A new office telephone system

We were moving offices and as such had a new phone system installed that unlike our current ancient beast would integrate into the computers systems. Long story short we never moved in so we decided to have it moved over.

They came out checked the lines pronounced them okay and scheduled someone to come over and switch them over. This duly happened and as I was looking over the new system asked
"So where does it plug into the network?"
"It doesn't"


Yep turns out the system we had installed and never got to use didn't have the facilities we specifically requested multiple times and in multiple ways in the initial sales pitch.

One more sales pitch later and a new system. With no idea when it's getting installed I call them up and they promise to get back to me. Then later digging through the electronic fax spam I find the installation date - yep they sent it by fax!

Anyway in he came installed the system and the new phones... ah can't connect it to the network as a cable needs to be run to the router. He puts everything else in place and then states someone will come out next week to fit it and the extra bits and bobs.

That week passes with no communication despite me contacting them. Amusingly (or not) they contact me as to schedule training for the system not yet installed. Anyway this morning I give them a call to discover someone's coming out tomorrow; gee thanks for the notice.

I then get a flurry of calls about our broadband situation as a VPN from office to DaBosses house is going to be implemented I get asked what our broadband login details are etc. and I a) ask why they need them and b) refuse to just hand them over on the phone.
"Because of the new routers" I'm told
"But we've already got routers" I reply.

I dig in my heels because I'm already pissed off at this and that results in a call back from their IT Manager. Turns out they don't use a soft VPN it's a hard one so new routers are required to provide a consistent endpoint oh and this isn't the work that's scheduled for tomorrow that's just to hook it up to the local network.

Anyway we had a chuckle over sales staff not knowing what they're selling or why they're asking these questions; he mentions that giving out the broadband login details isn't exactly bad; I agree (they're tied to the line) but that one had to set a principle about handing over login details ("So why can you give out those, but I can't give out these?" is a fair conversation, but only if the other person really wants to know rather than just have an excuse to do it). We agree that due to BT's reluctance to assign static IP addresses to home packages that the office static should work and as always it's nice to converse with someone on the same level.

So one visit tomorrow which should be easy then another visit... some time to install the VPN routers at both ends which will require much better scheduling than has been displayed so far.