That’s one way to put it. The truth is, a good percentage of people reading this article are losing money through their communications services for the following reasons:
Over 80% of all telecom invoices contain errors.
Your IT budget doesn’t have any room for errors. But when it comes to telecommunication bills, you’re probably paying too much. That’s because, according to Gartner, approximately 80% of all communication services bills are incorrect and riddled with charges you simply shouldn’t be paying for. Here are the top five telecom billing mistakes your hard-working employees don’t have the time, resources or expertise to uncover each month
- Continued Billing for Disconnected Services/Equipment: It happens all the time. You’ve cancelled orders, disconnected lines and returned equipment, but you continue to be billed for services and equipment you no longer have. This can occur for months and even years.
- Incorrect Services/Third-Party Charges: Companies are often charged for services like long distance lines they don’t own. These fees also include third-party billings for services like online faxing, voicemail and internet security monitoring.
- Metering and Database Errors: Often these include local and long-distance charges, these may occur through transcription errors, metering malfunctions — including double metering — and charges for incomplete calls.
- Incorrect Rates/Contract Renewals: These discrepancies occur with newly installed services that don’t receive the quoted rate or discounts, and contract renewals that include lower rates never applied to monthly invoices.
- Tax Errors: Fees applied despite applicable statutes or ruling exemptions, and incorrect taxing jurisdictions. If facilities are taxed incorrectly, associated usage charges are often taxed incorrectly.
90% of all telecom invoices are paid without being reviewed.
As we mentioned above, your organizational team is not trained to pinpoint communication services billing errors. The person at your company charged with this task likely has much larger, more important responsibilities. To-do items like this one take a back seat, especially because it’s not within the person’s core competency. Additionally, communications services invoices are inherently confusing and hard to understand. They are littered with industry jargon and telecom-specific acronyms. Communications carriers know their clients don’t understand their invoices. In fact, they count on it because the invoices are usually paid with no questions asked.
For these two solid reasons, it’s a good idea to consult an Independent Communications Advisor, and we hope you’ll chose us! Contact us at (703) 939-8240 or sales@p2cm.com to arrange an audit of your telecom bill.
Still not convinced? We encourage you to check a couple of our other related articles:
Top 10 Perks of Working with a Carrier-Neutral Telecom & Cloud Solution Advisor
How to Make Sure You Have the Best Telecom Services Agreement