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AT&T 964 Corded Expandable 4-Line Intercom Speakerphone with Digital Answering System (Graphite)

AT&T 964 Corded Expandable 4-Line Intercom Speakerphone with Digital Answering System (Graphite)

List Price: $229.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Disappointment and Frustration
Review: Nothing about this product is intuitive or simple. The hardware and software for this product are poorly designed. The only reason to purchase this product is if you want a product only you can use; this may give you job security but your job will become coping with the phones. Most important, our clients didn't like the process necessary to leave a message.

The most basic operations, like taking messages and retrieving them, are complex to set up and perform.

I could not figure out how to set the machine to pick up messages without calling AT&T support. I wanted to have the machine answer the phone and take messages if no one was in the office. Instead the answer message was played three times or the caller had to select an extension to have the machine accept a message.

If the line you set up to receive messages is busy, you need to have a second 964 if you want to take a message on the second line. This means that you have to check more than one phone for incoming messages. And, if I wanted someone else to pick up messages, it took a half hour to train them because the operation was so confusing.

The phone has too many buttons. Even after using the phone for several weeks I was not able to find the redial button easily. The directory holds lots of entries but it is not easy to set up or retrieve them.

The problems just went on. Rather than waste more time trying to use the features on these phones, I set them where they are only used occasionally -- throwing away most of the purchase price for these phones.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: AT&T should be ashamed of the 964
Review: Phones are an integral part of most businesses, specially service ones. This system is grossly misrepresented in their marketing. AT&T has put out an embarassing piece of garbage for a leading phone company.

People cannot leave you messages while you're on the phone. People cannot hear your messages because the quality of sound is either too low or too muzzled. Many features don't work well as advertised.

We needed 4 phones. We returned them and purchased a Voice Logic Voice Pro 412 system. This little system is awesome and, best of all, it works.

Whatever you buy, stay away from the 964!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do Not Buy
Review: The 964 is a bad phone system -- answering system is faint and unclear; after the TAD picks up a call and the caller hangs up, the phone continues to remain on for more than 3 minutes (Surprised I even bothered to wait that long.)unless handset taken off the hook; programming is lousy; buttons are too small. It is only useful as a single-line phone which is why the 1-star rating aptly applies. Do not buy this phone system.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Definitely a pricey piece of junk!
Review: To echo everyone else's comments, I've had the same problems with this phone, which I foolishly bought when it first came out upon the advice of an office supply store salesman. (Ughhhh!!!!!)

Sometimes the connection sounds clear; othertimes, even a local call can sound like the other person is calling from the moon.

The answering machine is absolutely dreadful. You can barely hear the messages when dialing in remotely, and even when you're standing in front of the thing, the speech is so highly compressed that it's often garbled beyond recognition.

There are lots of other smaller but very annoying quirks already mentioned. This phone is obviously a product that never made it past the alpha development phase and somehow mistakenly was released to the public for further testing...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Do NOT waste your $money$
Review: We bought 3 of these phones and tried out 3 more... they came from 3 separate locations. All 6 had the same problems!!

Minor problem: Intercom never worked.

Minor problem: Set-up is difficult to scroll through. You have to go through many options to find the one you want, because of poor organization & layout.

MAJOR problem: This is why we returned the phones. When you receive an incoming call on any line, if either Auto Attend or DTAD picks up to either transfer call or take a message, whatever happens from hereon out, when the caller hangs up, the 964 phone will continue to HOLD THE LINE for approx. 3 minutes while the phone company comes on with their automated message of "If you'd like to make a call please hang up and dial again." followed by a loud off-the-hook beep-beep-beeping. Finally, the line will be released. This also happens if you're talking on one line and someone calls trying to leave a message on another line. You can hear the other phone being "off the hook" so to speak and it is irritating beyond description. This has been thoroughly researched and tested on our end and it ahs nothing to do with our line, the region we're in, or other phones on the system. We eliminated everything and the problem persisted! We went through dozens of calls to Lucient to get help and Customer Service was unknowledgable and unwilling to give more than surface assistance. Research Team was very thorough and tried a lot, but they were unsuccessful at solving the problem. To complicate the problem a little further, after a couple of weeks with that problem, the line-holding suddenly became sporadic. That couldn't be eliminated to why it did/didn't work... The best answer we got was that, "These are very new phones and we don't have everything smoothed out yet."

My advise from much painful experience is to NOT BUY these phones, unless you relish the development of your patience through coping with numerous problems on your own.


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