Husbands business needs help with phone bills plea

A question about : Husbands business needs help with phone bills plea

Having had great success using this chat forum to reduce my home phone bills, my husband was so impresssed he has asked me to do the same for his medium sized business.

Please help me impress him again. This is a bit more complicated so any responses the following would be greatly appreciated!

1.Can businesses use the 18866 and if so can they get a gadget to do the prefix automatically (if so which one and what would it cost?)
2.Anyone know best phone call rate- i was told of a company called Cavendish who do a rate of 1.78p/min - anyone use them or could i do better with a more well known company?.
3. How do you find out all the business tariffs anyway?

4.Would it be unpopular to suggest call barring for premium rate, international, 0870, 0845 etc or mobile numbers for the company (with a pin override on certain lines) or is there an alternative?.

5. I have no idea what setup the company has at the mo but i'm assuming they want to stay with BT for rental - is that the best idea?

6. Is there any particular information i should check with them first?, I am going in to see them on Friday this week to talk costs over with them so any help from you kind people out there will make me seem knowledgable rather than interferring spouse!.

Sorry i have so many questions but really hoping someone can help me with some, if not all, of them.
thanks
noo

Best answers:

• 1. Yes businesses can use it. You can store the 18866 prefix on a memory button on your telephones. Or, if you have a sophisticated switchboard it might be possible to tell it to prefix all dialled numbers with 18866 or whatever prefix your chosen operator uses.
  2. At the moment 18866 are about the cheapest, in some instances 1899.com are preferable. You mentioned a Cavendish rate of 1.78, but you didn't say where the call was being made to for 1.78. I assume it is UK National? 18866 will allow you to make an untimed UK call for 1p.
  3. You look at this site. Or if you feel your phone bill is huge, then you may be able to negotiate with a network service provider. You will be hard pushed to beat 18866 and/or 1899.com.
  4. You should bar Premium Rate (09) range as a matter of course. BT will allow you to do this free of charge. It would not be practicable for you to bar 0845 and 0870, or mobile numbers if you are a business customer. BT will allow you to bar International numbers also, but they will levy a charge of around Ј1.75 monthly to do this. Remember that BT's call barring for Internation numbers will not work if you decide to use 18866 or some other operator.
  However, you might consider attaching an 0870 number to your business lines and thereby generate an income from your callers. This will help offset your phone bill.
  5. Yes, do stay with BT for line rental because this allows you to route your calls through another operator via the BT lines, should you choose to do so. BT are bound by the terms of their licence to allow you to do this. Other telcos are not dominant enough in the market place as yet, and such OFCOM (the UK regulator) does not insist that these companies allow other telcos to use their lines.
  6. Assue you mena you are talking to BT on Friday? Just take the exchange lines from BT and route the calls via somebody else.
  Hope this helps you.
• I put my PC guy on to 18866 and he uses it all the time from his business line.
  I also referred a friend to TalkTalk for Option 2 and she then referred her husband for their village shop phone so although most of the shop calls are through the day they do get free calls between the house and the shop.
  I would also get someone to check through the website that gives you the alternative numbers for dialing 0870 numbers that the business dials regularly. Sorry I can't remember the name or give you a link but I am sure someone will come along who can
• Thank you all so much for your advice. This chat forum is really brilliant.
  I may have to post this on the main site too but just thought i would try here first
  is there a risk that if you use 18866 for a business (around 40-50 people) that there could be problems with quality or access?
  If so, what is the next cheapest calls provider?