Horrible experience with the system and installer co

[davetjens]

UC 540 phone system was installed at our location about 10 months ago. There are two locations with two Sonicwalls in place, and we went through hell to get the phones working at both locations. It took many months for the local reseller/installation company (Inclusive Technology Solutions Inc) to make the system somewhat operational. It's been 10 months since we started it and it is still not completed. Inclusive is very unprofessional, their response time is more than a week and their customer service skills are completely missing. I would not recommend them to anyone. They were recommended by Cisco and they are listed as a current partner on Cisco's website, although their contact phone number is no longer working and the address is a PO Box.

Currently there is still a ticket pending (it's been more than two weeks) with Cisco as there is a problem with the conference call quality (conversation is garbled). Sometimes we experience half duplex issues (one person can talk at a time - if two speaks, one would cut out). Inclusive Technology Solutions is not able to program speed dials at the remote location (the phones don't respond when a button is pressed).

Horrible experience - we would like to get rid of the system and go back to the traditional telephone system.

[cindy toy]

Hi David,

I moved your post into the correct area.  Can you please tell me what your Service Request ticket number is so that I can get an update and escalation on this for you.

Regards,
Cindy Toy
Cisco Small Business Community Manager
for Cisco Small Business Products
www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport
twitter: CiscoSBsupport

[jonatrod]

Hi davetjens, thanks for using our forum, my name is Johnnatan and I am part of the Small business Support community. I understand your situation and I apologize for the issues you are having, to add to Cindy´s post, could you provide us your SR number?.

Greetings,

Johnnatan Rodriguez Miranda.

Cisco Network Support Engineer.

[David Trad]

Hi Dave,

Further to the Cisco team jumping in on this and working hard to assist you, I would also be willing to help you and can do things with you remotely, I am not adverse to staying up late at night to help people out if we properly organize the time differences

I am fairly certain I can get you up and running to the level you would like, or close to it, it might take a bit considering I would be doing it remotely and potentially from the other side of the planet, but I would be willing to give it a go and ensure you have a proper working system.

You can e-mail me on the address below, there wont be a cost to you as I would be doing it based on goodwil, so please dont conern yourself with it.

If you want to do it though there will be some prerequisites before we proceed;

1. A Call flow topology diagram, I don't care if it is hand written, but one is very much essential
2. The CCA Bulk User list correctly and fully filled in, I can help you with it but I don't know all your users so you will need to do the bulk of the work
3. An understanding of the exact requirements
4. A computer that has no AV or firewall turned on that can be directly connected to the UC500 and a WiFi connection so I can come in remotely at least, this would be disconnected though at the time of setup to ensure it does not interfere with the CCA process
5. Time, this is critical as it wont be an hours worth of work if we need to start from scratch, and in most cases this often the best thing to do especially if the current configuration is botched and in a mess
6. If you are doing SIP all the required information to get it to work, if it is BRI the relevant information on that would be good too
7. A network diagram of your current network and where the UC500 would be situated in it
8. An idea of the exact role the UC will be playing as the configuration that is built will be dependant on knowing the right information

Let us know, but if Cisco are already assisting you then I will stay out of it as I don't want to interfere with their process.

Cheers,


David Trad.
davidtradconsulting-at-gmail.com

[Brian Rapier]

I hate to say that you are not alone in this area.

If your installation involves a single location your install will go smooth.  As soon as you toss in remote location its goes all to hell.

I went through your exact issue last year.  Our install started on Jun 18th and our cut over was Aug 28th.  We were still having issues at the time and finally got things resolved in Oct.

I have a very lengthy post about my adventure on one of the telecom forums, that also contains how we got things working.  If you care to have a look hit me up and I will send you the link.

Unfortunatly there are a lot of companies out there selling these systems without the support to make things work.  We were ensured repeatedly that the system would work as planned out of the box.  Only to find that our install was not a "supported" install for the UC systems.  And to end up basically reworking our entire network to make things function.

When the first words from the installing tech are "Call TAC" run.  Fire the installer, call Cisco themselves and get things sorted out, fighting with your installation company is only going to land you where you are now and frustrate the hell out of you.

I will say once I started dealing with Cisco directly things got sorted out much quicker.  Be prepared to spend some time on the phone as they will sit with you until things are working correctly.  I have nothing but praise for the tech I talked to during our install.

As for the garble, I can almost gaurentee its a QOS issue.  We ran into the same thing with remote calls, it turned out that we had to add an inbound QOS rule to limit the http download speed as folks were sucking up all the bandwidth surfing the web and killing the calls.  The outgoing side would work just fine, but the incoming side would be very choppy.

My suggestions to you are:

- Fire your installation company - if you have any outstanding invoices - do not pay them and look at your options as they obviously have not delivered on your contract.

- Call TAC - and spend a few hours on the phone with them going through things are getting things sorted out.

Its not a bad system - its bad installers making it look that way.

Brian