A latest computer virus that is being studied by analysts has attacked and crashed over 1,000 cash registers at Tim Hortons donuts and coffee fast food restaurants during the week. The problem is not completely resolved yet and franchisees of the fast food network are still experiencing problems with their registers.
The problems were seen to occur early last week when cash registers based on XP were seen to start crashing all of a sudden. The outages were first believed to have affected only under 100 locations, but it was only after news started coming in from other parts of the country that the real extent of the damage was revealed. It is now believed, according to concrete news reports, that around 1,000 franchised stores within Canada were affected by the virus. This marks around a quarter of the total stores within the country.
While some stores halted their operations for a short period of time because of the problems they faced with their Point of Sales (PoS) terminals, others had to close for a good period of time. Angry franchisee owners grouped under the patronage of the Great White North Franchise Association to register their protest against Tim Horton’s parent company – Restaurant Brands Inc. (RBI). The franchise owners gave the parent company time until Friday of this week to reach a feasible solution over what could be done about this problem and the compensation they should receive for lost time. This compensation should account for lost sales, product spoilage and employee salaries during their idle time at work.
Although Tim Hortons and their parent brand have maintained silence over this problem, a Tim Hortons spokesperson was believed to have said that they are currently working with external sources to find a solution for the virus. The spokesperson clarified that as of yet, they have received no information of customer credit card data being extracted during the virus, but this was hard to find out so early in the process. Tim Hortons is already under the pump for their recent decision to cut employee perks after the imposition of the regulations for 20% hike in minimum wage.
