In February of 2012 I contact Dave Mink the founder and owner of Trax Sales about their traffic count system. In March of 2012 we ordered 15 systems (1 for each of our stores) at a cost of over $30,000 US. Part of our agreement included a lifetime guarantee on the equipment.
The equipment arrived in April of 2012. Due to parts and other issues the system wasn't operational until June of 2012, and was never fully operational. Promises of making it compatabile with some of our Excel programs never materialized. Nevertheless we were getting some information from the system that allowed us to schedule better in our stores and this was of benefit.
In January of 2014 we received the following email from Dave Mink.
I am very sorry to tell you that the Visual Proof and basic traffic counter systems you had purchased from my company have failed and can no longer produce traffic counts.
Unfortunately the technology I developed 15 years ago was designed with a hard coded password into my server and cannot be re-written at the store level. To give you more details we have had two separate issues. The first is that the Julian Date on the infrared traffic counters has been disabled. The most pressing problem is that even if I was able to resolve the Julian Date issue by having you send me back the device and re-programming the security problem of a hard coded password into my server cannot be overcome. I cannot take a chance that a professional hacker could go through my system (possibly corrupting all of my data) then leap frogging into your system. Target or Nieman Marcus could survive that kind of attack but my company could not.
The new system we have been shipping for the last two years is called Argus and is more accurate, extremely easy to install, has a much higher quality camera and is completely secure.
Argus sells for $1800 per entrance but if you decide to stay with my company I will give you the new system at my cost of $691.
Here is a video that will tell you a little about Argus. People-counter-movie
Just so you know we have put 100% of all of our effort into making this new traffic counter the highest quality product of its kind. I know that if you move forward with the new system that you will agree that this new device far exceeds your expectations.
If you pull the trigger it takes us approximately 3-4 days to build the new systems, I-2 days to do complete regression testing and a day to ship. I will personally oversee this and insure that your system goes out as fast as is humanly possible.
I hope that we can continue to work with your fine company and I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience this problem has caused you.
I called Dave today to discuss this with him peronally. He says there is nothing he can do ... that maintenance has nothing to do with obsolete equipment. He says its unfortunate that we received old equipment verus the new Argus ... that at the time he used up old equipment not realizing it would fail. Dave said we need to pay $691 sx 20 = $13,820 if we want to replace our current equipment and if we don't like this offer to call Shopper Track or some other company as that's all he's prepared to do.
I couldn't help but notice today that this company was reported to Ripoff in May of 2011 ... had I read this report I would never have purchased from them.
Trax Sales Reviews
In February of 2012 I contact Dave Mink the founder and owner of Trax Sales about their traffic count system. In March of 2012 we ordered 15 systems (1 for each of our stores) at a cost of over $30,000 US. Part of our agreement included a lifetime guarantee on the equipment.
The equipment arrived in April of 2012. Due to parts and other issues the system wasn't operational until June of 2012, and was never fully operational. Promises of making it compatabile with some of our Excel programs never materialized. Nevertheless we were getting some information from the system that allowed us to schedule better in our stores and this was of benefit.
In January of 2014 we received the following email from Dave Mink.
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Dear Eric,
I am very sorry to tell you that the Visual Proof and basic traffic counter systems you had purchased from my company have failed and can no longer produce traffic counts.
Unfortunately the technology I developed 15 years ago was designed with a hard coded password into my server and cannot be re-written at the store level. To give you more details we have had two separate issues. The first is that the Julian Date on the infrared traffic counters has been disabled. The most pressing problem is that even if I was able to resolve the Julian Date issue by having you send me back the device and re-programming the security problem of a hard coded password into my server cannot be overcome. I cannot take a chance that a professional hacker could go through my system (possibly corrupting all of my data) then leap frogging into your system. Target or Nieman Marcus could survive that kind of attack but my company could not.
The new system we have been shipping for the last two years is called Argus and is more accurate, extremely easy to install, has a much higher quality camera and is completely secure.
Argus sells for $1800 per entrance but if you decide to stay with my company I will give you the new system at my cost of $691.
Here is a video that will tell you a little about Argus. People-counter-movie
Just so you know we have put 100% of all of our effort into making this new traffic counter the highest quality product of its kind. I know that if you move forward with the new system that you will agree that this new device far exceeds your expectations.
If you pull the trigger it takes us approximately 3-4 days to build the new systems, I-2 days to do complete regression testing and a day to ship. I will personally oversee this and insure that your system goes out as fast as is humanly possible.
I hope that we can continue to work with your fine company and I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience this problem has caused you.
Sincerely,
Dave
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I wrote Trax Sales and complained as follows:
From: Eric
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 1:51 AM
To: Jacob
Subject: Re: Your Traffic counter is no longer operational
Hi Jacob,
If you’ve been shipping the Argus for 2 years then why did you charge us and ship us 20+ old units and not the Argus when we signed up 2 years ago?
I’d like someone to call me about this.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
I called Dave today to discuss this with him peronally. He says there is nothing he can do ... that maintenance has nothing to do with obsolete equipment. He says its unfortunate that we received old equipment verus the new Argus ... that at the time he used up old equipment not realizing it would fail. Dave said we need to pay $691 sx 20 = $13,820 if we want to replace our current equipment and if we don't like this offer to call Shopper Track or some other company as that's all he's prepared to do.
I couldn't help but notice today that this company was reported to Ripoff in May of 2011 ... had I read this report I would never have purchased from them.