Went to Rafferty's last night and used the 'meter' for the first time.....
My experience and impressions- - can not see the keypad well - is is not lit up ! - No light in the panel to illuminate it from the exterior and no back lighting within the keys. This is ridiculous - Basic human factors engineering - If you cant reliably see and read the input device it will be a problem using it. - the receipt is not obvious - it drops into a closed compartment at the bottom of the unit at about crotch level - again no light or indication that it's there. Delivering it out a slot in plain sight would make more sense - more on this later. - the screen dialogue is flawed - one has to select a time first and then insert the money for just that time - I wanted an hour and a half and could only pay for 1 hour. Tried to 'Add Time' but the dialogue would not accept 30 minutes additional as input. - more on this later. Had a great meal at Rafferty's - they have never disappointed. Watching the clock indicated a need to feed-the-meter. Went out and purchased another hour, grabbed the receipt (now that I could find the delivery chamber) and returned to my meal. My companion looks at the receipt and notices that it's for 30 minutes - I know I put a dollar in - so we look at the original receipt - oh sh*t a different space, number 5276 instead of 5279 - must have misdialed (no lighting - remember).... She runs out to take care of it and comes back with 2 receipts... ??? Seems that my receipt was still on the machine - I reached in and grabbed someone else's receipt that they had left behind (likely because they had no idea it was there). Now we are looking at 3 receipts for our transactions... original transaction - 6:18 - 1 dollar - good to 7:18 I add 1 hour- 7:16 - add 1 dollar - good to 8:16 She adds 30 minutes - 7:22 - add 50 cents - good to 7:52 ??? WTF we just lost time ...... paid $2.50 and got 1 hour 34 minutes instead of 2 hours 30 minutes. Both being engineers we spend all of desert time trying to figure out what happened.. Well is seems that purchasing time on a space does NOT add it to the existing balance it deletes the existing time and resets the clock to zero - !!! Further examination reveals that there is a code on the ticket labeled 'Add Time' - An ah-ha moment - the add dialogue that would not accept 30 minutes as input was actually asking for this code. - Not obvious. This is not mentioned anywhere on the machine that we could find and the dialogue question is not clear - 'Add Time Code:' should read as ' Add Time Code From Ticket:' All-in-all ... the meal was great the meters suck. no lighting , receipt in a hidden compartment, faulty instructions. Think how much easier it would be if all you had to do was enter a space number and start feeding in money to the time you wanted ??? Good design and human engineering continue to decline in this day and age. Happy New Year - Ba-Humbug...... etc Werner ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: asburypark-dig...@yahoogroups.com asburypark-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: asburypark-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/