Hello,

The VOIP set for (phone number extension) has a bad stuck hook. I swapped the phone out with one of my spare sets. I have the bad set in my office. If you could arrange for a tech to swap me a good one for this bad one, I would appreciate it.

Your name

Chemistry IT

Chemistry IT's tracking of stuck hook issues, and others

Chemistry IT's characterization of the mechanical problem with the Avaya 4610SW IP (VoIP) hardware

The switch-hook is not reliable.

Picking up the handset does not consistently answer the phone. This problem is immediately noticed by the user at the time of failure, who therefore can learn to try jiggling things until the call is engaged, hopefully not hanging up on the caller by doing so.

And, more critically, hanging up the handset does not work reliably. This keeps the line open when the user does not intend it to be. This has resulted in voice mail messages being left consisting of room conversations occurring after the intended message had been left. Those inadvertently recorded conversations were considered private.

The only solution offered to us is a replacement phone. The replacement phones are refurbished phones. The refurbished phone have the same tendencies, which has caused us to replace a single unit more than once for the same problem. This pattern of failure is not acceptable, especially considering the state of phone technology today.

The sub-models differ such that one or both portions of a phone’s base are not physically compatible.

To make the two base pieces fit has required whittling plastic with a knife. No other solution has been offered. And whittling plastic with a sharp knife is not an acceptable expectation of our IT staff.

This condition interferes dramatically with our capacity to efficiently swap out phones.

Attempt to escalate the issue, via ITSG

From: Oliver B. Habicht
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 3:09 PM
To: Frank L. Strickland <fls1>
Subject: VoIP refurbished replacement phones (1) not fixing key problems, and 2) have introduced new problem.

Frank,

We’re having physical (mechanical) issues with our VoIP phones in Chemistry. The phone hooks are not consistently working. And now we are discovering that some replacement phones are not compatible with existing bases, which we are expected to re-use. These problems relate to the Avaya 4610SW IP phones. We had three failed switch hooks on faculty phones in the Nov-Feb time frame- not good.

I would like your assistance to package our feedback to CIT so it may be most useful to affecting positive  change, please. NCS service line staff and techs have let us know that they also have been seeing these problems. I was encouraged to raise this issue through my ITSG representative. Is anyone else in A&S seeing this problem?                                                                                                 

CIT staff have kindly provided us a refurbished unit to be “ready to go” in our office since these problems keep occurring, but the base incompatibility problem has made that spare less effective.

The root problem of the switch hook not being reliable must be addressed. Refurbishing phones are not making that fundamental design problem go away.

Also, any newly provided phone must have a compatible set of base parts (both light grey and black). Providing just a replacement phone is so longer sufficient due to the base incompatibility problem.  Currently, to make things work per the techs, we are expected to break off pieces of plastic, hoping the wrong things don’t break and trying to be good in protecting our eyes.

What more information do you need from us for you to provide feedback to CIT so they may be better informed of the impact some of their decisions are having on people we support, and on us? Thank you, -Oliver.