Siemens Gigaset 2-line Cordless Phone with 2 Handsets (GIGASET-C285-2)

phones seem to be fine for our small business application. for the price my expectations were not high and were met except for the hold music which is a beep melody that has drawn numerous complaints. i am trying to figure out how to turn that part off, otherwise they are good. we purchased an extra handset, easy to setup, east to use, great price. our old phones were a little hard to hear at times, so far these are good.

I received this today and the product in the box did not match the picture. Whoever sells this took the Verizon model V500AM-2 and put Siemens Gigaset stickers over the Verizon logo. The Verizon phone sells for $76.46 and this model (C285-2) was sold to me for $144.44.

Liars!

The product description/photo did not match the product.

Go to the Siemens Gigaset website and you'll see this described as a DECT 6.0 phone. A DECT 6.0 logo can be found on the base station too. Yet... this is the first DECT phone system I've ever come across where only "approved" handsets (specifically the C28H) will work on it. Not even other Siemens' DECT 6.0 handsets will register with it, as I discovered after both trying it (I bought this as an upgrade to my E450) and calling Siemens to find out whether there was a magic handshake or something I had to perform.

What does this mean? Well:
* The big difference between DECT and the other systems is handset interoperability. You can use the handsets you want with the base station you want as long as they're both DECT, or both DECT 6.0 (same system, different frequency). DECT achieves this using a system called GAP.
* The C285 doesn't support GAP. It uses a proprietary variant of DECT.
* There are many, many, multiline multiple handset cordless phone systems...Read more