Avaya expenses - paying too much? 1

[Demarcc]

I read a post earlier that you 'get what you pay for' if you don't use Avaya for any servicing. After speaking with a couple of colleagues they suggested that there are some vendor companies such as viable resources and Demarcc.com worth checking out that can bring the price down by half. Has anyone had any great experiences?

Thanks,

Tyler

 

[FortKnox]

Wow. I would never work with Avaya Direct. I have only done business with Avaya Business Partners. The kid that came out here from a BP was more on top of things than the TIER 3 support at Avaya. We had an issue where Avaya sent us the wrong the ethernet dongle for the clan board, and tier 3 support couldnt tell him how to make his own out of an ampehenol end, but he figured it out on his own.

I think you will find that most of the BP's employ the old Lucent/Avaya techs.

There is so much markup in this Avaya gear. I got an apples to apples quote from two different BP's, one was like 70K the other was 30K, and the BP at 70K immediately came down to 30K when I told them what the other BP's quote was.

 

[speechguy]

CaNiBuS,

I agree with some exceptions. Many of the Avaya Tier 3 people that I had worked with (I was tier 4) have not been in the field working day to day issues. They have to read the manuals, ask questions to their peers and or escalate to Tier 4. And then.. there are a few Tier 3 engineers that are extremely sharp and great to work with... it's a roll of the dice and you do not know who your call will be pointed to.

In the last few years there have been many seasoned engineers and techs that have either retired or were (FMP'd, don't ask ;-) and have since gone to work at BP's or contract for hire.

Best bet is ask questions here then go to a BP, BEFORE calling Avaya. There are lots of very talented people in this forum!

Don

AT&T/Inter-Tel/Octel/Lucent/Avaya and so on and so on...does it get any better?? ;-)