Our service repair company has been listed as Rachio Pro’s for years now. We have about a quarter of our customers using Rachios to date with 3 to 4 being changed each week. In the Southwest Region of the US, most Cities and Water Purveyors have designated day(s) of the week and times we can irrigate as well as a change of season requirement. Summer (Apr 1 - Oct 1) Winter (Nov. 1 - Mar. 31) These never change. For the life of me, I have never figured out why Rachio put a YEAR on the scheduling app. The ONLY time you need a “year” is if you are scheduling a (Grow in Period) for new installations of landscaping. After that, you are required to follow the law of each State, City, or Water District. We work quite hard to educate our customers, but this is a stumbling block twice a year for no good reason. Please help.
My other wishlist items as a Rachio Pro:
- A way to send a quick note to thank our customers for trusting us with their irrigation needs.
- A quick checklist to let them know what we fixed, i.e. scheduling, the area we worked in by zone, Complete System check, Leak fixed. I think you get the idea. (We leave postcards on the controllers with information during our service calls. Now that we usually don’t need in the garage we don’t have a safe place to leave them.
- Since I am dreaming…how about a compatible accounting software app that works with QuickBooks.
(goodness knows I would rather pay you for that service than yet another app on our Technicians phones. - Service software to know where my trucks are. (again I would rather pay you than the 3rd party we use now.) Besides you already have half the piece (I think) to that puzzle. I would think at some point Rachio needs recurring revenue.
- Last one…we have quite a few customers that have over 16 zones. We have 2 and 3 controllers at our customer’s homes. I am pretty sure this is on someone’s dream team list at Rachio already. I just wanted to make sure you had a Pro’s perspective. The sky is the limit with Rachio…I hope the investors see the value of upsizing the controllers or at least being able to link them for scheduling. 3 controllers is still a smaller footprint than a hard to use Hunter or Rainbird.
May the Sunshine on us all soon!
Lo