[cisco-voip] Problems with 7941 hookswitch

[Robert Harvey]

Oh My,

We've had the hookswitch and phone stand issue here for years now! 
Cisco TAC states that the hookswitch mechanism is self-cleaning and
requires one to merely toggle the hookswitch 20-30 times in rapid
succession to rectify the issue.  Not so in my experience.  What I've
been doing is opening the phone and manually cleaning the rubber contact
peice and circuit board portions of the hookswitch to fix the issue. 
What I also do is straighten the metal spring mechanism to cause more
pressure on the hookswitch contact.  It seems to work great; however, it
is a manual process that takes ~5 minutes per phone.  We have no easy
fix for the broken phone stand, but in our student residences I use 3/8
" self-taping screws to permanently fix it in the full upright position
once they fail.  My question is why the newer 7941 and 7961 share the
same design flaws as the 7940 and 7960?  Cisco definitely is aware of
these issues from all the complaints I read from System Admins in the
forums and on this list...  This is very frustrating and causes me many
headaches.  At which point does a full recall take place when a product
demonstrates such absolute quality issues such as this?  I'll sign any
petition!!!

----------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Harvey
Network Support Analyst
Fleming College
Peterborough, ON, Canada
Office (705) 749-5513
Fax (705) 749-5540
experience.success
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>From a mechanical viewpoint, the 79xx phones are junk, IMHO.  We
probably 
RMA-replace 10% of our phone population every year,  almost all because
of 
switchhook and deskstand problems.  I've asked several times if we
could buy 
replacement parts and fix the common problems ourselves, but never
received 
any response; I suspect a local repair might complicate future RMAs.  A

while back I had to escalate an SR because the first engineer claimed
we 
were abusing our phones, but after I offered his supervisor a chance to

discuss the abuse with the 64-year-old lady who was the alleged abuser,
he 
declined and we've had no problems since.

Mike Armstrong
UF/IFAS CREC
Lake Alfred, FL