atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Inter-Tel Telephones & Systems Axxess web interface...

What I am against is the exclusivity of it all. Seems ridiculous that you can't get any information unless you are certified, can't be certified unless you work for a dealer, can't be a dealer unless you invest TONS of money with them in the hopes that someone will need their system. So you have to pick which vendors you would want to sell their products, go through all these steps, be granted access, then realize that company B has a better product so now go through all that all over again for them. They all get their money, while the dealers are left holding the bag. And you can't even TOUGH their equipment unless you've done all this.

And that doesn't get any else's dander up? Guess I know why I am not exclusively in the telecom field.

Greg

I am biased because Inter-Tel is the first system I learned to work on.
It is a quality product and serves a good customer base. They have been around since the early 60s so they must be doing something right.
Now they are part of Mitel which is a larger company with more products to offer.
The majority of their dealers are small to medium sized companies who can afford the investment needed to sell this equipment.
I don't know what else to tell you. Nobody is forcing you to work on it.

Let's exclude me from the picture. Say my client makes some changes to their phone system, renumbers a few extensions, changes which phones ring off which lines, updates employee names, etc. They then need to call in a certified tech (at I would guess a hefty minimum hourly fee, with an hour as a starting point) to backup these new changes. Then next week an employee leaves, so they rename that phone, switch it to not ring, etc. They then need to call in this tech (again at most likely an hour minimum) to do another backup?

You are the 2nd person to mention that things have been this way since the 60's or 70's, and I understand the company needing to protect their product base. However, I would think it would be MORE beneficial to them if more tech's were able to do at least some basic maintenance tasks on them.

As an example, I know of several large software manufacturers that hand out "demo" copies of their software packages that cost tens of thousands of dollars. They do this so that more people are familiar with how their software works, and thus would list that as a capability of theirs. Employers see more people comfortable with that software package, they will start looking into implementing it into their business.

Most end-user/business owners don't want to know how to run a backup or anything else. They also don't want to keep calling in a variety of different "specialists" for every minor task that needs to be performed. Having to keep a list of who to call for what. And then a vendor closes up shop and they are back to square one (which is what happened in this case, system was installed so long ago the old vendor is long gone and nobody at the business can recall the first thing about it.)

I am all for calling in the specialists to handle their specialty. But holding a client captive because no one else could do a thing without this specialist is morally wrong.

For the record, when I set/configure ANYTHING for a client. I supply them with ALL the top level usernames/passwords and any other information they would need should something ever happen to me, or they just become no longer satisfied with my services sometime in the future. I have yet to lose a customer due to that, but I have picked up SEVERAL from other local businesses in my same field because the client felt they were being held hostage and they weren't being given the information they needed to access their equipment. This makes it a headache for me as I then have to go on a discovery of their network infrastructure and try to power my way through all the configurations. This becomes expensive for my client as it is a time consuming process without many results to show for them. And is very cumbersome and tedious for me when I could be getting some real tasks done for them instead of just trying to get back to square one.

And for the record, I've never bashed the quality of Inter-Tel's product, just their (and apparently several other telecom hardware providers) operating practices. I am starting to realize why the movement to systems such as Asterisk are gaining such momentum however.

Unless the client has the programming software they can't make those changes to begin with. If they have that software then they can also do a backup. It's not programmed through the phone like many small systems.

Can they request a copy of that software as a purchaser of the hardware? Whoever installed it should have supplied it but didn't and they are now long gone.

It may be worth a shot to call Mitel and see what they can do.

Greg have you tried Inter Tel Web Site ?

Merritt, the correct site is www.mitel.com
UK stuff probably will just be confusing...

Thanks Jeff I didn't look at it close enough.

Thanks, I've posted a request at Inter-Tel/Mitel. I also requested access to the Installer forum, but I guess since my website doesn't list telecom services I was denied access.

Oh well, just another example to learn from I suppose.