For weeks now I’ve been preparing a PC-based check-in system for our Kids department. The plan is for 9 mobile kiosks with touchscreen monitors & thermal label printers that will be running Shelby Chek-In. We are currently using Shelby as our ChMS, but Fellowship One has, in my opinion, a superior product - but that’s a different post altogether.
The main goal is to increase our security in the Kids department and to make the attendance process much more efficient. When a parent checks in their kid(s), they enter the last 4 digits of their phone number, select the child’s name, and check them in. The system then prints 2 name tags – one goes on the child, one goes with the parent. The two tags have a matching, randomly-generated number on them. When the parent picks up the child, the numbers must match. That’s the general idea, anyway.
The key to all this is the label printer. I ordered everything almost 2 months ago, and I’ve had everything except the printers for a month and a half. Zebra (the manufacturer) discontinued the printers after I ordered them, and Dell (the reseller) has been working overtime trying to find out what’s going on. Dell finally worked it out so I would get the new, upgraded printer, the LP-2844 P, at the discontinued printer’s cost. Great!
They finally arrived today – 6 weeks late, but at least I have them. As I was unpacking them I noticed there was only one oddly shaped, proprietary cable included – one end plugs in to the printer, and the other end is a mystery. I’m pretty sure it’s a breakout cable that requires an adapter for power & USB. Of course there was no such adapter.
There was also no documentation, and this model is so new, there’s nothing available on their website. So it appears in their haste to ship out these printers, they forgot a few key parts. Now I’m extremely ticked. We were hoping to beta test the new Check-In system through June & July and release it in August. Now it looks like we’ll be lucky to beta test for a week. My S&P rep at Dell is contacting Zebra to see what they can do for me, but I’m really disappointed with Zebra. They may have lost a repeat customer.
