Businesses today are often the targets for slick marketing campaigns form the competitive world of business telecommunications, all of which promise to deliver the very best in cheap business telephone calls. And this is often where the problem lies - the jargon and complicated deals employed mean ensuring your deal stands up to scrutiny can actually become rather difficult. Use our guide here provides seven straightforward ways to spot inferior services plus straightforward ways to solve each of these common problems.

Seven ‘Tricks’ Used To Hide Costs With So-Called Cheap Business Telephone Calls:

Trick 1: Is your provider billing you by the minute and rounding charges up to the last penny? If they are, this could be the way in which your provider is obscuring the actual costs of your advertised ‘low cost’ calls.

This common problem has one simple solution: simply change suppliers. The better providers only ever bill by the second and don’t employ any such ‘rounding up’ techniques.

Trick 2: Are you suddenly facing hidden charges, such as mysterious ‘connection fees’?

The more competent providers have negotiated robust working relationships with all the major UK telephony suppliers. Those relationships mean you won’t have to pay connection fees - so again, you may well want to change provider here.

Trick 3: Are you being mislead that cheap business telephone calls always a loss of call quality?

This simply isn’t the case providing your provider is genuinely competent - you should expect low call charges and the best possible call quality as standard. Ask to discuss money saving options like VoIP for business, a telephony solution which securely routes your calls using the internet. If this solution is correctly configured and managed, call quality should not be problematic.

Trick 4: Were the cheap charges for local and national calls prominent in the advertising whereas higher international call charges were buried in the ‘small print’?

The unfortunate situation is that some of the less competent companies deliberately employ ‘confusion marketing’ tactics to draw attention away from the less attractive components of their call packages. Today it just isn’t necessary these days to pay those higher charges for international calls. Have a discussion with one of the better providers about VoIP for business to get cheaper calls to any location worldwide.

Trick 5: Does your bill include minimum call charges?

This is another prime example of poor industry practices which are all too often employed to bolster the advertised ‘low cost’ rates. Again, the better providers don’t collude with this practice and you should not hear any mention of minimum call charges at all.

Trick 6: Are you being expected to take some services which seem inappropriate?

Your may find unscrupulous suppliers encouraging or pressurising you sign up for systems and services which don’t suit your business needs. This can become a will be able to provide you with the latest in business VoIP facilities. This is a specifically configured system which can save businesses as much as 50% on line rental costs plus deliver substantially cheaper routine call charges.

Trick 7: Is It Virtually Impossible To Fathom The Bill And Telephony Options?

This is our final example of poor practice here - it’s a confusion marketing method to create a type of ‘smoke and mirrors’ approach. The thinking is that if the customer doesn’t fully understand the ‘technical’ jargon, they will accept the bill without questioning its contents. If this sounds like you, the solution is to become pro-active - politely challenger your supplier to fully explain everything to you only using plain English, and ask them how the charges relates to current market rates. If you find this is an issue, simply find another provider prepared to avoid jargon and operate with greater transparency.

To sum up these seven points: there does seem to be an unfortunately industry theme of working to confuse business customers with complicated and unnecessary jargon. Insist your provider only ever uses plain English and always behaves in a completely transparent manner = for both customer service and those all important bills. You should be offered all you the latest products as standard; be assured that your supplier works with the latest technology particularly business VoIP without asking you for ‘premium charges’; and know that the company has long-standing relationships with BT for quality assurance.