sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems If I would have known

That Vodavi charges $75 to ship a flash-based VM for a warrenty repair I would not have sold it.
So far I have only sold 3 VM's with the STS systems and have had problems with all three. Tech support is telling me to replace the very first one I sold and installed but only after 9 service calls.
I know I can send the customers card back for repair but that is not acceptable to them.
Do those of you here that are selling and installing this product have any of these kinds of problems?
The main problems I am having are stuck message waiting with no messages in the mailbox and the VM will just quit answering and will not start again without a power cycle.

The only time I have seen that issue is when it wasn't properly initialized upon installation. It seems since we started doing that (several years ago), we haven't had any more problems.

Is your company an authorized dealer with Vodavi? If so, I would check with your regional sales rep to see about that fee. I know that they charge it to non-dealers due to the high rate of failure to return the old unit.

I've not had any real problems with the flash VM or any other STS product. Except for the time that I put the voicemail into different voicemail groups. You can't do that.

This is why you really should stock a crash kit for most everything you sell.

i've had 2 card failures that i had to send back but always had one in stock to replace it. when the card failed it actually would take the system down.

i agree with ED. THEY NEED TO BE INITIALIZED OUT OF BOX!(not yelling just saving all some agony as Ed would prob. agree.)

With the problems that you said you are havng it sounds like you could have intialzed the vm and maybe have vodavi walk you through the debug and start over. you don't loose the greetings you loose mailbox greeting and all progamming though.

I have been selling sts/ste since it was first offered to dealers. I guess that would be around 3 years plus.
The product is solid. Be advised you must have ac breaker to ksu only, if not you will have problems.
Trust me, the systems i have installed i also maintain.
I have the inskin and the inskin HD out in the field.
Its not a Lexus, its a chev.
Basically it will do the job, and it works. (no problems)

I have ordered the VM from Vodavi and will have to pay the charge just to keep my customer happy.
So far as the initialization issue goes,all three
VM's have been done. If not for this forum I probably would still not know it needed to be done.
All three systems have had problems even after
initialization, just not as often.
We are not dealers,just a sales and install company
and probably will never be a dealer. I did call the
regional sales manager and was told we didn't have to pay but support wouldn't agree to that so I guess we are stuck.
Any suggestions for a stand-alone Vm to go with a
STS? I don't think I will be proposing a flash-based mail again at least until this is resolved.

You could go with a Digital Talkpath, but it won't be as cheap.

Really, no one else seems to be having an issue. Does everything have surge protection?

I'm puzzled ? You say you have (3) three different sites which all are experiencing issue"s with the inskin voicemail.
I have 25 or 30 inskins installed and they are extremely easy to install and there is no maint. issue's. I wished i had a crack at the returning problem's. at these location's. We cant have the big picture as something is being overlooked. I
know where you are coming from and sad to hear of your problems. The inskin voicemail is basically plug and play. I wish you luck with your problem's. you said you defaulted the inskin useing hyperterm with your laptop? I just don't know

All sites have surge protection on the incoming lines and surge protection on the power.Two sites have small ups backup.
The most annoying of the problems,message lamp on but no message, is only happening at two of the locations.All locations were done by our electricians and the power is clean and not being shared with any other device. One location I have not had another problem since I initialized the voice mail and reprogrammed it. I have had problems with the other two. The system in our office frequently shows messages and then says
no messages when an attempt is made to retrieve
them. Unfortunatly it is always the owners mailbox. :confused: Good thing he sleeps with my
daughter.
In closing this loooong sad story I had a call today about a bid for a new Vodavi system we won and the customer now wants to add an inexpensive VM.Think I'll go fishing.

I gotta say that we have seen this problem very rarely on the XTSc, but when the vmail is reset it seems to fix it about 90% of the time, and we have sold a fair amount of those.

As for flash voice mails in general, if I were you I would require that all systems with them have a battery back up of some type. Seriously, the customer can purchase one for under one houndred dollars and save a lot of possible pain in the future. We always require that there be a battery back up on systems with voice mail, even hard drives. If they refuse to supply it, (which is very rare) or purchase a decent one from us, we put a cheapy on just to save future issues.

Steve