[asterisk-biz] Dear Termination Providers,

[Jared Smith]

On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 22:20 -0700, John Todd wrote:
> Why is this? My belief (which is based on painful experience) is that  
> they will always overcharge by 3%-15% because of data slop, and they  
> will make it as difficult as possible for you to argue the cost  
> delta.  It's a way of bleeding the clueless.  If you're smart, you'll  
> know how to catch them at this game.  If you're a sloppy carrier who  
> doesn't care or thinks that it doesn't matter, they'll double their  
> profit on you.

I couldn't agree more.  I once had the opportunity (in a previous job)
to turn up accounts with several different long-distance providers, run
several hundred thousand calls through each one, and then compare their
advertised rates to the bill that came at the end of the month.

We had seven providers that passed our initial screen process and went
on to real-world testing.  Of those, only *one* actually billed what
they said they would.  (And, even more surprising... they were the most
communicative and by far the best to work with.)  Three of the seven
providers over-billed us by more than 25%!

The most common issue I found with overbilling was carriers were
claiming to do six-second or one-second increment billing, but actually
charging for full minutes.  Other common issues included charging for
uncompleted calls, claiming a flat rate but charging a blended rate, or
charging completely different rates than their rate table specified.

I hate to admit it, but I'm now a firm believer that most carriers in
the business of selling minutes are purposefully deceptive, or at a
minimum almost completely incompetent.  I'm also a firm believer that
they feel justified in doing so because their customers rarely challenge
them on it.  (It's human nature to want to avoid auditing the phone
bill... When is the last time you did this?)

In short -- you've got the tools to be able to audit your carrier and
see how well they're living up to their promised rates.  Do your
homework, and you might save more money than you realize.

-- 
Jared Smith
Training Manager
Digium, Inc.