Maintenance Assist or T&M?

[Dustinn3]

Is anyone out there using maintenance assist? I'm looking at dropping maintenance and was curious if it is worth the money. It says they remove your maintenance permissions if you don't carry maintenance assist, but can you still legally manage your switch without a maintenance contract? I know there are people out there managing switches without maintenance, but I have to stay legal.

Thanks!

 

[mikeydidit]

We are using maintenance assist program and are pretty happy with it. We had no maintenance agreement, working only on T&M and then Avaya threatened to turn off my maintenance permissions. I feel this is a pretty good program providing you have knowledgeable staff on hand to work out most of little problems that your switch will have. This gives your staff a level of support to turn to on larger problems that arise. The major thing with this is, you do not have to use certified circuit packs which saves lots of $$$.


Mikey

 

[mikeydidit]

We are using maintenance assist program and are pretty happy with it. We had no maintenance agreement, working only on T&M and then Avaya threatened to turn off my maintenance permissions. I feel this is a pretty good program providing you have knowledgeable staff on hand to work out most of little problems that your switch will have. This gives your staff a level of support to turn to on larger problems that arise. One major thing with this is, you do not have to use certified circuit packs which saves lots of $$$.


Mikey

 

[mikeydidit]

Sorry for the double post.


Mikey

 

[Dustinn3]

Thanks for the info. I guess my biggest complaint is that I would basically have to pay 60 cents a port to manage a switch that my company has already spent $500,000+ on. I've never had to pay any other company a monthly fee just to be able to maintain our own equipment.

Dustin

 

[Bobg1]

You might also want to check with Walt Medak & Associates
They have some maintenance programs avaiable.

http://www.medak.com

 

[budgetgh]

We are paying the $.60 per port to maintain the Definity ourselves and feel like we are being blackmailed. Another thing Avaya did to us, we bought a 100 RTU License in March for $1000. Nine months later, we attempted to purchase another 100 RTU and were quoted $15,000. Their answer was that they had re-structured their pricing. We are now shopping for a CO switch and we will NOT consider Lucent/Avaya/Expanets or whatever they call themselves this week.

 

[Dustinn3]

Yikes,

We payed $5,000 for our last 100 RTU's. The latest price I was given for IP RTU's was around $100 per RTU. But I haven't gotten any quotes for regular RTU's lately.

 

[OldPhoneGuy]

I got a quote from a business partner last week for standard RTU ports at $85.00 each!!!

 

[lopes1211]

Avaya definitely has their heads up their *sses on this one. In a cheap attempt to force long term customers to unneccessarily upgrade by extorting the removal of maintenance, etc., they are slitting their own throats. I refuse to pay $40K to upgrade my PBX only to gain me the privilage of paying Avaya $8K/m to continue to maintain my PBX in the horrible manner we've grown used to. Why not pay a WMA or other group 1/2 as much for maintenance and get better service less the $40K upgrade, extortion, and BS sales tactics. I didn't think it could get any worse a year ago but I continue to be surprised weekly. I love the product, think it's still the best, have worked with it for over a decade, invested a lot, but I'm exhausted with Avaya at this point. I don't feel like there is a choice other than move to another platform or stay R10 forever with 3rd party support.

-CL