Consider what happens if your POS system goes down. Chaos? Closed doors? A blizzard of hastily-scrawled receipts? While it does not happen often - most reputable POS systems have very good overall reliability - shutdowns can lead to unhappy customers, lost revenue, and considerable headaches. The support policies of a POS vendor can easily determine whether you should do business with them or not.

You should get an in-depth explanation of how your potential POS system vendors handle support. Most will diagnose problems over the phone first -- many basic problems can be solved this way. Some vendors have telephone support available 24 x 7, while others are available only during business hours. Restaurants should lean towards vendors who do have 24 x 7 support, since their busiest times tend to be outside normal business hours.

For problems that can not be solved over the phone, there are different options for escalation. Local vendors usually have field service technicians who can come to your location and make repairs. If they can not fix the problem on site, they should be able to provide loaner equipment that can keep your business running. Usually you can get a guarantee that site repairs will happen with 24 hours.

Some vendors do not have field technicians - they may not even have an office in your state. Often, they will set up direct Internet access to your system, so they can dial in and make changes remotely. Others will send you a replacement component as soon as you call in with a problem, then have you send the broken component to them for repair. If you have many terminals, this is probably fine - you will get your new parts within a day or two. For smaller business with only a few terminals, losing one for two days may not be an option.

Vendors provide widely varying guarantees. Some provide parts and labor for one year; others include free phone support for that first year, as well. Many charge per-incident for calls outside of business hours. Some charge for annual support contracts, and prices range from a cheap $200 to over $1000 per year. In short, there is not much consistency in how vendors structure their support plans. This can make it hard to compare one to the next, but make sure you do: POS systems are too critical to day-to-day business to risk underbuying support.

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