During long distance phone bill audit projects and service contract negotiations for business clients, we often hear this from the telecom carriers, “you’re getting long distance phone service for a only a penny a minute!” That sounds pretty darn good right? Well, it often is too good to be true…so be careful. During our telecom audit projects, we often uncover the fact that there are many other charges piled on top of that penny per minute that pad the revenues of the carriers and serve to sap your business telecom expenses even further.
Watch Out For Hidden Fees
For example, I recently audited a client’s AT&T telephone bill that reflected the customer was receiving 1.5 cents per minute as per their contract. However, the customer did not realize that hidden well within the hundreds of pages of their bills were numerous surcharges and tacked on fees. The carrier charged $7.50 for each location of outbound and inbound service. This particular customer had about 7 locations so AT&T added another $52.50 to their bill. Next, two of those locations had inbound call routing charges on them, add another $100 per location for $200. Finally, the account also included a $25 administrative surcharge (account service) fee. In summary, AT&T tacked on almost $300 in additional fees! The attractive 1.5 cent per minute call charge really was about .05 cents per minute with all of the fees, making the deal not so attractive.
When I explained the actual charges to the client, he said that his AT&T representative never mentioned the extra charges. Moreover, as we reviewed his long distance contract that he had signed, there was no specific language noting that those additional administrative fees and charges would appear on his phone bill. Nevertheless, AT&T was legally covered by referring to the website (tariff) within the contract, which contains the fine print or rules of the contract. Within that phone tariff, the charges and AT&T’s freedom to legally charge for them were clearly spelled out.
For most of us, going to the actual fine print of the tariff and understanding the additional hidden charges can be difficult and time consuming, therefore, we end up unknowingly paying the extra money to the carriers each month.
Be Sure To Negotiate
The good news is that not all carriers do this, and AT&T’s extra fees can be negotiated away from the deal, if you know what to ask for. In summary, it pays to negotiate your deal and understand what the real deal is. So be sure to ask your carrier’s sales representative about the extra hidden fees in the deal they are offering you. Make sure they clearly spell out that there will be no extra fees.
Also, you can learn about call rounding by the long distance carriers by reading our call rounding article at, When a penny a minute is not really a penny a minute.
Another weapon in your arsenal is to contact the long distance telephone bill audit experts at http://www.bottaboom.com for a free analysis of your long distance or complete telecom billing situation. We offer a free initial review of your bills and can tell you in plain English what the real story is regarding your telephone and data charges. Our telecom audit services typically save clients between 30-50% on their telecom expense.
Tags: phone bill audit, Telecom Audit, telephone bill audit
