Unlimited toll free service?
I wrote a new post about unlimited toll free shell games that covers the all you can eat, flat rate 800 plans pretty well.
People sometime to go looking for unlimited toll free plans because they like that for their outbound phone service. Ironically it’s the people that need it the least that tend to want this, which is probably why a couple companies you’ve never heard of, pretend to give something called an Unlimited service. It NEVER really is unlimited but they can sell some people on it as long as they hide the limitations deep down in the fine print.
If you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that almost any big business could blow out any really unlimited toll free plan. Companies like 1-800 FLOWERS would LOVE it if they could get an unlimited toll free service. They can generate thousands of dollars per hour in toll free charges so they’d blow any real unlimited service out of the water. No big company uses anything like that because, point blank, it just doesn’t exist. There are ALWAYS catches and limits to it. There has to be. And further, there is NO REPUTABLE COMPANY that sells any unlimited service.
I personally own several domain names related to flat rate 800 service and have even worked and tried to promote a couple services like that, but the only way that they can exist and make money is if the customer uses less than what they’re paying for. I have thousands of small business customers and the average bill for them is much lower than you would think, probably about $12 to $15 per month. That’s because toll free service is cheaper than most people realize.
Most new businesses tend to picture a huge volume of calls and think that $49 a month will be a bargain, and if you know that you consistently use just a little more than what they are charging, it might be. But in reality, most customers will wind up paying for more than they use, and the ones that use more than what they are paying for will usually have a spike of calls at some point and then the company will cut them off, often imposing huge penalties or at best, charging a higher per minute rate or simply asking them transfer away. Either way, you are at their mercy because you can’t afford to have your toll free service shut off when you need it the most.
So the bottom line is that you should never use a flat rate plan or even a block of minutes unless you have a track record of using more than the monthly fee is on another service and also know that you won’t have any spikes that push you too high above what you’re paying for. Think of it as a gambling game and them as the house. You may think you can beat them and may do it for a little while but they wrote the rules (and often rewrite them as necessary) and once you have the number advertised you are at their mercy and the system is set up to insure that the house always wins.
I know a couple people in the industry won’t like someone exposing this but I think it’s also important to point out that I’m probably the only major person in the toll free business that’s not trying to sell you their service. So I really have no axe to grind at all, except to be a valuable resource to my visitors.
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navin says:
January 21, 2008 at 8:13 am
Hello
We would like to have a “vanity” toll free number for our business. I want it to be an 800, 866, or 877 number that ends GET HAPPY or BE HAPPY. I need the plan to have a monthly fee below $30/month with no additional per minute charges. The plan most likely will include around 500 free minutes included.
Can you help us with this?
Regards,
Navin
Bill Quimby (197 comments.) says:
January 21, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Navin,
I can help you with the number. That’s what we do. We’re kind of like the GoDaddy of the phone number business. If you get a domain name from GoDaddy, you can take it to any hosting company for the ongoing service, and if you get a toll free number from us, you can take it to any phone company for the ongoing service too. The cost per minute will vary depending on what phone company you take it to, but the cheapest ones go down to bout 3 cents per minute. We really focus on helping you find a better number because as a marketer I know that getting a good number makes much more difference to the success or failure of your business than the slight if any cost per minute difference from one phone company to another.
Regarding flat rate plan or an unlimited plan, I think you should read http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/blogs/guide/unlimited-toll-free-service.html Unlimited plans are almost always scam and you should never pay for toll free minutes in buckets as you’re describing because, 1. most people starting out have no track record and way over estimate the number of calls they with receive and the expense, 2, you almost always wind up paying for minutes you don’t use, and 3, they are usually just starting out and they take time of ramp up, so you will probably pay for several months like that before things ultimately get going full speed.
500 minutes at 3 cents per minute would be $15. The average for one of the companies we work a lot with is actually $12 per month for stand alone toll free service. You might be able to find someone that will charge you thirty something a month for that but it would be stupid to do. Paying by the minute for what you actually use is much smarter. It means you will pay half as much when you get up to 500 minutes and you’ll pay much less in the beginning while you’re getting things rolling.
It’s OK to include the first 100 minutes instead of having a monthly fee. But there is certainly no reputable company offering buckets of minutes other than enough to cover the couple dollar monthly fee.
Bill Quimby
1-800 MARKETER
*** This comment was moved from another post, because of the relevance to this topic.
Erika Hinson says:
March 20, 2008 at 7:24 am
Can I have my 800# which is essentially a vanity number thru you and have the calls come into my local carrier line where my local and long distance calls are unlimited?
Erika Hinson
*** This comment was moved to this post where it was more relevant. I don’t want this comment to look redundent because it was relocated. ***
Bill Quimby (197 comments.) says:
March 20, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Erika,
That’s how toll free numbers work, forwarding calls to your local number, except that you don’t get unlimited incoming toll free calls. Even if you have a toll free number and transfer it to a company that gives you a plan for unlimited out bound calls or LD. That does NOT mean you get unlimited toll free calls. Sometimes they are very confusing and misleading because they may say you get unlimited incoming calls for free. That means you can have people call your local number all day long at no cost, which is kind of stupid since all land lines basically have that. But anyway there are no unlimited incoming toll free plans.
There are a couple scam companies that pretend to offer unlimited or flat rate toll free service but they are all designed to attract people that are new to toll free and don’t realize how little toll free service they are going to use. You can tell that this isn’t real because they don’t let you transfer numbers in or out, they are very small companies you’ve never heard of before and no major company ever offers this, because it’s not unlimited. Because careful when you think you’re getting something for nothing because they’ve set up their system to look like you’re getting something for nothing, but they’re not stupid and if you do use more than you pay for you’ll certainly find out that they are in control and they’ll make sure you can’t do that again.
.Bill Quimby.
The “Unlimited” Toll Free shell game at TollFreeNumbers.com says:
June 12, 2008 at 10:26 pm
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