Van Theodorou's Blog

Shopping for long distance business service on the internet can be confusing, frustrating, and time-consuming. But these 10 tips will help you find the best deal.

Once you have selected your top three to five choices, contact each company via email or phone and ask these questions:

1. How many years or experience do you have?

2. What are your price ranges and options?

3. What are your rates, and can I secure a certain rate if I sign up for service for a year or two, etc.?

4. How does your company figures the costs, including surcharges and increments?  

5. Who will handle my account--a team, or a project coordinator, or someone else, and will  this person continue to handle my account?


Once you make a selection, ask these questions:

6. Who do I contact to report a service interruption?

7. Who do I contact for billing information?

8. May I have the name and contact information of the person who will be responsible to interpret my first bill?

9. Would you tell me about your customer satisfaction surveys and schedule a follow-up for me?

10. Would you explain the details for the  end of my term?

Remember, you want the best long distance service, it's your money, your effort, your time. It is your right to ask these questions. Don't let the companies intimidate you; they are here to serve you, the customer!

Van
Long Distance Business

1. Watch out for billing tricks. Ask what is the billing increment the carrier will use?

Many times a $.03 rate will be closer to $.05 or even higher because of their billing tricks. Instead of the standard 18/6 billing, they'll round up your call in 30 or 60 second increment.
 
What this means to you is... if you're on a call for 1 minute and 5 seconds, they'll round up your call to either 1 minute and 30 seconds or 2 minutes. As you can see, this can easily raise your bill by 50-95%. I've seen the horror stories of this shady practice.

 
2. Beware of sites that show a listing of carriers and their rates.

Not only can you fall victim to the 60 second billing trick, you'll still have to contact all the carriers yourself to determine the best rate plan for your business. And this can be very time consuming.
 
These sites aim to confuse you with their gimmicky rate calculators hoping you won't do your homework and just choose what looks best.
 
But as you know, what looks best isn't always the case. These sites serve one purpose, to make a referral commission off you. They're not their job to help you in choosing the best plan for your business.
 
Also, these sites represent resellers and not long distance carriers you are more familiar with, such as AT&T, Qwest, Sprint and Verizon.

This can be advantageous but you have to do your homework. If a reseller goes out of business that means your long distance service is out of business, too.
 
If your long distance isn't important for you, then it won't matter which carrier you choose but if it's important to you, then you need expert advice in choosing the best and most stable carrier.

   
3. If you're interested in a name brand carrier, ATT, Verizon, Sprint or Qwest, be prepared to deal with a call center telemarketer.

You will have NO representation, they will not sell you the best rate plan for your business and you still have to deal with their customer service anytime you have issues or problems.
 
I don't know about you, I've wasted enough time talking to clueless customer service reps, especially ones from other countries.

4.  Be careful of the one size fits all type of plans. If you don’t get proper one on one attention, then there is no way a simple webform and/or wizard is going to give you an idea what is the best long distance plan for you.  

There are many different factors that will go into effect, such as in state vs out of state calling, international, do you have enough minutes to qualify for a voice t1, do you need voip or sip termination. As you can see with all the options out there, one would be crazy to trust their telecom services over to a website.

5. Is the site only offering VOIP service?  If that’s the case, then they really do not understand the needs of businesses and their telecom infrastructure.  Many of these sites are aiming for the residential or the home business market, they just happen to be on the first page of Google when you are searching.

6. Sites that offer for you to fill out a form. They get you thinking they are going to take care of you. The forms are long and seem endless. But this is only good  if you like sales reps from 6-7 people to be calling you.

These site make it look like they will be the ones handling your business but instead, they either sell your name to 6-7 other companies or they hand you off to several other companies because they are nothing more than affiliates.  


Van Theodorou
Long Distance T1
MPLS Networks

When your business long distance usage starts to get over a $1000 per month, this is a good time to start looking to switch to a  T1 voice line. You can usually save 20-30% off your regular long distance and the higher your bill, the lower the rate you can qualify for.