One of the most common mistakes a lot of people make regarding toll free service is that they think they need to get their toll free number through their local phone company that gives them their local line, or that they need to transfer it back there if they want to use it with that local line. Not only is that false, but they are often the worst place to transfer your local line. Any phone company can send calls to that local line whether they were made to the local number or toll free calls that are forwarded to that local number. From the local phone company’s point of view, they are the same thing.

There are several reasons not to use them including that they are more expensive, harder to work with and more restrictive than a separate long distance company would be. And not only are there several disadvantages to using the local company but there are also NO advantages to using them either. People often say that they want everything with one company but that is definitely not an advantage to the customer. That is ONLY an advantage to local company because they know you are less likely to change anything, even if they do a poor job.

1. All-in-One almost always costs MORE.

This is the first reason because it is the most obvious. Local phone companies often charge as much as twice as much as the more competitive companies for toll free service. They tend to be the large big name companies that get away with that because they are selling based on their name, not their competitiveness. If you’re not the one paying the bill, go with it because it’s easier and you don’t care if you’re paying a little more for the name. At least it’s a known quantity and you’re covered because you didn’t change anything.

If you asked anyone if there was one company that was always better and less expensive for everything, (other than maybe Walmart?) most people would say, no of course not. And they probably wouldn’t buy a car from the same place that they buy their gas. That’s because different companies have different strengths and choice and competition is the only thing that ultimately insures the consumer gets the best deal.

Choosing a company because you already have an account with them is fine if they’ve been doing a great job for you. But if you’re choosing them not because they’re the most competitive in that area, you have to realize you’re going to be paying more. I think it’s a secret rule they teach in business school, that no company should ever be more competitive than they have to, to get your business. You didn’t compare or pick that company for their toll free rates. So if they’ll get a lot of that business even with higher rates, why would they want to lower them?

Your local phone company is often harder to deal with. I don’t count that as a separate reason, but it’s certainly the case more often than not. I can’t tell you how many times people have come back to us frustrated with their local phone company. Big phone companies tend to be more than a little bureaucratic to say the least. If they are responsive and easy to deal with stay with them and even if you have to pay more, keep them. But if you dread calling them, why would you want to use them for another thing you don’t have to?

2. They won’t go to your cell phone.

Most local phone companies won’t send toll free calls to your cell phone for three reasons. It costs them more, they don’t get any outbound long distance (which is all they seem to care about most of the time) and the companies that send calls to a cell phone are usually smaller. So they’ll tell you that it CAN’T be done. They don’t want to tell you that they just won’t do it because that makes them look bad and then you’ll probably look somewhere else, so they try to at least imply you it just can’t be done. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s just that they WON’T do it.

That may not seem like much of an issue if you are sending your calls to a land line now, but it could become an issue if you want to point the calls to your cell phone when you go to a convention or are on vacation for two weeks, or if there’s a flood and your office is closed. Business today requires more flexibility and changes faster than ever before and this is just an important part of being flexible and there when your customers want you.

3. They may require a business line and additional (more expensive) services.

Why do they do this? There is only one reason I can think of, and that’s because they can. I think this comes down to a monopolistic attitude problem to some degree. Or it may just be that 20 years ago that was true, when toll free numbers had to be set up on trunk lines. And the big phone companies were able to sell more phone lines by requiring that. So why get rid of that restriction if it helps them sell more and they can still get away with it because many people still think they have to get the service through them.

I apologize to the big companies, that want to sell you more of the more expensive business lines, but I’m letting that cat out of the bag and telling people that you don’t have to follow their stupid rules any more if you don’t want to. Eventually if enough people know the truth, maybe they’ll change the rules any more if you don’t want to. But they are big companies and we can’t expect them to change their rules very readily. Thanks to competition though, we just don’t need to pay any attention to them. Go ahead and point as many toll free numbers as you want to your existing personal, residential phone or a cell phone, we won’t tell anyone if you break the local phone company’s silly outdated rules.

4. Disaster recovery could be an issue.

This may not seem like much of an issue and I hope it never is for you. But if there’s a real disaster in your local area, like a flood, hurricane, earthquake, or even just a large blackout, your local phone company is going to have their hands full and it may be hard to reach them to change the ring to number even if they are willing to forward the calls to another number. But if you get your toll free service from a separate company they probably aren’t going to be very affected by your local issue and will have no problem rerouting calls to a different office or your new prepaid cell phone either. You can be back in business without missing a beat no matter what happens with a toll free number IF you get it from someone outside of your local area. That flexibility is one of the important benefits of a toll free number.

5. You might move or change phone companies.

The only constant about small business is that things always change. If your business does well it things will change or if it does poorly it will change. And even if it stays the same your own personal situation will probably change it anyway. Small businesses evolve and adapt much faster than large ones. Running my own micro business of just one employee through 5 or 6 moves, 2 marriages and three children until we just reached a million dollars a year, now with a couple employees, I can speak with a little bit of experience, that things always change and your business probably will look nothing at all like what it does today even in the near future.

You don’t want to have to transfer your toll free number just because you move and have to use a different local phone company. They probably won’t prevent you from transferring but it can be a pain, and a lot of the errors that wind up disconnecting numbers by mistake come when you transfer phone companies. If you want to change toll free providers then by all means change, but you shouldn’t have to change toll free providers just because you’re moving. The fewer things you have to change at one time, the easier it is and the less likely you are to have a problem.

6. They don’t offer enhanced features.

You may not need them right now, but as your business grows you may need the virtual office type features of the enhanced voicemail services. Regular toll free service is pretty much the same whether you get it from the largest billion dollar phone company or the smallest competitive reseller. Nobody would be able to tell the difference. But when your business grows and you open a second location, or hire someone to help you handle different types of calls, you may want to give callers different options and route calls to multiple people. There’s no way to know what you’re going to need in the future, but your local phone company doesn’t provide any of those extra features. They’re really not part of the toll free number, as much as they’re part of the voicemail service they added to it, but these extra features can be a great benefit to a small business and would require you to use a different company than your local phone company anyway. See Enhanced Voicemail Services for more information on these services.

I have two bonus reasons. They’re not as black and white as the other reasons so I’m not counting these as separate reasons, but they are very important considerations.

Bonus Reason A: All on one bill really means putting all your eggs in one basket.

Local phone companies have spent millions of dollars trying to convince people that getting several services all from one company is better. They’re doing that because they know that you will stay with that “one” company longer even if they do a poor job repeatedly and cost more than the competition. That’s because they know you won’t want to change everything, so you’ll pay more and put up with more crap because it’s such a pain to change everything. Competition lowers prices and improves service. Locking yourself into one company is good for that company but is clearly bad for you.

If you think being able to write just one check is so important, set it up to be done on your credit card each month so you don’t have late fees and you only have one check to send, but more importantly, the total bill will be less and the service will be better. Don’t marry one phone company, just keep dating them and if they don’t treat you right or a more attractive offer comes along, you can go with the one that’s best this way. It’s good to be loyal and devoted but don’t do that at the expense of the best options. Pick the best at each thing because nobody is honestly the best at everything.

Bonus Reason B: All on one bill doesn’t mean all from the same people.

Quite the opposite is actually true. You can tell because they will give you at least 5 different toll free numbers to call for different types of services. If all in one, meant that you could all up one number and talk to someone (without waiting half an hour) who knew how to do everything you wanted on any of the different services, that would be a good thing. But unfortunately the big companies are almost always a maze of different departments, and if you do talk to a live person there is a high probability they will tell you that you need to talk to a different department despite the fact that you entered your account number and made the correct menu selections repeatedly for what you wanted.

Even if you only have a regular cell phone you will need to talk to different departments for different things and the person on the other end of the phone is usually on a totally different continent by the time you’re done. These are the kind of things you don’t usually get as much with a smaller company.