1) Cancel your telephone system maintenance agreement – Telephone system maintenance agreements range anywhere from 10 to 20% of the purchase price of the whole phone system. In other words you are paying for a new system in 5 to 10 years and only actually getting a small fraction of the system equipment replaced. I recommend buying a couple telephones, handle cords and line cords to replace items yourself.

From my experience, the only business I see that has a need for a maintenance agreement is a Not for Profit Organization. This is because the usually have to keep to a fixed budget. But even in this case, the Not for Profit Organization could add to there stock of backup common equipment, and build a cash account. This cash account can be used to pay for service calls when needed.

2) Learn how to troubleshoot basic telephone set problems – When you encounter a problem that is only occurring on one telephone you have an opportunity to save a considerable amount of money. When a problem occurs on an individual telephone it can be in a possibility of six items. The good news is you can easy fix four of them by simple replacement.

a) Find a test phone - The first step in determining if the problem can be corrected by replacement is to find a working telephone of the identical type to be used as a test telephone. The test phone can be a backup phone you keep in storage, or an existing telephone of the same type that is currently in use. If you used an existing phone as a test phone remove the line cord from its wall port. Remember this port location because when you are done testing you will replace this connection.

b) Swap the phones – Remove the line cord of the broken telephone from the wall port. Insert the line cord of the test phone into the broken phones wall port. If the problem is solved this means that the problem is in one of the 4 replaceable items. If the problem is not solved this means the problem is either in the cable, the telephone system hardware, or in the programming. For the scope of this training you should contact your service provider.

c) Determine which item to replace – If the problem is solve be replacing the phone completely you should now narrow down what the problem is by one by one testing each of the following items with items from the test phone until the problem is solved. Once the issue is solved it indicates that the item you swapped out is the bad component and should be replaced

1) Line cord – The line cord is the cord connected from the base of the telephone to the wall outlet.

2) Handle cord – The handle cord is the “coily” cord connected from the base of the telephone to the handset.

3) Handset – The handset is the equipment that you pickup, hang up, speak into and listen to. The handset is connected to the handle cord.

4) Telephone base - The telephone base is the equipment with the keypad.

The order listed above is a good order to test in. It is recommended that after you test each item that does not the problem, the original should be swapped back to the broken phone before proceeding to the next test.

3) Buy Online – Buying online can save you anywhere from 30 to 60% off of retail prices on equipment. Additionally if you call a service to fix a telephone and you need a $2 line cord replaced it could cost you $102 total after the technician replaces the cord for you. The biggest concern in buying online is finding a company you can trust. Name, address, and telephone number published is a minimum, additional credentials such as industry awards, certifications and trade organization affiliations are very helpful