Realizing the Cost of Enhanced Toll-Free Services

Toll-free numbers have the greatest variety of add-on services available, and every carrier assesses the fee in a different way. One carrier may charge a one-time installation fee when you activate a number, and another may activate numbers for free but collect a monthly recurring charge (MRC). Any feature you add onto your toll-free numbers may have a one-time nonrecurring charge (NRC) on it or a continual MRC, but is rarely free unless you negotiate to have the fees waived.

There are exceptions to every rule, but the two fees that you can always expect to see in relation to your toll-free numbers are:

• The standard per-minute charge for usage. Just like you pay a per-minute fee for your outbound calls, every toll-free call is charged for the time the call is active. The rate is generally a little more than what you pay for standard outbound calls. The only way you can avoid the per-minute fee for toll-free calls is if you have a package deal with a flat rate for all of your services. I can guarantee you that even if you have a package deal like that, somewhere in your contract or the contract of your carrier is a calculation for usage based on a per-minute cost.

   Warning!  Charges for toll-free calls vary! Your contract for toll-free service probably has a standard set rate plan for calls that only originate from the lower 48 states. If you are about to begin a campaign in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, or any part of the Caribbean, check your rates before you send out the fliers. These areas may only cost 5 or 10 cents per minute to call out to, but inbound calls on your toll-free number may easily be 25 to 50 cents per minute. Ouch! Call your carrier to confirm the rates in writing before you receive a $5,000 phone bill for calls on your toll-free number from Puerto Rico.

• Pay phone surcharges always apply. Unless you have a contract with a pay phone provider, you will be required to pay the 55-cent pay phone surcharge on all calls to your toll-free number from pay phones.

Aside from these two fees that 99 percent of businesses find on their phone bill, there are other ways that carriers charge you for toll-free service. No two carriers are the same, so you will have to extract from them all the charges and fees that are in their ancillary fees list. They may also be buried in your contract, but it is worth the hour to read through all the sections. Some of the more common fees to ask about are:

• Toll-free activation fee: This may be a charge of a few dollars per toll-free number to build the routing plan and activate your number. If you have less than 20 toll-free numbers, you may be able to negotiate this fee to be waived. If you have more than 50 numbers, ask your carrier whether you can send the numbers over as a bulk load (you just list the phone numbers in an Excel spreadsheet or Word document instead of filling out the same information on multiple paper order forms) to reduce the charge. The bulk load process is probably automated and is definitely quicker.

• Monthly recurring fee per toll-free number: Even if you don’t have any calls on a toll-free number you may be charged for simply having the number active. All the carriers are charged about 20 cents (the rate fluctuates) per number by the National SMS database for maintaining the records on each toll-free number.

• Fees for enhanced routing features: If you have Time-of-Day, or geographic routing on your toll-free numbers, you may be assessed a fee for that feature. There is, of course, no industry standard for this fee, but you should ask to see if there are any of the following fees on your enhanced toll-free features:

  • One-time installation fee per toll-free number: This may be as little as $1 per number or $10 per number. It is generally not a massive fee, but if you have thousands of numbers, the cost adds up quickly.

  • One-time installation fee per dedicated circuit/order/trunk group: Sometimes a feature for dedicated toll-free numbers is not actually built on the individual toll-free number, but actually built on the circuit that receives the number. When you are looking at rebuilding or adding features to a dedicated circuit, the fees can be anywhere from $100 to $700 per circuit. The fee may be assigned, not per circuit, but per order or per trunk group that is a partitioned section of a dedicated circuit. Be sure to know at what level the fee is assessed.

  • Monthly recurring fee per toll-free number/circuit/trunk group: Your carrier may charge you a one-time installation and a monthly recurring fee for enhanced features. The monthly fees may quickly add up to more than you are willing to pay for the service. You really need to know what the fee is based upon to know what you will be paying for it every month. It is better to pay $50 per month to set up DNIS on one circuit than to pay $50 per toll-free number for the 500 numbers that ring into the circuit.

• Release fee when your toll-free number leaves your carrier: Some carriers get you coming and going in the toll-free world. They not only charge you to set up the new number, but they also charge you when they release the number to your new carrier if you change carriers. There is some work required to release a toll-free number, so carriers that are looking for that extra sliver of profit margin may charge you to release the number as well.

• Monthly fees to access Web tools: Carriers that have Web portals may not simply inflate their per-minute charges to provide the service. They may actually recover what they spend in development and maintenance by assessing a monthly fee or per-transaction cost. These fees may not be immediately visible to you until you use the portal for a month or two and determine how much you use and need the service. I suggest that you see how quickly you can cancel the tool if you want to and if there is any contract term on it. If you find the feature is nice, but too expensive, it is better to cancel it in 30 days than to be locked into it for another 10 months.