I would not normally warn people off a company but in this instance I have begun to reach the end of my tether. My current issue is ongoing too!

We have an AVAYA IPOffice phone system with digital and analogue extensions. This was purchased several years ago through a company that ATC have since bought out. It seems that ATC have been doing this a lot recently.

After some remodelling work in our offices, we required 2 extensions to be moved and an additional extension to be installed. We decided to take the opportunity to install 3 IP phones instead so that we would be able to add further extensions more easily and cheaply in the future and add the flexibility that IP telephony offers.

I discussed this with our account manager after a little investigation of my own. I realised that our particular system was relatively old and the setup (due to the use of digital handsets) required a certain model of IP phone so made doubly sure that the correct phones would be ordered. I expressed concern about this on a couple of occasions.

The hardware eventually turned up and we EVENTUALLY had an engineer arrive to perform the upgrade to the IP403 and install the phones. The engineer had been stung in the past so phoned the office to confirm that correct equipment was with us - it was not! The wrong model of phones had been sent to us!!!!!!!!!!

Several days later, another engineer (an AVAYA expert) came out and confirmed that this was the case! As an interim solution the digital sockets were moved and additional one installed so at least we had phones (2 weeks after we actually wanted them!).

The IP handset problem has still not been sorted out (over a month now) and nobody seems to want to sort the problem out. Our account manager is also very poor at communicating - ironic for a communications company, eh? I even had to insist that I was telephoned at specific times so that I could find out what was happening - it seems that their usual practice is to tell you nothing if no progress is being made.