The NCR/Diebold techs charge out at 200-300 an hour which regional banks cannot really afford. I was working for a 3rd party servicing company which existed only because of the duopoly's insanely high service rates. We were contracted by the banks to purchase the appropriate amounts of licensed software and then install it on their machines.
One way NCR/Diebold would screw customers is by having the software upgrade process take so effing long. If you wanted to upgrade the software on one of these machines it was multiple CDs with a total boot / reboot / loading time of 5 to 6 hours. I've torn through all the code and programs I could find on those machines while in the shop, there is NOTHING that could possibly be taking that long to load and install. The entire customer interface is an XML config file with a few PNGs and text-to-speech running for selected parts of the XML. (This is also a fun way to hack an ATM to say things like "FEED ME A STRAY CAT"). We really suspected the companies greatly padded the install time to increase their service bills. We got the contracts to upgrade from the regional banks because we would instead build new cages with the correct CPU/RAM/audio spec, preload the software with a bunch of cloned hard drives, swap the cages and then bring the machine back on the network. This was MUCH cheaper than paying the factory technicians.
Don't even get me started on what NCR/Diebold do with the DMCA. They would do things like releasing an identical hardware component (receipt printer, etc.) but with a new driver, and if anyone bought a used component (for about 10% of the new price) and dared to update the driver so it would work with newer machines (which refused to work with the old drivers) they would sue and win.
One way NCR/Diebold would screw customers is by having the software upgrade process take so effing long. If you wanted to upgrade the software on one of these machines it was multiple CDs with a total boot / reboot / loading time of 5 to 6 hours. I've torn through all the code and programs I could find on those machines while in the shop, there is NOTHING that could possibly be taking that long to load and install. The entire customer interface is an XML config file with a few PNGs and text-to-speech running for selected parts of the XML. (This is also a fun way to hack an ATM to say things like "FEED ME A STRAY CAT"). We really suspected the companies greatly padded the install time to increase their service bills. We got the contracts to upgrade from the regional banks because we would instead build new cages with the correct CPU/RAM/audio spec, preload the software with a bunch of cloned hard drives, swap the cages and then bring the machine back on the network. This was MUCH cheaper than paying the factory technicians.
Don't even get me started on what NCR/Diebold do with the DMCA. They would do things like releasing an identical hardware component (receipt printer, etc.) but with a new driver, and if anyone bought a used component (for about 10% of the new price) and dared to update the driver so it would work with newer machines (which refused to work with the old drivers) they would sue and win.