Business Cost-Savings; Do You Really Need Cell-Phone Insurance?
In my 25 year experience as a cell phone bill audit professional, and from my telecom research, 99.9 percent of U.S. businesses that use wireless services do not need monthly cell phone insurance. So I urge you to strongly consider cutting wireless phone insurance from your budget and save some solid telecom expense today.
On average, the cell phone carriers are charging anywhere from $5-$6 per month per phone and making a killing on these charges, particularly for large companies who are forking this out each month. Add the premiums when you lose or break your cell phone, and there are even more costs. And, the headaches and filing claims with the cell-phone carrier is a huge time consuming and frustrating process.
It’s always cheaper to self-insure your wireless phones unless you have unusual kinds of usage or those users with butter fingers. We’ve seen janitorial and maintenance type of workers take the insurance because their cell phones get beat up a lot or dropped in water due to the nature of their work. But even then, the cell phone companies often won’t cover that type of damage if they open up the cell phone and its wet inside or clearly been abused. If you decide to keep the insurance, make sure you read the fine print on the cell phone insurance contract.
Our telecom audit company (BottaBoom) is so sure of advising our clients to cancel their cell phone insurance; we guarantee that we’ll cover half of the savings of the normal insurance costs if that threshold is exceeded once we actually cancel the insurance. In over 9 years of offering this savings guarantee, none of our clients out of several hundred have taken us up on the offer because they have not needed to. The cell phone carriers aren’t stupid, they’re making a killing on these insurance premiums.
If you want to measure the cost of going without cell phone insurance, take a look at your last 8 months’ worth of cell phone bills and/or ask your cell phone carrier to provide you with a report on past replaced phones for your company. Now compare that cost to what you are actually paying for 8 months of insurance on all of your cell phones and blackberries. Once you’ve determined your savings, show your boss the cost savings and get a huge pat on the back, or perhaps a nice raise or bonus! Saving money can be fun.
Also, make sure you have a corporate cell phone policy, particularly one that holds users accountable for damaged or lost phones. Another thing you can do is negotiate with your cell phone carrier for spare phones and replacements as part of the contract. The more cell phones your company has, the more leverage you will have in asking for this incentive from the cell phone provider.
Look for another cost savings article coming soon regarding wire protection insurance on your data and phone lines.
Research information and portions of this report were provided courtesy of The Voice Report, a state-of-the-art professional telecommunications management publication. You can sign up for a free trial at www.thevoicereport.com/FreeTrial. Once you sign up for log-in credentials, you can read more details and the whole piece on wireless insurance here: http://www.thevoicereport.com/2009-05-07/Insurance.
Get a free no risk telecom cost savings and telecom audit review for your business from BottaBoom today, contact the telecommunications audit experts here: http://www.bottaboom.com/contact-us/
Tags: cell phone bill audit, Telecom Audit, telecom cost savings, telecommunications audit
