I am considering using a Toll Free Service to forward calls to us from a toll free (800, 866, etc..) number. I've found tons of companies out there that provide these services, all at different rates and most have hidden charges and monthly minimums.

Does anyone here use this service? If so, who do you go thru and what are the costs involved? Has it improved your business?

We used Teligent. No per month fees and 7 cents a minute. ATT was a lot higher but has more numbers (a lower cost carrier will not have the range of numbers ATT does). Have not used it much, but probably the customers like it.

I am also interested in obtaining a toll free number, however just like you Ultimate, I found many with hidden costs and such. If anyone is using a great service or know of one, it will be great to hear about it.

www.mineralbeauty.com

Whereas we are generally unavailable to answer calls I am unsure if we should get a Toll Free forwarding service and use our own answering machine or just get a Toll Free voice mail service. Right now we are considering the J2 service for $15 a month which will give us a toll free number to accept voicemail and receive fax pages.

This is who I use and it seems to work for me...

Check it out...........

UREACH

Which service do you use? uConnect or u800/u800Plus?

I use U Connect. Cost is like 6.99 a month weather I use or not. It loaded me with some minutes to start. After those minutes are gone then you can but the minutes in blocks. And it will recieve faxes and it all voice mail. Then you can retrieve you voice/fax mail over the Internet/Phone. The Internet is free to retrieve call by phone takes away from your minutes. It can also page you when you recieve a new message or fax..

Sweet. I was looking into J2 but they wanted $15 setup fee and $15 a month but was limited to VM & FAX. Looks like as long as it doesn't get used much Ureach.com will only be $9.95 a month for the same purpose -- however Ureach has the ability to upgrade should I want calls to forward to us before going to voicemail. Thanks alot CBhale!

Thanks for the info cbhale...im going to look into it.


www.mineralbeauty.com

Ultimatekeychains,

You might also want to look into Capsule Communications. I use them for my toll free.... they just added a per month surcharge of $1.00 (if your monthly usage is less than $1.00/month) - which mine is, sadly to say.

I pay less than $.07/minute. Maybe somewhere around $.05 or less, in state or out of state. I say this because I have the paperwork at my home office and it is not available to me as we speak. I have not had any problems with them at all and you can also have your bill emailed to you - as with most companies now days.

They are out of Philadelphia and their # is: 800 - 972-0600. Or if interested, I can get the name of the person I spoke with.

Hope this gives you some other info to follow up on as having a toll free number is important, and so is paying a low rate.

Beverly Bartlett
Goddess Enterprises

Ultimatekeychains,

Here is a website for Capsule.....

Capsule

Good luck!

Beverly

Thanks Goddess. I'll check that one out too.

If you have a costco membership, they have great merchant services. I believe when I used their phone service the toll-free number was free, but the long distance rates are 5.5c/minute and if you spend $25/month you can get 4.5c/minute.

DetailsArt

QUOTE (DetailsArt @ Jun 24 2003, 12:41 PM)

If you have a costco membership, they have great merchant services. I believe when I used their phone service the toll-free number was free, but the long distance rates are 5.5c/minute and if you spend $25/month you can get 4.5c/minute. DetailsArt

We looked into getting toll-free services with Costco, and decided against it when they faxed the 7 page contract/application to us. Considering what most phone companies require to set up an account, I found Costco's application a little extreme.

We just signed up with SBC Pacific Bell. They had a great package including local, long distance, and toll free for one flat rate- which starts at about 3.5¢ a minute for year 1, then goes to about 5.5¢. By far the best plan I found.

If you are located in California it might be worth checking out. I crunched the numbers and will be saving about $100 per month on our phone bill- and we will just have 1 bill instead of the previous 3 (local, long distance, and toll-free).

Note: we are a corporation and I think the sign-up is a little simpler with Costco if you sign up as an individual.

I'd like to revive this thread to see if any of you have new guidance on toll free number providers. Anything change over the past 6 months?

We're about to find a plan and would like to hear about your experiences with the various companies.

I have a question for people who use Toll Free numbers.

What percent of your total sales come from phone orders?

I got my toll free number a week or two ago. It's like $5.00 a month and 3.9 cents a minute. But I just got a letter from SBC saying that after a year it will go up to 8.0 cents a minute, which almost makes me want to cancel it right now.

But, to answer your question, in the past two weeks it has accounted for around $300 of sales, and even some more pending.

For me I think it will be worth it because most of the people who call end up buying stuff. I have already made enough profit off the sales from it to probably pay for itself for 4-5 months and then some.

SBC (Formely PACIFIC BELL) is my local provider and long distance.

I would say I am on the phone for about 5 minutes... Maybe 10-15 when an actual order is placed. I could be on the phone for 2 Hours! and it would still cost me less than $5.00!!!

I got another order in the past few minutes over the phone. I know they are sales i would not have gotten otherwise. You can tell the people are scared of ordering online and they even leave messages to call them back so they can place the order. Also, a true 1-800 number brings a sense of trust to the store I think.

Another good thing is while they are on the phone i can normally talk them into Rating our Store (Yahoo! or Bizrate), good customer service = good ratings= more sales from Yahoo! and Bizrate.

I'd like to revive this thread, 3 months later. Does anyone have any recommendations? I've come across a lot of hidden fees in services. And, I'd like a service that forwards the 800 number to my cell phone (and not to their message retrieval server.)

I use PowerNet Global, and am very happy. Here's a link:

PowerNet Global

Toll-free forwards to any phone you wish, but they don't have any fancy answering systems, etc. Just great rates, no sign up fees, no monthly fees.

And yes, I do get 1 cent less per minutes for referrals, so if you wanna PM me.....

And if you don't, that's okay too!

Cheers!

I use MCI. I think it's 8 cents a minute 6 second intervals.

Hi,

I've read through all the posts here and I see some good recommendations for services offering toll free numbers. I plan to review them and compare. In the meantime, though, I have a question for other small business owners out there.

I'm a one-person business working out of my home. I'd like to have an 800#, but I don't care to invest in new phones or another phone line coming into the house. I also do not have Caller ID. (I guess I'm in the Stone Age...!)

Is there a way through these services to know whether the incoming call is a business call, coming in through the 800#, or a personal one, coming in through my regular, residential phone number? If there's a way to know before answering, I could answer the call accordingly with either my business name (and my business hat on) or just a plain "hello."

Does anyone use one of these toll free services in the way I've described?

Thanks!

Anita N.
www.strandsjewelry.com (not YET a MonsterCommerce hosted site)

Hi Anita,

My 800# forwards to my existing residential line (I am at home, too). That means I keep my regular local phone directory listing as well as being able to get a company listing for the 800#.

Unless there is a workaround I don't know about, I can't tell whether an incoming call has been forwarded from my 800# or is a local call. However, I have Caller-id and can tell that way. Any unknown numbers I just answer with my company name. There have been a couple of mix-ups, especially with my son's friends, but really very few, and they know I own my own business at home (heck, most of them were in my math classes). When in doubt, I use my company name.

I work out of our home and have 2 "home business" lines (phone and fax) and separate 800 #'s for them. I was with AT&T for years and recently switched to my local phone company at .05 minute.

This is our home # and I can tell from Caller ID whether it's business. Like WhoaGirl2 says I'd rather mute the music and answer with the business name to a friend than just answer "hello" to a customer. Though recently my caller id said "private" (which my daughter, a frequent caller, has). It was a customer, who didn't mind when I explained, but I now answer all calls with business name.

If I'm not here to answer we have voice mail for messages. Occasionally people call (I can tell out of area number from Caller ID) but don't leave a message. If they haven't just placed an order online, I call them back anyway. Most never question why I called when they didn't leave a message. They're pleased that I did.

Our phone orders are 30 to 50% of our sales. Many people aren't comfortable ordering online especially when it comes to entering their cc. Sometimes they just want to talk to a real live person. (Also our customer age group also tends to be over 30 rather than under for the most part.)

I think the 800 #'s add credibility and trust to the site no matter who's viewing it & they are well worth the cost for us (tho it's always good to compare rates occasionally).

There's my 2 cents or should I say 5 cents!

A great company to check out is tollfreelive.com

Excellent customer service, quick turn-around and several features that we really enjoy. After hours paging, music on hold, call announce, etc. You can even assign a PIN# so that if you have an important customer that you want to be able to get ahold of you after hours they can enter the PIN# and the system will transfer the call to your "evening" number.

They have 3 different plan levels starting with 10 extensions and going up to unlimited.

Very easy to setup and manage as well!