sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems Should I buy Vodavi STS?

I am opening a new standalone small office with 7 people in November and have been shopping for phone systems. I have a quote for a new Vodavi STS KSU 4line 8 extension, 9 display phones, 3 port 3hr voicemail, and all installation, configure, training for $3k.

Two questions if you all would be so kind as to assist:

1) Do you like and would you recommend Vodavi?

2) How does this price sound?

Thanks in advance for all your help for a phone system noob. ;-)

Yes, buy it! We've had very good luck with these systems. We've had no faliures as of yet.

Good luck!

Do you like the vendor? Get some references and find one who you know and trust to confirm that you iwll be treated fairly.

Obviously, the vendor's credentials and qualifications are very important, so be sure to check them out.

As for the product itself, we have been selling Vodavi for 16 years and have had very good success with their products. We have many of the STS systems installed in our area and have found them to be very stable and reliable. You can't beat the price when you look at everything it can do!

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Ed
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How come there's always enough time to go back and fix it a second time?

The STS is a very good product. We've had no reliability issues and it is a feature-rich system.

$3k is a very good price, so be sure to check-out your vendor's credentials first.

Ah great to hear! Thanks so much for the feedback. I have looked into the vendor and called existing clients and it all looks pretty good. They are one of the bigger vendors in Denver Metro area and have been around since the early 80's.

As for the system, I just thought the price was too good considering all the features that it brings. Compared to a Partner or other big-name system its considerably cheaper, and the quality/reliability has seemed to be comparable according to what I have heard.

Thanks again for the input everyone... forums like this make me look back at the dark days before the internet and shudder... i mean how did anybody do anything? ;-)

we stopped selling them. the phones and system are fine but the v mail keeps falling apart.
one cust has been replaced by Vodavi 3 times, just made warranty last time, sent one out of warranty in for repair and it came back still not working, and the remote modem seems to work only half the time. Warranty or not, going back even once is to much for me.
Also hate having to shut system down in a busy office when making program changes (rocket science) Other than that its a nice little system.

[This message has been edited by brokeda (edited July 29, 2005).]

Hey Brokeda:

Why do you have to shut the system down to make changes? I have never heard of that and we have been putting these things in for several years.

As for the voice mail, the earlier versions had a software bug that was easily fixed by downlading a patch from their website and uploading it; a ten minute procedure.

We had a similar issue with the modems, but only for a short time so I think it may have been a bad lot in manufacturing because we never heard anything more about it.

It turns out that installers were not performing the initialization process on the voice mail card when installing it. We made that same mistake but once we started doing that on every installation, they worked fine. They tell you to do that in the installation manual but who ever reads them until the thing doesn't work?

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Ed
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How come there's always enough time to go back and fix it a second time?

I suspect that Brokeda was using WINDBA and found that some of the programming did not take until the system was reset. I had the same problem when WINDBA first came out for the STS. I like user interfaces as much as anyone but I have to say that DBA for any of the Vodavi equipment should be used as a tool only and it is very good for veiwing programmed information and for some shortcuts but do yourself a favor if you work on Vodavi's and learn you flash codes!!!

I agree the WinDBA is only good for looking around and maybe for some customers to self-admin. I find it faster to use the flash codes via RS232 port and a terminal emulator. My favorite is any switch with a command line interface. Once I know the 'language' I can fly - just like typing...