Canceling an Avaya Maintenance Agreement.

I want to touch on a subject that has become a big issue for me. Maintenance Agreements. I have multiple sights all with Avaya Equipment. I am in the process of canceling all my maintenance agreements and using my local BP to maintain them. Why? Cost and level of service. My local BP has prices that are 50% less than Avaya. Also, they answer my questions and I deal with the same 3 techs every time. When you call Avaya's 800 number, it's a crap shoot. Many of the people answering the phones don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Anyway....my point. If this is something you are planning on doing, here is what I have learned.

1. Maintenance agreements auto renew every year. So my suggestion is to find out the dates that all maintenance agreements expire so you will be ready on that date. LetÆs say you have an agreement that expires on Jan 15, 2006. You have from that date to Feb 15, 2006 to cancel. After Feb 15 you are locked into another year.

2. Your name must be on the account in order to cancel. This requires someone (not you, probably your boss) to send a fax to customer care saying that the contact person on the account has changed. Make sure you do this before you are looking to cancel the account. It takes like 2 weeks or more to get your name onto the account, so during that time you may loose your 30 day window.

3. When you cancel your maintenance agreement, make sure you get a conformation number. This is proof that the call was made. Avaya will require you to send a fax (on company letter head) with your account #, sold to #, and service contract number. Save it as well as the fax conformation sheet. Also write down the full name of the person you spoke with. Again, more proof.

4. A few days after you cancel your agreement. Avaya will dial into your Definity. They will remove all MSP's (Maintenance Service Permissions). This gives you the ability to troubleshoot. Things like busy and release require you to have MSP's. Without these you can't do it.

They will also change the dadmin login to prevent someone from modifying the inads, init, and craft login. I believe they do this because they don't want anyone adding or changing their logins or passwords.

I don't care about having craft level access, but do want to keep my MSP's. So the simplest way to keep Avaya out is to change the RMATS line to a different POTS line. Just be sure to give the new number to your BP as you want them to be able to dial in. If for some reason you do loose your MSP's you need a dadmin login to do things like busy and release, etc.