Getting the Price You Pay Closer to the Price You Were Quoted – Finding and Dealing with Hidden Carrier Charges and Surcharges

Staying Connected Webinar Series –  
D. E. Boehling.  

Every other month, LB3 attorneys and TC2 consultants bring their wealth of experience and hands-on daily work in telecom and IT sourcing to bear on today’s most critical questions. On Tuesday, February 14, 2012, at 12 pm Eastern time, LB3’s Deb Boehling and TC2’s Theresa Knutson presented the latest installment in our Staying Connected, “End Users Only” series to help you identify and mitigate the “extra” costs the carriers tack on to your bills.

Telecom carriers can make money by raising rates, but face competitive pressures to reduce them. To resolve that dilemma they quote competitive “nominal” prices, then pile on surcharges and miscellaneous fees. No charges for access coordination, access function, multiplexing function, central office coordination, network connection, paper invoices, toll-free routing control, VEC monitoring, web portal, reports, or CD/call details ring a bell? If not, you didn’t negotiate them (or get them waived) in your contract.

That’s too bad, as they represent significant add-on costs, some of which have been steadily increasing. But there is hope. Once you know about the extras, if you have leverage (uncommitted traffic, a competitor salivating to get some business that you are willing to consider giving it, etc.), the carriers will address them to reduce the unpleasant surprises.

Theresa and Deb presented a detailed tutorial that explains how to identify these costs and charges and what enterprise customers can do to protect themselves from the carriers’ mostly hidden efforts to assess and increase them.