If Stadler are charging for altering a display to show what it should do for the benefit of the travelling public, then the contract is bad. They should be being charged for every single instance where the most passenger friendly, accurate information is not displayed.
That depends on why the correct / most passenger friendly information isn't being displayed.
If the units are displaying the information as specified to Stadler, then Stadler are fulfilling their contract whether the information is correct or not. Stadler can hardly be penalised (eg by not being reimbursed for rework) if they delivered per the contract / specifications supplied.
I would hope that they specification included the ability of operators to maintain and change the information displayed themselves (eg to cater for new stations / station renamings), rather than having to request the manufacturer to do so.
I think they charge for pretty much any software update that customises it. And from what I've been told, they charge a hefty expense.
This is entirely normal for this sort of contract. Having worked on PIS and on-train WiFi and telematics projects in the past, the spec is agreed at the time of order, and anything else is considered a variation order (VO) and not covered under the O&M contract. I've yet to see a solution in the market where the vehicle operator can make changes themselves beyond what is supplied via the data feed - these systems are the manufacturer's IP, and are closed-source. Often, it goes beyond this, and the system is actually licensed and will stop working if the operator ends the service contract with the provider.
And if they didn't charge per change, you can bet that there would be a premium on the overall contract price to cover the costs of changes at will. That would be jacked up because they would assume, not unreasonably, that a customer will want to make more "free" changes than if the changes have to be paid for.
I've no idea what the price per change would be, but I'd also be careful about saying "it's a hefty expense" without thinking about the cost of making (including testing) that change. If their staff are paid an average of £50k (low in the IT industry), then a piece of work requiring 10 days of effort would cost over £2k simply on salary costs, before any other costs of employment or corporate overheads.
This is exactly how it works - as the saying goes "gass, grass or ass - nobody rides for free". £50k for the level of developer and QA resource for something like a PIS layout change is about right, depending on the market the employee sits in, but it's worth remembering that the employee's gross salary is not how these things are costed.
The employee has overheads beyond their gross compensation, including employer tax/insurance liabilities, admin costs (HR, etc), office space, hardware, licenses and more. Then you have to account for the fact that when the employee is working on one thing, they can't do another - also known as opportunity cost.
As such, most changes are handled by way of the client being able to alter the data feed that the PIS is fed with, but obviously, if the presentation layer templating needs changing, it has to be done as a VO. No provider of such services includes these changes for free - they are either costed into the overall contract with a very finite number of revisions permitted, or chargeable.
It's also worth noting that VOs usually have no SLA/OLA attached to them either, so they get completed on a "when ready" basis.
