I agree that you had a great track record with systems installed 10 or 15 years ago because the E and X class were definitely reliable. It's the communication servers introduced several years ago that we experienced high failure rates. As mentioned numerous times; defective equipment including plastic cabinets, flash drives, ASC cards and model 30, 40 and 60 phones is what bit us in the ass.
BTW; We never install any systems without doing the following; confirm the equipment ordered is correct, assemble then initialize the system, upgrade the software to the highest level then bench test for 24 hours. Additionally, every system is properly grounded and connected to a battery backup. Doesn't matter how much preparation and bench testing you do because it doesn't find hidden bugs and defects that only show up over time.
I can't explain why my ASC card failure rates are higher than yours. Especially, since we installed much less than you have. Either way, the mean time between failures were unacceptable.
We've lost priceless references and threatened with legal action while you experience glowing referrals.
My only agenda on this message board was to share my experiences and get feedback from others. I certainly didn't expect ESI to use it as an excuse to terminated my dealership because of it.
My sales being down the last couple years was the other reason. We made the decision not to sell ESI equipment until all defects were resolved. We also tried selling their cloud service but it wasn't competitive and paid less commissions than other carriers.
Ironically, we just received a call today from a customer requesting our services because their present vendor, a major ESI dealer in New Jersey announce they are no longer supporting ESI premise systems as of 2018.
My experience with ESI is they take a passive approach, instead of being proactive. They expect dealers to sell their products without any support. I haven't had an outside sales rep in over three years because most were terminated or resigned.
Rick
