[asterisk-biz] Digium, Polycom, and Netxusa Cutting Us Out?!?

[Lacy Moore - Aspendora]

On 3/28/07, Steve Totaro <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com> wrote:
> I am all for acquiring clients and keeping them.  Not redistributing
> them among "Approved" (political discrimination possible, heck maybe I
> will not be approved for starting this thread) vendors.
>

According to the requirements you are required to:
-Sell only Digium PCI Server Network/Voice Interface Cards (Zaptel)

Heck, I'd put that requirement in there, too.  But, that might be a
problem for some.  And, I'm sure some will have problems getting
approved because of this.

I don't know how things are in the Voip market, but as far as general
computer hardware goes, I found I could buy the hardware at Amazon or
Newegg cheaper than I could through a distributor.  Some clients would
rather buy direct, some would rather I handle it and mark it up.  It
was a waste of time filling out all those reseller forms.

The money is in the service, not the hardware.  The money is also in
the face to face meetings with clients, not outsourcing tech overseas.
 I would have never found Asterisk had the person making changes on
our existing Merlin Legend system had come out to our office to make
the changes.  Instead, they didn't want to meet, just wanted to sit at
their office and make the changes remotely.  Then, they constantly
called and asked questions about our setup, questions that were
clearly answered in our configuration notebook (that they didn't want
to see).

Sure, supporting a system remotely is one thing, if you have an
established business relationship.  But not for the initial setup.
Not something as important as a phone system.

Then, again, tomorrow Best Buy may be selling cds of AsteriskNOW with
X number of hours remote setup time.  That would go along with their
purchase of Speakeasy, I guess.