Hardware Models
I just got a question in a PM regarding hardware models and what would be shipped if reseller purchase it from VOIPo and wanted to clarify some things...
VOIPo does not want to be in the hardware business and we expect to lose a pretty substantial amount of money on the hardware by offering it for resellers. We prefer that resellers purchase their own hardware.
With that being said, we know that we need to offer the option for some users that want it dropshipped and don't want to configure it. So we are making the option to purchase VOIPo hardware available if resellers choose to use it. It's just a necessary evil.
Even in quantities of 5-10K at a time, the discounts given are generally only $0.50 - $1 per unit on VoIP ATAs, so there are no margins in hardware. It's done at cost. So in order to make it work, we pull from the same inventory we use for our direct VOIPo customers and cannot take special requests or reserve certain models.
As far as the VOIPo inventory that we use for our direct customers and would ship from if you choose to purchase from us, here are some things to keep in mind. We ship a variety of devices including PAP2Ts, RT31P2s, and now Grandstream HT502s again. Devices may be new or used. We do not guarantee new devices even to our own customers because in order to keep things cost effective working devices have to be reused if someone cancels/returns a device.
The only exception would be if we continue to have a good experience with Grandstream, this time around we may start shipping ONLY HT502s since they have a router built in. That significantly reduces support since you can bypass a customer router. Linksys does not currently offer a device with a built in router that is cost effective for the residential VoIP market. They stopped making the RT31P2s years ago, but we had purchased the ones we had from the defunct AOL VoIP division. At this time we are continuing to support a mix.
I understand why you would want to have the same model consistently (to keep things simple), but in order to not lose a massive amount of money on hardware, we can only ship from our general inventory and what is in it.
If you need a specific device model, only new devices, or want to have more control over things, you can always purchase hardware on your own and add to our provisioning in vPanel.
We recommend VoIPDW.com if you choose to purchase hardware directly. We've dealt with them for years and it's been fine.
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Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
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