The MEX Promise

What would it be like if you owned the latest car, and in three years’ time be told that they no longer support it, and if you needed a new water pump for the engine then that required a fitter to take a large chunk of steel out of the bin and go and spend the next 3 weeks hand making one for you.  And, of course charge you about the same for the water pump as what the car cost when you first bought it.  I think most people would be apoplectic. 

Well, it is happening.  Not in the car world, because that would be incredibly stupid, but to the competitors that I supposedly have in computerized maintenance management systems. 

Well, there are firstly those that just cease business and disappear.  Very sad, but that is the way business is some days.  But I am always surprised that they just disappear.  I would have thought some old lady who normally just looks after her cats would be able to glean a little bit of money from this sort of business to allow her to buy more cats. 

And then there are those that I referred to previously.  The soft in the head, brain dead competitors that want to stiff there customers and not care.

Those that decide that in bringing out a new version of their maintenance and inventory management software that they will stop supporting their older version and tell the customer that you must update to the new version and it is going to cost you a lot of money.  Firstly to buy the new software and secondly to move your data.  Yes, you heard me right.  To move your data and this can cost more than the software. 

I am almost speechless that someone would be charged to have their data moved.  I have been doing maintenance software (MEX) for 20 years.  I can still remember the first customer of the system, I can still remember the first version that we released.  And I still have the upgrade program to go from the first version to the second.  It still sits on our servers and is available for any customer to get at any time.  And it costs nothing.  And it does the data upgrade.  You press a button, make a cup of tea, and sit back and wait. 

Even when we have had major changes... Like going from a MS Access platform to .net.  Sorry, a bit of geek stuff there.  But this was a major effort by us at MEX.  It took many man years to make and was a big shift in the way our data was held.  The creation of a data upgrade was always part of it; there was never even a thought of not providing one. It was hard to make, but we did it. 

If MEX had not done the data upgrade, and not provided it for free, I would not have wanted to have been in the building when customers found out otherwise.  The phones would have gone mad and there would have been a lot of unhappy people.

And this is why I am seeing a plethora of customers switch from another not to be named system across to MEX?  We do provide upgrades.  They wont cost a cent and we will even be there to help you if you have problems. It is all part of the maintenance agreement you have with us.

Stephen Ninnes
Managing Director
Maintenance Experts
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