So the telephone repair community is a "good old boys" network? Is that what I am understanding? And the customer did NOT lose, there was a delay in getting their system functional, and they were compensated for this delay. There are TWO known companies in this area that service phone systems, and neither of them comes with much positive feedback.
The fact that Inter-Tel has proprietary software is nothing new, you see it all the time. The fact they won't allow anyone to have it unless they are a certified tech? That's preposterous. I bet if they marketed that when selling the phone system in the first place sales would plummet.
And what makes someone "unqualified"? Because I didn't spend thousands of dollars with each vendor learning their particular hardware and paying them a dividend? That's the "good old boy" philosophy at work there. Any person competent enough to understand how the wiring works (which eliminates a good 3/4 of the tech's out there mind you) is capable of moving/working on phone systems. They all operate the same, save for each vendor's own method of attempting to make their systems have some sort of DRM to prevent "outsiders" from working on them.
Lessons learned, and more work coming my way I'm sure (of which I clearly inform the client that while I am not "certified) for a particular phone system, I am competent and express to them that moving ANY technical hardware comes with risks. Shutting off any electronic equipment that has been running for a long time can expose a weakness in the hardware that causes problems to arise when attempting to power it back on. So it isn't always the technicians fault that something doesn't power back up properly.
Greg
