atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Thread Like Summary - Deer ESI

What are you thinking? Pay the $1400 annual fee, or now, you lose the ability to send in out of warranty stuff for repair.

Seems like desperation has overtaken the company. I don't know, but I think I'm happy to be on the downhill side of telecom sales and service. The sad part is I love what I do, but it's getting harder to get excited about the latest trend in the industry. I like SIP trunking and the latest hardware of an IP PBX, but sometimes digital phones and traditional lines work just as well for the startup business. I hated cell phones as a means of communication, but now it's become a necessary evil.

I remember the parallels of Comdial and Intertel trying to control distribution and pricing themselves out of the market by requiring dealer commitments that were unsustainable. Are you next ESI, or is Panasonic going to beat you?

Of course, on the plus side, we're soon getting to the place where you buy a phone from one vendor (pick your favorite) and your software/hardware or cloud service from someone else. It's almost like the 1A2 days!!!

Carl

I paid the fee for a couple of years since I had a bunch of large accounts that had service agreements with us. What was sad though, all their good techs moved to the hosted side and we were left with newbies which of course sucked, We rarely ever needed support, as a dealer for over 20 years, we knew the product real well. But as all of you know, when it comes to a "software or firmware" problems, that is where we needed them. I too did not like there hosted solution, primarily the cost, second was the dealer agreement where if I did not meet a quota, they now owned my base. Also what I found silly and for the life of me cannot understand why anyone would be a dealer of their hosted solution is they bill MY CUSTOMER directly. The problem there is my company name and future referrals are gone!

I have successfully been able to convert my larger clients to IP (My white label solution using AWS and Free PBX and other solutions).

With that said, and being ESI is no longer supporting the CS line, I suggest any dealers out there that want to continue to support their base do the following:

1- Get a hard drive and flash duplicator (very cheap). Go to the sites you are supporting and copy the flash or hard drive and keep a master in your files. All licenses you paid for (remote phones, ACD, ESI-Link, etc will be copied). We have been doing this for years now. Also, We have always kept on a server in our office the upgraded software releases, if you have done that, upgrade your clients software before you duplicate the hard drive or flash card.

I have a ton of ESI cards and phones if anyone needs them to continue supporting their base. As of today, I have the following:

150 ESI 48D Key Phones (all look new)
30 ESI 30D phones and 5- Brand new ones
65- ESI 60D phones
09- ESI 48 IP phones
Many Cards for the ESI 200/600 servers.
ESI 50 cabinets and cards I am keeping for my non service contract clients
ESI 100, have nothing

When the day is done, I am very happy I became an ESI dealer over 20 years ago, the education they provided made an easy transition to the IP world we are in now. I also understand why they ditched the CS line, Traditional systems are not going to be around much longer, they saw that writing on the wall over 10 years ago when the the CS line no longer had new enhancements. Or should I say, I saw that! All us dealers remember that ESI would have two shows a year showing us what was in the future with the CS line, then it dropped to one show, then know shows, last rollout I believe was over 10 years ago, maybe closer to 13 years.

When Sprint Protégé closed their doors, I helped many here get through that. Willing to do the same for My ESI dealers

Walter