoint, but there are more minuses than plus points from the rider's perspective. Probably 98%+ of jobs can be "rogered" as a rider is moving. Havingto pull over and look at an XDA or pager is a pain - especially when you're going round the Elephant, Swiss Cottage, Hanger Lane, etc. and you have to guess which exit to take when the "Attention! New jobs!" message goes off. They're also a pain when you're in a hurry and a receptionist is tied-up on the phone. If you stick a pen and paper under her nose, with a big X on it, she signs in the right place. There's usually very little point in sticking an XDA under her hooter, as there are so many different systems that she'll probably struggle to work it out. The buggers also malfunction occasionally. I was once a firm that uses trackers and hi-tech shit - E-Courier - and the XDA was malfunctioning regularly. Every time it fucked, it was "Come to the office"... in E1... when I might be in Baker Street or Belgrave Square. That's taking the piss.
p.s. - Aren't you lot embarrassed that when a parasitic office bod comes on here - Patton, "Wynne-Jones"... er... or Bill - they always post more common sense and display a better command of grammar and the English language than we do? It's not as if they're Brian Sewell or Oscar Wilde, is it? Most cycle couriers are cycle couriers because they're dysfunctional and thick.
"parasitic" - a bit strong perhaps. I like to think that those of us who work in the office have our place in the grand scheme of things. I'm no Keynsian, but i carry out my duties with an awareness of my place in the machine - and a machine it most surely is - and respect for my peers. By peers i mean the people without whom i wouldn't have a job.
And if i was Oscar Wilde, i certainly wouldn't use my real name... "Either that non stop to Appold Street goes, or i do". In something verging on the serious though, if i'm not welcome, if i have gatecrashed, i understand, and will hold my counsel.
Perfectly welcome on here, Malcolm. If that's your real name, how come I've never heard of you? I'll have to check you out. I digress. No problems with office staff posting. After all, Bill's been loafing in offices for years - though from personal experience I can attest that he does work hard, remains at his post well beyond the call of duty and is better at his job than around 98% of courier industry office personnel. I think Bill's just having some "time of the month" problems at the moment. Or perhaps it's the male menopause. I occasionally get talked into office stuff myself. Do you know, Overdrive, I've become so senile that I can't remember if we had radios at Jubilee Place when it opened up? I'm pretty sure we didn't. Mercury phone cards spring to mind as the main method of communication.
@ Malcolm "You know that "buyers" will keep on trying to screw the price down, the data has nothing to do with it, any more than livery will, ISO accreditation, but at least data is easier than not data."
I'm not suggesting that the data has anything to do with it, but it is unfortunate that, at a time when buyers are forcing prices down, that riders face increased fixed costs.
I was speaking to someone at a much bigger courier company that the one I work for recently, and he said that he was pushing his tech guys to develop a mobile app for job / pod data. That way the riders would be able to use their personal phones to receive data / transmit pods. Not being tech, I have no idea whether this is possible or not, but would seem to be better for everyone.
The problem is the number of different platforms - we're working on one for the iPhone for instance, but the problem is still signature capture. The GPS also drains the battery life, so that limits the devices that are any good - and of course data costs money, so using the drivers own devices, which i have resisted in the past for other reasons, isn't that attractive as the driver will end up paying the cost of that.
Having said that, two or three of our fleet have asked that we install our software on their own devices, and where it will work we have done that, which means we don't have to charge anything.
My thinking at the moment is that if we can give drivers a decent machine (for instance an iPhone) that they get something out of, it'll be worth paying for, and they will be more likely to look ater it.
Clients like the GPS, not because they hover over a website all day seeing where we are, but partially because they know they can, and partially because they can see, retrospectively, where a parcel went - allied with a POD, this means they know that something got as far as the post room, even if it vanished in to a black hole thereafter.
Friar - thank you - i've been in the industry literally since i was a child, but i have essentially only worked for one company. I'd rather not use my real name or company if i can avoid it, because then i hcane have my own opinions without having to preface every statement with the conditional "not the opinion of the big courier co. ltd".
I've lurked here occasionally, because i'm interested in what i do.
"Now i'm a great one for embracing technology, but where's the downside?"
We have to pay for it??
"If you are neurotic enough to think that your courier company gives you an MDA so they can charge you enough money to profit from it, then i'm not interested in your world view."
Please... You are telling me no profit is gained from the "rental" of xdas at any company? Its become part and parcel of the "deal". The unit I currently use is a first gen O2 style xda, except it bears spanish Telefonica Movil markings (a second hand joblot perhaps?). You can get these things for peanuts on ebay. And yet my rental charges at any company have far exceeded the cost of the device and data cost combined. No profit? (lets not even go into the Courier Systems horror stories)
"and we have found that if you let people have something for free, they treat it as if it is worthless."
While I resent paying for something a thousand times over, I take good care of it, cos I dont want to get stung with a hefty repair cost for some outdated piece of shit. I think most companies take a deposit... Rental is pure profit after a very short while.
Everything at cost to the courier.
"You have to ask why they are paying us the money in the first place - why do they want a thing that is in point A to actually be in point B? Because ultimately it is worth money to them."
Yes, but seemingly worth less and less money to us, although you probably make the same regardless on net profit so not to worry.
None of us will be any happier if we bicker, and i've got a point of view that's based on my place in the GSOT, but i can assure you that at least one company does NOT make a profit from MDA's.
Having said that, you really sound like you could use a new MDA.
I had an orange phone with the service Janky mentions in the OP, worked fine on incoming calls, but not having anyone I knew to test it with couldn't tell you if it was a good walkie talkie replacement.....and what happens when you get a second call coming in?
There's an additional cost to the company of actually administering PDAs, ie working out whose got which unit, keeping track of charges, ordering replacements, trying to keep the software updated etc, so charging to defray these costs is reasonable, given that the whole business model is based on passing on costs to the riders.
Without seeing a breakdown of costs vs revenue it's hard to say which companies are making unreasonable profits on the PDAs. But given the propensity of some, less than totally honest (intentional understatement) companies to over-charge for equipment, in some cases to actually charge for equipment that was never received, and the many cases of with-holding 'deposit' repayments, it's not hard to sympathise with the view that some companies are embezzling riders.
Was thinking of getting a PDA, but I don't think i'll bother now. I use pen and paper and if customers want a POD I take a photo of the job sheet and send it down the phone. I am self employed, running my own company and find that only a few companies demand this sort of technology. Seems like an expense and a bother I could do without...