Savings on Maintenance contract? 1

[mars1947]

We are looking to save some money on our maintenance contract,we are being charged $17,000 a year from BellSouth for maintenance of 26 Digital and Analog cards in our Option 11. Would BellSouth allow us to drop that part of the maintenance contract and have a couple of each card on stock?

 

[hawks]

One thing to look at is, are they also including phones. If so I would drop the phones and see what it cost just for switch level.

 

[PERRYPJ]

THERE CHARGING YOU $3.50 A PORT WHICH INCLUDES PHONE, I KNOW THERE ARE OTHER COMPANIES OUT THERE THAT WILL GIVE YOU A BREAK IF YOU TAKE CARE OF THE PHONES. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GET A COUPLE OF EACH PHONE AND KEEP THEM HANDY

OLD ROLMEN WORKING ON NORTELS

 

[johnpoole]

only your local contacts can answer that, usually you can get by cheaper if you exclude sets.. that sounds a little high but i don't see the numbers that often.

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[TAnselm]

more than 3.50 a port....

26 cards X 16 ports = 416 ports

17,000.00 / 416 is like 40.00+ per port.

 

[dcalcano]

TAnselm:
Yes is 40.00 per port but per year, after all it comes down to 3.40-3.50 per port per month.

David
Evertec
Puerto Rico

 

[mars1947]

Thanks, we will talk to our service rep on Thursday after Ernesto goes by, time to hunker down.

 

[srmega41]

Why not eliminate the cards as well and try for a switch only contract? I was able to do that for 4 PBX's at four locations for less than $12,000 a year. This is also on an Avaya platform, which is historically higher thank Nortel. At my old job (back in the Nortel days), I had 3 Option 11's covered for less than $6,000 a year, and those were switch only. Line cards are cheap, so if you can get them to only cover the core and the cabinet, you can save a bunch.

Hope this helps,

Scott M.

 

[gregdeike]

You might also try looking at some other companies. We had the same problem with SBC at my site. For monitoring only they where charging us 12,000.00 a year. I found a vendor that is only charging us 1200.00 a year now and they are better at responding to alarms then SBC ever was. Time and materials is a better deal than SBC charges also. The company is TRCA. You can check them out on the web.