RingCentral Canada - IP Phones

I have used RingCentral for several years, mostly for its advanced call management features for incoming calls. I find those features to be the best of any VoIP service I have looked at. In the last year I have started to use the service for outgoing calls as well, initially using their soft phone application on my laptop. With a good microphone the soft phone application usually works well, but I found that it was dropping out regularly when the laptop was also running other applications.

Therefore I recently decided to purchase a RingCentral IP phone. I have been much less satisfied with their service in this area than in others.

My complaint with this service is that they cripple some features of the IP phones they sell, especially the display options on the higher end phones. I have a Cisco model SPA525G purchased from RingCentral for some $300. The essential call features of the phone work well and were set up by RingCentral before it was delivered to me. However, a number of features, especially those related to the display (which is quite advanced on this phone), are overridden by settings that are periodically downloaded from Ring Central. Given the price of the phone and the fact that the settings that are overridden are not critical for Ring Central service, I find this very annoying. Annoying enough, in fact, that I cannot recommend the purchase of an IP phone from RingCentral. They also sell IT phone adapters for analog telephones, which only cost $30 or so, and if I were doing it again that's what I would purchase. I am offended that RingCentral chooses to limit features on a phone it sold me at full price, when I am already paying for the service and the feature limitations have nothing to do with the delivery of that service.