Danger: Hidden Fees
How other companies hide higher activation fees…
You may think another company is helping you get a number out of the goodness of their heart, because they don’t charge any activation fee. But many people find out the hard way, that there’s fine print and hidden fees that can make it as much or more expensive than our up front and only fee of $49. Even worse some companies can also wind up holding you hostage or at least making it hard to leave, because no matter what they say or how friendly they may seem when they’re trying to sell you something, their goal isn’t to give you flexibility or control, it’s to keep you there.
Updated: 6/8/08: Before writing this I was told that TollFreeNumber.org had a $60 transfer fee that they didn’t usually tell you about until you want to transfer your number away from them. Since writing this I have been informed that this is incorrect. See Aaron P. Morris’ letter. I sincerely apologize for relying on customer feedback without verifying that. The point of this article, that some companies do charge hidden fees is still valid though. For example Onebox.com actually charges $200 to release a number.
Some companies charge you more to have or get a vanity number, even though it doesn’t cost them any more for the ongoing service. Kall8 for instance charges an additional $5 per month for a vanity number with a 12 month minimum. Most customers don’t leave after the minimum 12 months, so the average customer requesting a vanity number probably winds up paying an additional $120. I also found and wrote up a seperate post about Onebox’s hidden $200 fee to release 800 numbers.
So when you can compare our up front and only fee of $49 to another company that backloads and hides the cost, charging you more per minute or per month or making up some other type of fee that prospects don’t know to ask about (or some combination of all of the above) remember that hidden fees almost always wind up costing more than clear up front ones do. In the long run almost everyone is better off dealing with an honest company that charges an honest fee to get the best possible number and then going to whoever has the best service too.
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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David R. (1 comments.) says:
May 25, 2008 at 9:53 am
This page is somewhat troublesome. In addition to titling it negatively, you have referenced a number of toll free companies and suggested that they are hiding fees.
An example of some of the information in this post that is inaccurate is when you write that Tollfreenumber.org has a “$60 transfer fee that they don’t usually tell you about until you want to transfer your number away from them.”
This is incorrect and could possibily be considered libelous. Tollfreenumber.org fully supports it’s customers in porting their tollfreenumbers to any company they choose at anytime if they ever decide to do that.
In the interest of providing your readers true and accurate information, I implore you to edit your post to provide the correct info and possibly remove the Tollfreenumber.org and kall8 brands from your site. Thanks
Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
May 26, 2008 at 1:23 pm
First of all I removed or edited all of the other spammy comments. Posting repeatedly about this or anything isn’t the way to try to win a link from us. All it does is get your IP and email flagged as a spammer, which doesn’t help anyone.
Secondly I’m going by what more than one customer has said. So you may say one things, but experience doesn’t always bear out what you’re saying. And I give more weight to what the actual customers report than what the president claims.
Your lookup tool reserves numbers on people so they have to get them from you. You may not charge transfer fees in all cases but you obviously do in some. If you want to send me the actual policy and fees I’ll post it here or link to that.
But until you send any evidence to the contrary, I have to believe what customers are reporting to me. And no I didn’t write the post today suggesting that TollFreeNumbers.org may be lieing about your age because you wrote this. I’ve been writing most posts almost a week in advance. But it is ironic how it worked out…
Bill
Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
May 30, 2008 at 11:56 pm
We had another customer call up and blast us today thinking we were MyTollFreeNumber.com. As obvious as that might seem, it took a long time to convince them that we weren’t MYtollfreenumber.com.
side note: MyTollFreeNumber.com is also one of the worst shared use companies that we really tell people to avoid, so it’s funny that people would think we are them.
Anyway, we’ve heard this before and I realized today that even though they’re not technically a fee, MYtfn has a kind of hidden fee in that they just ignore cancellations and just continue charging customers. If you refuse to cancel accounts you might have some disputes but they do make a few extra bucks.
I’m going to post something later about how to research companies too, because we’re working on the providers section and researching all the providers. That will have information on any fees we see companies charging.