AVAYA Maintenance

[extreme4x4mt]

Hi all,

I've been studying up on AVAYA maintenance plans as I'm considering lowering the SLA for our contracts. We currently have 8x5x5 full support and it's costing us an arm and a leg and we're just not getting anything close to what we're paying for. As a matter of fact, it often causes delays and frustration with getting problems fixed when I wish that I would have just fixed the problem myself in the first place.

At any rate, I read where a lot of people in this forum were recommending "maintenance assist" for self maintainers at around .50-.60/port. I'm currently paying around 2.90/port. I looked on AVAYA's website at

http://www1.avaya.com/services/portfolio/maintsvcs/capabilities.html

and don't see any docuementation on this plan. Have they changed the name to "remote only" support or is the "maintenance assist" something different?

I definitely need to keep my maintenance permissions so I have to have some sort of contract. (btw, this blows me away...doesn't a self maintainer need maintenance permissions???Oh, the things they make us pay for...)

Thanks all for your help! I would be in a big o' pickle most of the time without the help of this forum.

Mike

 

[nohuhu]

extreme4x4mt,

i'm not to advertise anyone, but in my opinion it's always better to hire some independent maintaner. avaya is just too big and slow, almost like a dinosaur. and most experienced people rarely work in vendor's tech support.

 

[mikeydidit]

I would also look at the business partners very close. I had a really good program with one, until Avaya made them give up their maintenance customers. I actually paid less than Avaya charges (about $.50 per port) and had a better line of technical support (the older experienced guys that had retired from Avaya). If you decide to go with anyone I would definitely look closely before getting into any contract. I have even seen post here asking about different maintenance providers, so you might even consider that.

Happy Holidays to all.

Mike Jones
LSUHSC

 

[bigtee959]

I concur; you would be better served to look into an Avaya business partner.

http://avaya.via.infonow.net/locator/jsp/Result.jsp

Better service AND save money

Merry Christmas




Terence Phillips
Telecommunication Specialist
Fisher-Price Toys, Inc.
Confidential Business Communications
Terence.Phillips@Fisher-Price.com

 

[orypecos]

The problem with the Avaya remote technicians is that they have some very experienced excellent technicians, but they also have some lazy inexperienced ones and u never know who u are going to get. That is unless when u find a good technician, then u get their agent extension and call them direct. The problem is with this that they are usually on another call and have to call u back. It use to be that they could tranfer the call back to their agent extension so it didn't hurt their stats so much, but Avaya changed the setup so that isn't possble any more. So this punishes the technician. 'no good dead will go unpunished'. Oh well....

Da-vi'do

P.S. For the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244. Also give the type & version of your voice mail & pbx system & preview your post to make sure it is complete & understandable. Be aware that if u don't answer a question, I usually will not continue to help u. Please leave a post on how u fixed the problem too.

 

[robsuttonjr]

We are about to decide on whether to use Avaya direct / partner or partner (not Avaya manintenance but authorized dealer). They will offer the same level of service but we would not have access to Avaya except fully billable. Avaya says if we do not get support from them directly or through partner, they will disable our rights to use and abilty to maintain the switch. What is the truth? Both sides tell me differently. Reseller will give us 35% off of the Avaya pricing. But I am worried if we needed to have Avaya dial in they would disable our software and ability to maintain switch.

Forums rule, pass it on!!!

Rob

 

[Midstream]

I've been a customer for 12 years and now I work for a Business Partner, so I've seen both sides. AVAYA Direct, although more expensive, is the way to go.

A Business Partner that sells their own maintenance contract to you directly is gambling with your future. The same goes for the big 3rd Party Maintenance companies. They are hedging that nothing will go wrong and are willing to pony up the dollars to pay if things do go wrong. In the event that the lights stop flashing and the fans stop running, nobody will care how much you saved them by getting a maintenance contract with anyone besides AVAYA. Your job may be in jeopardy.

I've experienced the big 3rd Party "insurance providers" and suffered through the small Business Partner "gamblers" enough to know better. Buy your AVAYA Post Warranty Maintenance Contract either through AVAYA, or your Business Partner.

If you don't have one, your response times on issues will be much longer than your superiors may tolerate.

 

[extreme4x4mt]

Thanks everybody for your help. I'm having my vendor quote out the different maintenance levels that AVAYA offers with the costs and descriptions of each level. It's time to change, I just haven't collected enough information yet to make the decision. Like I said, thanks everybody for your help.

Merry Christmas to all.

Mike

 

[robsuttonjr]

Thanks for the input. We are very close to going with the Avaya partner that sells their own backed service. (They have been in the Utah area for 56 years.) Anyway my last question is I am asking them to take off the call center Elite software maintenance and quote on billable to replace this if it goes corrupt. Any thoughts on this? We don't see the benefit of paying $350/mo for software support when all we need is to have it restored if it is corrupted. We also are looking at eliminating BCMR support since we have the software and only the dongle is really going to potentially go bad (one month of service pays for a dongle.) ???



Forums rule, pass it on!!!

Rob

 

[Midstream]

I'd be surprised if you could take the CCE and BCMR off the contract. It is my understanding that you can take phone sets off, which is a smart play, but not software or peripherals. I'll be interested in hearing your final outcome.