Comparing apples to apples on your business phone bill
At Avid, something that many new customers find too good to be true is the monthly invoice they receive from us. Let’s break down the difference between Avid’s invoicing methods versus other providers when it comes to your business phone bill.
Taxes & Surcharges
When we sit down with a customer, they usually want to discuss how other providers give them quotes for decent prices or comparable prices to what Avid is offering them. Our response? “Have you looked at all the additional charges they tack onto that great looking price?”
If you look at a competitor’s invoice, most list line items such as “service fund surcharge”, and a “regulatory assessment surcharge”. With Avid, you are charged only the necessary taxes that must be paid by law. This includes: Sales tax, State Universal Service Fund, Federal Universal Service Fund, Telecommunications Relay Services, Municipal Tax, and E911. In other words, the word ‘surcharge’ doesn’t exist in Avid’s vocabulary. The problem with these vague surcharges is that they end up costing you more money than the taxes themselves.
Invoicing Style
Most of our new customers come on board after being with a provider that gave them a lengthy bill consisting of about 5-8 pages. This would be fine if all information in the bill was pertinent to the customer. However, the sad truth is that the majority of it is a bunch of additional junk put in there to disguise fine print language, additional charges, and more.
With plenty of experience in telecommunications, the owners built Avid’s invoicing design on the idea that less is more. In other words, we keep our bill to one page. We don’t tack on extra pages to distract from what ultimately matters to our customers: the monthly cost. We don’t add complex language that people outside of our industry may not understand, therefore, don’t question the provider when they likely should.
Additional Assistance Shouldn’t Come at an Additional Cost
One thing that shocks businesses when an Account Executive meets with them is that we don’t find ways to charge them every time they need assistance. At Avid, we believe this is part of the service we want to provide for your business. If you need to reset a PIN, make changes to your call flow, need our techs to come out and tweak something with your equipment, rest assured that this is part of your service as an Avid customer and covered by the ‘Account Administration’ or ‘Gigabit Complete’ line item.
This is consistent on every invoice.
So, when many of these competitors give quotes for their services, it’s essentially a price provided under the assumption you will never need any additional assistance while you’re a customer. However, this is rarely the reality for many businesses.
If you would like to meet with an Account Executive to discuss services with Avid and help you break down your current business phone bill, please call 816-994-7070. At the very least, let’s at least talk about how we can help you save paper on your telecommunication bill every month!
