How much is Suddenlink toll-free costing your Branson businesses?
Businesses in Branson are made up of the organizations that serve the 8 million visitors per year, such as 207 lodging facilities, 125 restaurants, 100+ shows in 50 theatres, and countless retail organizations. Branson also offers such professional firms as banks, attorney firms, CPA and accountants, insurance offices, realtors, medical facilities, and car dealerships.
So my question is simple what do many of these businesses have in common? Most have phone service through either Suddenlink or CenturyLink and have a toll-free number for potential customers to call into. Is this your business?
What do you pay per minute when someone calls your toll-free number (or 800#)?
Don't look at your phone bill yet, but take a quick guess and remember that amount.
One of our Motion VOIP experts, Craig Lansing, was out meeting with clients in the Branson area and pointed out that on the four different phone bills he reviewed there were three common occurrences:
The business owners didn't know what they were paying for their toll-free service - they all guessed the wrong amount
All of the Suddenlink bills we reviewed had different fees for toll-free calls - all in the same area but different per-minute fees
The Suddenlink customers were overpaying because that was the same amount they had always paid and they didn’t know any different
I genuinely believe that phone companies purposely make phone bills hard to understand so you will not see what you are spending and so that you cannot figure out what are real taxes vs. the ones they creatively word to sound like fees. If you don't understand it, aren't willing to spend the time to understand it, odds are you will pay it.
Let's figure out what you pay for your toll-free minutes. Look for this actual section in your Suddenlink phone bill:
So if we do simple math, you would know you are paying (not including taxes and fees). You take the AMOUNT you are paying (in this case, $11.82) and DIVIDE it by the NUMBER OF MINUTES (in this case, 44 minutes). Here is the math:
$11.82 divided by 44 minutes equals $0.27 per minute
This person guessed they were paying $0.06 per minute for toll-free service. The funny thing is before doing the analysis, Craig told them he could save them money at the $0.06 price they thought they were paying. So if this bill was sent from our VOIP provider it would have been $0.66 instead of $11.82 saving them $11.16. This is a savings of 94%. Imagine the savings if you are using 100 minutes or more each month.
Motion VOIP found them a new provider that will save them $200+ per month on their phone bill ($2,400 per year) plus got the toll-free fees down to $0.015 per minute. Yes, that’s right they will save over $0.25 per minute on toll-free. -Craig Lansing, your Branson VOIP expert