sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems Call Pilot 100 not working

Hello All,
First time poster here, hoping yall can help me out.

My office uses the Nortel phone system with CallPilot 100.

Yesterday I found out that Features 981, 983, 986, and basically all features that work with our CallPilot voicemail are all of a sudden "Inactive Features".
I tried to log onto the mailbox administration panel through my browser, and sure enough got: Connection to server failed (The server is not responding.)

I've opened the CallPilot Box and it looks like both the LEDs are on, but the 10/100 and the 2 icons below it are not.

Please help, as the only tech that is available to us (the guy that set up the system years ago) wants to charge us such a ridiculous amount just to come in and take a look at it, is bordering on extortion

I've tried rebooting the CP (turning the power off for a min and reconnecting) but no dice.

Thank you so much in advance,
Eddie

The tech that's wants to charge you may have a spare power supply or software or even another CP that they can test with as well a laptop to hook up to do some tests.

How much are they charging?

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Profile updated, thanks.

The technician wants to charge us $100/h + expenses.
For a small company, frankly, we just cannot afford this.

You could try buying spare parts for your CallPilot, but in the long run, the tech charging you $100/hr (which is fairly normal for a competent telecom tech) could likely troubleshoot with spare parts he has with him and get you up and running for less money and much less headache.

The issue is, we just don't have that kind of budget to accommodate such an expense.

Back on topic, anyone have any ideas what I can do myself to troubleshoot this issue?

Unfortunately, you've done all you can without spending some money - if resetting the phone system & voicemail doesn't do it, then you are looking at needing to start replacing parts. Either the proprietary power supply has failed, there is an issue with the software cartridge, or there is a cabinet issue.

price seems inline to me , maybe you can't afford to maintain a functioning voice mail system.

I would have to ask how much the VM being down is costing you in lost business .

Again, we're a small company, so not much since we field all of the incoming phone calls.

Generally when it was working, we would get maybe 2-3 messages a week, so it's really not a big deal, just a nuisance. (When people call us after 5pm, they generally just call my or one of our other sales staff cell phones)

Frankly, the elitist attitude of "$100/h is nothing" isn't helping. There ARE small businesses out there that use the Nortel phone systems, and talking down isn't the way to go. As my experience has showed me through the years, most techs don't know what customer service is, they're more money hungry then willing to help the little guy.

I thank those for the constructive replies in my post, and frown at the elitists.

$100.00 per hour "Extotion" Really????

Our apologies that you feel we're being "elitist" We're not saying $100/hour is nothing... We're saying that $100/hour is a fair price for a competent Nortel technician. I understand being a small business it's hard to justify certain expenses for seldom used items - Rather than repairing the CallPilot system which will most likely even to self-repair, would end up costing more than $100, that if you are only receiving 2-3 messages a week and not using the advanced auto attendant features available with the CallPilot, I would recommend purchasing a simple answering machine and connecting it to your main line. This should be more than sufficient for your needs and cost less than $100.