Customer Reviews

AT&T 984 Small Business System Speakerphone with Digital Answering System and Caller ID/Call Waiting

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

There must be thousands of home businesses that need a two line corded phone with an answering machine, but this is not that phone and I haven't found any other either. I suggest reading the reviews of AT&T 964 all of which apply in my experience. The answering machine will only allow one outgoing announcement for all four lines. In other words, a call coming in on any of the four lines will get the same message when it reaches the answering machine. Worse if one is using one line, the answering machine will not pick up a call coming in on another line. This wouldn't be so bad except when one is using one line the ring on the other lines is so muted that it is easy to miss the ring. As others have noted sound quality can be either good or poor for unknown reasons. I gave the phone two stars because the phone has a nice feel and look and the ring tones are pleasant as are the pre-recorded messages and such. The dialing out tones are aversive and automatic dialing is really slow.

The phone answering system has problems hanging up. So when people do not leave a message, you get a lot of messages from the phone company stating that "please hang up and try to call again" followed by a fast busy signal. This takes a couple of minutes. It's not possible to receive incoming calls to the answering machine or call out from another phone on the same line while this is going on.

I tried to resolve this problem with "customer service" but I gave up after a while. I just don't have time to be on hold all day.

Now the volume on the speaker phone goes to mute at random times. It's very annoying. I have had this phone for less than a year. I made the mistake of buying ATT because I thought it was a good brand.

Answering devices ansewers all lines. No selection. It's either on all lines of off all lines. I only want it to answer line 1 but even with the ringers off on the other lines it still answers them. Recorded sound quality is also noticably "watery" sounding, not very clear. My Panasonic KX-TG5100 is much clearer.

I bought this for my home office and would sure not buy this model again. Phone is fine, good feel, menus a bit cumbersome.

We have been trying to get this system to work in our office for a couple of months. Tech support has been worthless. If you want to go out of business fast because no one can call you, get this system.

We are using 5 of the 984's in an office with 5 administrative employees that need voice mail answering systems. We also have 3 954 phones in areas that do not need the answering system. Plus there are 4 wireless phones for our hourly employees that are not system phones. The system does what we wanted it to do. I had planned to return it if it did not live up to our needs. We had a older AT & T 4 line system 800 series and this one has a totally different logic system and many improved features. The bugs are still not worked out. AT&T offers support and even electronic enhansments for free to solve electonic problems associated with your local service. We are collecting question and situation data before wasting their time.It took about 4 hours to read and understand the directions plus program the phones. One person should do this then teach the others what they need to know. We did this with a short summary sheet which also gave intercom numbers, how to transfer, etc. Programming the phones could probably be done easily by a 10 year old. For us it took some re reading. I can see why some people would give up and think the phones are no good.

We paid about $1100 for the system. We could have paid well over to $4000 for other systems that I am sure were excellent with many more features but were just more then we needed. Plus the selling company would have had to maintain them and make any up grades for us at an additional expense.

We wish when you transfered a call the caller would hear a ringing, they hear nothing until the phone is answered or sent to voice mail. AT&T may have an answer for this or we will warn callers in the out going message. It would be nice if you could play music during the wait or a sales message.

Over all we are very happy with the price and performace.

Just recently purchased. It took me a very long time to set up this phone - the manual was very confusing. Once set up however, it is easy to use and I have virtually no problems using it.

This is the most flexible "mini-PBX" style multi-line phone I was able to find. And BELIEVE me - I did my research! You ARE able to add music on hold with a separate device that is for sale on the web.

Holding - transfering - paging (individual or office) it works AWESOME!. The reason I REALLY like it is because I can attach 19 total incoming/outgoing lines to the system maximum while giving each extension their OWN private line. They each have customizable voicemail and I can have an autoattendant pick up every line even though other lines might already have been answered by the autoattendant.

I use VoIP - and so some VoIP carriers add extra functionality with transfering lines out, etc. One warning - the VoIP routers (so I've been told) may not be giving enough electricity as a regular standard phone line for the multiline features to work properly. I ran into problems BUT I think now that it's because my wires are to closely "overlayed" and if the wires are not "twisted" then this tends to cause more intereference.

So aside from user setup problems - the phones are GREAT! Recommended everytime.

[...]

Amazon must have sent a repackaged unit. The manual was missing, the transformer buzzed loudly. The answer system is useless, the computer appears to only be able to handle one line at a time. If a message is being left on one line the system won't pick up on another line. It used to be that AT&T made good phones but now they just resell junk. Needless to say I returned it and you may be getting this refurb, good Luck ;)

Getting this phone up and running is pretty straightforward, despite the fact that the manual is short on detail. This is particularly the case where it addresses the Auto Attendant feature, so if you're buying the phone for the Auto Attendant, you might have to fight with it a bit to get it going. Otherwise, it's a great phone, sounds good, no problem transferring/paging/conference/etc.

My phone freezes, as if your computer screen would freeze. You can't do anything until you unplug the power cord, and remove the 9V battery. Once you replace the battery, and plug the power back in, you are fine, for around 48 hours. Why can't I find I a phone?