Horror Story of the Week: Surprise Pay-Per-Use Charges.

October 3, 2011 By Melissa Harlow 1 Comment

Surprise, Surprise – You Have Pay-Per-Use Charges

Having the right plan for your company’s mobile devices can hugely impact your mobile expense management. The right plan, can help reduce overage charges, or, in the case of features, pay-per-use features. What would happen if the features or plans you had in place, were to disappear?

Here’s the Situation:

While going over your company’s bills, you notice a user who would benefit from a higher messaging plan. You email your corporate rep with the change you would like to make and leave it at that. A couple days later you receive your confirmation from the carrier that the change has been made.

The next month your receive and open your bill, then nearly die of a heart attack. Where you had expected to see savings from changing the plan, you are now seeing thousands of dollars in usage charges on the same line. Somehow the users data plan had been removed, and has been paying for the 200+ MB of usage at pay-per use pricing! Maybe it’s a mistake you think. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Billing Errors, Cellular Expense Management, Communications Management, Cost Reduction, Mobile Expense Management Tagged With: billing errors, cell phone plan, Cellular Customer Service, Cellular Expense Management, mobile device management, mobile plan management, wireless expense management

Travel Pack Combos

September 28, 2011 By Carol Strabbing 1 Comment

What’s In Your Travel Pack Combo?

As the Cellular Carriers continue to tweak their mobile plan offerings, one thing they are selling a lot of is the Travel Pack Combos for travellers going to the US from Canada.

These combos offer Voice and Texting, Voice and Data, or Voice, Texting and Data allowances, at reduced rates.

But are these offerings the best option?

Preferred LD Rates

September 7, 2011 By Carol Strabbing 1 Comment

Does Your Mobile Service Provider offer Preferred LD Rates?

Mobile Expense Management

As carriers are pressured to bring mobility plan costs down, they constantly find new and less obvious ways to get money out of your pocket. A long favoured way is to keep increasing the rates they charge for Long Distance calling. Standard plans now charge $0.40 per minute!

Rogers, at least, has gone back to offering a Preferred Long Distance Rate feature that can be added as a $5 option. This feature will then give you a rate of $0.10 per minute for calling long distance from Canada to Canada or Canada to the US.

Travel Saver Options

August 31, 2011 By Carol Strabbing 1 Comment

Mobile Plan Management with Travel Saver Options

Business trips are nothing new, and have long been a part of how we do business. Cell phones have become an integral part of our business too… but these two realities of business when combined have for too long been a huge expense with few options for relief.

Large company’s with fleets of employees travelling around the world on their behalf have had to pay upwards of $4 per minute for using their phone when outside of their country. Bills for upwards of $1,500 would not be uncommon for making and receiving calls while travelling.

Horror Story of the Week: Enormous Roaming Bills

August 22, 2011 By Melissa Harlow 2 Comments

Roaming Bill Mishaps – Imagine yourself in this situation:

If you have ever been in charge of the mobile expense management, chances are there have been times when you have cringed opening your wireless bill. Based on usage, the charges fluctuate, big one month, small the next. If you have ever had a user with roaming charges, then you know how much of an impact usage can make. Those charges can get high, however imagine yourself in this situation:

One of your sales persons, or VP’s are travelling outside of the country on a business trip. They tell you that they anticipate using their phone frequently. In an effort to help reduce the potential costs you make a mental note to call the carrier and add some roaming packages. A few days pass, the user leaves and returns. You don’t think much of it until your wireless bill comes in….. and you nearly die of a heart attack. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Billing Errors, Cellular Expense Management, Communications Management, Cost Reduction, Mobile Device Management, Mobile Expense Management Tagged With: billing errors, business expense management, canadian telecom expense management, Cellular Expense Management, mobile device management, mobile management, mobile phone management, mobile plan management

Flex Rate Plans

August 19, 2011 By Carol Strabbing 1 Comment

Which Mobile Plan is Best for Your New Employee?

When a new employee is issued a phone, you are often left guessing as to what their usage will be like. Putting a user on a low usage plan when the user actually is a high volume consumer can result in HUGE charges for additional minutes. I have seen bills where a new user was put on a 100 minute plan, then used 450 minutes. These additional minutes were billed at $.35 / minute… that means the additional usage cost the company $122.50 on one month of billing.

If you are looking to set up a new user and are not sure what their usage will demand, consider one of the Flex Rate plans. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cellular Expense Management, Communications Management, Cost Reduction, Mobile Expense Management, Telecom Expense Management Tagged With: canadian telecom expense management, cell phone plan, cell phone plans, cellular cost audit, Cellular Expense Management, mobile plan management, reduce communication expenses, telecom cost audit, telus, wireless expense management

Business Best Practices Do Not Believe in Status Quo

August 17, 2011 By George Gill 1 Comment

Status Quo As A Best Practice Might Kill Your Business

Some businesses have the big guy as their competitor. Some have a whole bunch of competitors in a local block. Some businesses have so much competition, that its easier to say who the’re not competing with. However, our competitor tops them all! Our competitor is “status quo”. Yup, I’d rather say I’m competing with XYZ Company than to say – we don’t really have anyone that does what we do or the way we do it (TEM 360° Solution). At least you can compete with the other women/man. Ok, but this is not about me venting that I have no direct competition to speak of. This is really to discuss that viral disease that slowly gets a company called “Status Quo” and how to avoid it with best business practices.

I want to share a story about a meeting I had several years ago, with Toyota and the manager of their mobile management team. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cellular Customer Service, Cellular Expense Management, Communications Management Software, Cost Reduction, Telecom Audit, Telecom Expense Management Tagged With: accountability, business expense management, canadian telecom, canadian telecom expense management, Cellular Expense Management, GILL Technologies, mobile management, mobile phone management, mobile plan management, reduce communication expenses, Telecom Audit, telecom cost audit, telecom customer service, Telecom Expense Management, telecom management, tem

Activating a SmartPhone with NO Data Plan

August 10, 2011 By Amy Prete 1 Comment

Want a Smart Phone but do not want to subscribe to Data plan??

I was faced with a problem the other day with one of our clients – they wanted to get a Blackberry for a user – however – this user did not require a data plan. They wanted him to have a blackberry to keep all company hardware uniform for internal reasons – however - they were discouraged at the price of the hardware due to not having a data plan!

Example Rogers BB 9800 $99.99 on a 3 yr term with data – with no data plan the unit will be $424.99 on a 3 yr term – In order to oblige the client with desired pricing – and follow the system guidelines set out by the carrier – we utilized the following solution!

Text Messaging – Are you covered?

July 15, 2011 By Carol Strabbing 2 Comments

Did you notice any increased charges on your mobile billing lately?

Text messaging has gotten a little more expensive on two of the big Canadian three.

Bell Mobility and Rogers Wireless have now begun to charge $0.20 for text messaging outside of a text plan.

That means anyone who does not have text messaging included with their cell phone plan or as an added feature, or anyone who exceeds their number of allowed sent messages will be paying $0.20 for each text message.

This adds up quickly! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cellular Expense Management, Cost Reduction, Mobile Expense Management Tagged With: bell, cell phone plans, mobile management, mobile plan management, reduce mobile expenses, rogers, rogers wireless

Changes And Alerts Report

March 25, 2011 By Carol Strabbing 2 Comments

Come Take a Tour of the Tele-Watch Changes and Alerts Report!

Tele-Watch makes managing your Communications so much Easier!

To get more information on Tele-Watch our Telecom Expense Management (TEM) services

please visit us at:

www.gill-technologies.com

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