sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Advice sought for home office setup

aboard Ajax496

Due to your handling some emergency calls, make sure that the below is also addressed by either the provider's services, or the local system being installed:

Per #3: Even though you mentioned that if unanswered, the call goes to a voicemail box, if a caller pressed "Z", and the call was then answered by an available attendant; there are additional options to consider for treating subsequent calls while the initial call is still in-progress:
A. Call sent to another specific line thru hunting or CFBL.
B. Call placed into a cueing feature, and caller receives a brief voice announcement informing them that their call will be answered in the order that it was received, giving the caller additional options, etc.

Well said Ed.

I agree totally. There are several instances where we are required to do things above what the customer needs because it is what the customer wants.

I try to advise all my customers in a way that they do not exceed what they need or buy something that does not do what they want. If your honest with them and not just out to get there money then they will stay with you forever.

This has been a learning experience for me.

I'm a grown-up, and know better than to ignore expert advice. If several professionals tell me in unison: 'avoid so and so,' I'm going to avoid it.

But look what happened in this case:

After leaving this thread, I investigated Forwarding and Call Routing through the phone company. No soap. $160 minimum per month! I called twice, just to be sure -- and that was the answer both times.

I called several installers listed on this site. One strongly suggested that the phone company is full of it, re pricing -- but couldn't help otherwise, as their work is out of state. Another quoted $3,500 to $4,000.

Time to swallow hard and go with Talkswitch. If anyone had suggested to me prior to this post that I'd go against expert advice on a matter like this, I would have said, no way. Adults learn the hard way to pay attention to what professionals recommend.

Well, maybe this is the exception that proves the rule.

The Talkswitch system works fine. Better than expected. I have a couple of minor issues with some 'not ready for prime time' elements in the installation routine, but they're just quibbles. It recognized the phone line, worked the first time, and reliably forwards calls.

Maybe the professionals here see reasons that this could be less than ideal for a big company with many PBX users. But for a one man band -- well, I'm very happy with it.

The time taken to stop in and update is greatly appreciated. We respond to many questions and rarely do we see them finalize. Keep us up to date as new challenges develop.

John

Ok folks, I'm lazy, I'll admit it. Can someone give me an internet address for 'Talkswitch'? You know what 'they' say, know your enemy/competition.
John C.

Just add .com

-Hal

These threads are google-able forever, so I try to wrap them up when results, when I can -- I want to be considerate to those who use them as I do, for research.

This is my first experience with anything resembling a PBX -- and I understand that most who comment here have spent your entire working lives *surrounded* by PBX equipment, issues, customer feature requests and set-up issues and the like. I have no idea how Talkswitch compares to the kind of gear you're accustomed to.

But it does what I wanted it to do and was relatively easy to set up.

Just keep in mind the advise that many have already given you in previse post on this thread.

It really is more about the company you buy from then the name on the equip.

Good Luck,

I repeat Michaels comments.

It really is more about the company you buy from then the name on the equip.

Most systems will do what you are asking and the talkswitch will work well. I have had customers use them for years with very little issues.

And another thing that is important is that you are happy with what you got. If it works don't knock it.

Good luck in the future,

Brian

Thanks again to all who commented in this thread.

I'll make one more post tonight to document a few product weaknesses, for the benefit of future googlers.

- Documentation suggests that one should be able to load a recorded greeting, but I regard this feature as unusable. The only supported format is u-law .wav, and every conversion mode I attempted into this format produced a rotten-sounding recording. If the device accepted .wma or .mp3 files, I'd be able to record a greeting with other equipment.

The Talkswitch documentation suggest downloading iaudio converter and ripper. This doesn't work! Jetaudio does, but, as noted, the converted-from-.wma file sounds awful. Using Windows XP Sound Recorder to convert to u-law also produced a lousy-sounding recording.

- I think that out-of-the-box security is pretty lousy. I'd rather not go into detail on this. Suffice to say: set passwords.

- Rough edges in documentation.

My impressions of Talkswitch as a company are favorable.

Overall, though, I'm quite happy I bought it.