"ONEAC equipment is very helpful in getting new business," said JW, Service Manager for Northwest Pump. "For example, one convenience store operator had been doing business with one of our competitors. He was having power problems with his POS (point-of-sale) systems, such as lockups and ghost failures. We found out that he had a UPS from an ONEAC competitor, with no power conditioning. We put ONEAC in at one of the most troublesome locations and the problems have almost all disappeared. Now, we are replacing his UPSs at all eight locations with ONEAC's ON400 series."
Northwest Pump is a petroleum equipment distributor in the northwest. "A large part of our business is service stations and convenience stores," noted JW. "That's where ONEAC has been so good to us."
Northwest Pump sells equipment packages which include gas pumps and underground storage tanks, as well a computerized POS equipment. An ONEAC is usually part of the package. "ONEAC protects most POS systems that we sell," JW added.
That protection is especially important because Northwest Pump maintains the equipment after the installation. "ONEAC has meant so much to us as a service provider," said JW. "Customers don't want to have to pay for nuisance problems. ONEAC helps us ensure that the equipment keeps working."
"Our first experience with ONEAC was ten years ago," remembered JW. "A customer had a very troublesome site in Washington. The system was constantly locking up and crashing and my gut instinct was that it was a power problem. ONEAC provided power conditioning and the problems went away."
"Our partnership with ONEAC started to grow in 1992, as POS systems became more sophisticated," JW continued. "We were setting up four Texaco stations that year, and we were doing maintenance on the MSI computer system. The stations were having all kinds of problems related to dirty power, like unexplainable lockups. We installed two ONEAC power conditioners at each location and the problems stopped. ONEAC solved a big challenge for a very important customer."
"POS systems have been getting more complicated since the early 90s, and all stores depend on them now," explained JW. "Several controllers have been consolidated into one unit and if the system goes down, the entire business is impacted. That is why all of our customers need ONEAC protection, because power related problems can keep them from doing business."
"Convenience stores are notorious for having less than perfect circuits," JW added. "They often don't have the dedicated circuits that are needed, and it became automatic to install ONEAC. We have been including ONEAC with most of our POS systems and have had absolutely no power problems."
"On this side of the Rocky Mountains, we don't have the lightning problems that affect power out East," JW said, "but we have overloaded grids. And any time the utilities switch a grid to feed power from some other source, it sends noise down the line all the way to the outlet int he wall. People don't realize that this happens, but we want our customers to understand why we're using the ONEAC product. Our power problems in the West are more subtle than lightning, but every bit as damaging in the long run."
ONEAC is unique in addressing these problems," JW continued. "Their competitors sell battery back-up units but none of them have the power conditioning circuitry that ONEAC provides. The other equipment protects against complete power failures, but you still have system failures from the day to day electrical spikes and noise that degrade components in today's world. ONEAC makes a good UPS, but what makes it stand head and shoulders above the rest is the power conditioning that is built into the products to protect against the spikes."
Northwest Pump's customers are seeing the importance of this protection. "We installed Ruby Verifone POS products at more than 60 sites for one of our major customers, Time Oil, and we supplied ONEAC at every site," JW related. "But the customer used another vendor that installed systems without power conditioning at a few other locations. Time Oil spend two weeks fighting power related lock-ups until the maintenance director called and asked us to get involved. We supplied them with the ON400 series and the problems have not recurred."
ONEAC power conditioning protects a variety of POS equipment - including MSI, Ruby from Verifone, Gilbarco G-Site and Gas Boy Profit Point - for Northwest Pump customers like Texaco and Tosco/Circle K in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska and Hawaii. Even when the POS products come with power back-up equipment, Northwest Pump still chooses to add ONEAC.
"The products perform very well," JW said. "We have had very minimal problems with ONEAC. And any time we have experienced a difficulty, the response from ONEAC has been superb. They always take care of us."
"Without ONEAC, we would face an enormous amount of unnecessary service calls," JW concluded. "Before ONEAC, our customers were having constant problems. Now, all the ghost problems, the unexplainable component failures, the problems with no answers have disappeared. For the problems with no answers, ONEAC is the answer.
© 1997 ONEAC Corp.
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"From the beginning of the computer system rollout, we started to see power related problems at the stores, causing both corrupted files and damaged hardware," said PR, Speedway's Store Automation Project Manager. "Computer systems at some of our stores were going down once a day!"
"We found out that a convenience store is not a friendly environment for computer equipment," PR continued. "It has big walk-in coolers, microwave ovens, ice cream freezers - a variety of factors to effect the power." And not only is the store's computer system threatened internally by poor quality power, it also has to face a multitude of threats from the outside. Bad weather and construction accidents are only a few of these external threats.
"When one of our stores experienced power problems and its computer equipment went down, the store would simple have to be closed," PR explained. "Without the computer system, we couldn't service our customers - that fact alone caused us to lose revenue. But each time we lost power, we incurred other costs as well. Thousands of dollars of permanently damaged equipment had to be replaced. And computer files were corrupted, making our accounting information worthless."
Previously, none of the stores had computers. The rollout involved going from manual cash registers to a computer system in these stores. As part of this project, Speedway had addressed the power problem when the computer equipment rollout had started. But speedway only addressed the problem of losing power. So the stations had battery backup equipment that did not provide adequate conditioning. In the short run, it saved Speedway money. But in the long run, it started to cost the company more than anyone had expected.
Speedway's experience clearly illustrates the importance of power conditioning. Battery back-up is essential protection against loss of power. But dirty power is also a hazard, and power conditioning is protection that is just as vital. Most people understand the problems of revenue loss if the power goes out, but they also need to recognize problems from dirty power.
When Speedway had suspected that dirty power was the cause of their problems, they came to ONEAC for a solution. "We had two particular stores which served as good examples of significant problems. We had ONEAC put in UPSs and power conditioning equipment. The ONEAC equipment immediately solved the problems in both stores. Once we installed ONEAC equipment, the downtime at our stores was significantly reduced. And corrupt data was also significantly reduced," PR said. "ONEAC solved a majority of our power problems."
ONEAC offered Speedway power conditioning from an isolated transformer based system, with a built-in battery back-up. Even the battery power is conditioned when the power is out, so Speedway stations now have clean power whenever they are operating, even during a power outage. All new Speedway stores now have ONEAC ON Series UPSs installed as standard procedure. The company is also going back to existing stores with problems and installing ONEAC UPSs or ONEAC power conditioning units to augment the equipment they already have.
"ONEAC didn't just offer us equipment - they offered us a solution to our problems," PR concluded. "And the company's customer service has been great. To us, customer service is an important point, and we have been very pleased. The ONEAC representatives have gone above and beyond the call of duty to answer our questions and make sure we understand the power issues."
© 1997 ONEAC Corp.
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Littlejohn's Equipment Company in Denver, Colorado, sells and services petroleum equipment for the convenience store and gas station industry. The point-of-sale or POS system is a main component of the Littlejohn's convenience store package. "As POS systems have increased in complexity. they have also increased a store's requirement for clean power," said DC, Vice President of Sales and Service for Littlejohn's.
Chasing phantom sales and lock ups -
"Before we used ONEAC, several customer locations were definite problem sites, experiencing ghost sales and hanging systems," DC explained. "One store was experiencing these problems multiple times a day." A ghost sale is a fuel sale that appears on the register when no customer has actually purchased gas. The hanging system is even more troublesome because the POS system completely locks up.
"When the system is locked up, the store usually has to power the system down and bring it back up," DC explained. "It may take five minutes to come back on line, which is a massive amount of time when there are three or four people waiting in line at a convenience store. And even if it does come back up, that's not the solution to the problem."
Searching for solutions -
"Essentially, the customers start to lose faith in the equipment," he explained, "and not only does their business suffer, but we get a black eye from the problem."
"We wanted to create clean power for our customers through economical means instead of rewiring the electrical systems," he explained. "Even a dedicated isolated line does not guarantee conditioned clean power. We needed a UPS with a power conditioner, and Littlejohn's initially selected a unit from an ONEAC competitor. The product was supposed to combine UPS surge suppression with power conditioning, and we started to include the unit with all our sales."
All UPS systems are NOT created equal -
"In a number of cases, our customers still experienced problems," DC continued. Littlejohn's learned that there are different approaches to power conditioning. And just because a product claims to have "power conditioning," does not mean it has the capability to clean up the dirty power or solve the power related problems.
"When we found out our UPS systems did not have the isolation transformer found in ONEAC's UPS systems, we decided to switch to ONEAC," noted DC. "We retrofit four test sites with ONEAC ON400 units and the power problems were cleaned up! Before we used ONEAC, we could not identify the causes of the problems and we didn't have a solution. Oneac was the solution."
"Since then," he added, "Littlejohn's has included ONEAC in all our new sales. We won't sell a POS system without an ONEAC conditioner at this point. And we have even retrofit a number of locations with ONEAC to save money for us and for our customers. We see ONEAC power conditioning as an integral part of the system."
Littlejohn's also includes ONEAC's RJ11 telephone line protector with the ON400. "Power lines are not the only problem," said DC. "One customer site was taken out by a lightning strike that came through the phone line. Protecting from surges through the phone line, in addition to power conditioning, allows us to completely insulate the POS system."
ONEAC keeps Littlejohn's equipment running -
In the short term, Littlejohn's customers have eliminated dirty power and its problems by using ONEAC. "But there are long-term benefits as well," DC explained. "We feel that our customers are going to get much longer life out of the equipment with ONEAC protection, which also means fewer service calls."
The advantage of reducing the number of service calls is not taken lightly by Littlejohn's. "When there is a service call, someone has to pay the cost," stated DC. "We want to treat our customer fairly, and if we install new equipment which is not working properly, we feel responsible. That means that we are paying for power related service calls."
"Littlejohn's goal as a sales [and] service organization is to sell quality equipment at fair prices and provide premium service," he continued. "We don't want equipment going down for reasons outside our control, and we want to minimize or eliminate nuisance service calls, which are usually power related problems. We see the inclusion of ONEAC with all new sales and retrofitting existing sites with ONEAC as an important part of the goal."
"We no longer look at dirty power as a potential problem," DC concluded. "We consider that if the power is not conditioned, we will be called for service. That's why we trust the ONEAC approach to power conditioning."
© 1997 ONEAC Corp.
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