Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

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.

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!!!

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...

I have had this phone for about 9 months. Programming the phones is very difficult. In order to get help from customer support I had to use a cell phone. Most recently all I got was a recording telling me my call was being transferred - for 17 minutes, but it never was transferred. I used the cell phone because in order to get help with programming the phones, you cannot be using the phones - they do only one thing at a time. I have found that if you are on one line and the other rings, the answering system will not pick up the call. The only time I get messages is if the phone is not being used at all. My intent was that if I was on one line and the other rang, that the answering function would pick it up. I bought 2 phones to ensure this would work but after 9 months it is worse than ever. Good luck.

I bought this to be a stand-alone phone for a home office. Although this phone seemed packed with features, there were a several things that detract. 1) If you're on one line the answering machine will not answer if another call comes in. 2) The answering machine can not be selectively turned on or off for individual lines. 3) Poor sound quality on the recordings as well as VERY low sound volume when picking up messages remotely. 4) My unit had a defective power supply (LOUD hum) and AT&T would not replace it w/o sending in the whole unit. Not good, stay away.

I purchased this phone as a stand-alone that could be expanded as I brought on additional help. It worked fine as a stand alone, but when adding additional phones in the office, I came to realize the same thing that the other reviewer have. The Auto-attendant simply does not work. If the auto-attendant picks up, you're console phone is dead until the caller hangs up and a couple minutes later the phone will ring. When you answer it, it's a "call" from the phone company saying: "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try your call again."

If you're buying this phone for the auto-attendant/answering system feature, DON'T. It doesn't work. If you're not concerned about that, buy the 955 for less money. It's got all the other features and seems to work great. I do have one of those. I should have bought my first two with the 955 and just used the voice mail from the phone company.

Bought three of these phones for a small office. All features worked reasonably well with the exception of voice mail. Recorded message quality is poor. The major issue is the same as described by reviewer Laura G related to DTAD & Auto Attendant. I did succeed with AT&T tech support when they told me it was a known issue related to line disconnect signal strength. If your system carrier is unable to adjust strength, then do not buy these phones! AT&T advised me to return the phones.

As a small business, I needed an inexpensive telephone system. Purchased three of these phones to integrate with the 955s. All of the complaints I have read in the other product reviews are my complaints. These phones do not work together as a system. ALL OF MY CLIENTS ARE MAD AT ME!! Voice mail is non-existent (not to mention confusing to set up) because you cannot receive a "voice-mail" if you're using the phone! Bad purchase.....Big, costly mistake.

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.

I second all the complaints here and add another one. Not only can you not selectively turn voicemail on/off for different lines, you also can't have different outgoing messages for each line. So you must be content with one (garbled) outgoing message for all lines.