I spoke about the importance of ordering your Carrier Services early when moving locations, and this time I want to talk about another issue with Carrier Services - bill reconciliation.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to audit your telephone and Internet bills on a regular basis. We recommend once every year at a minimum. The problem is that once you’ve negotiated a Carrier Services contract the bill usually gets sent to AP and paid automatically. Unless someone specifically says “take a look at that and tell me if it’s correct” then it just gets paid. That’s not good.

At Unitel we have a group within our Operations Department that handles all our Carrier Services support for our Gold Seal customers. They work with clients and carriers when their service is disrupted and also perform audits and bill reconciliation.

Just as an example…..in the last month our group negotiated a $14,000 and a $35,000 credit for (2) two customers! Both clients had relocated and had been billed for several years for services associated with their former location. Our group found the errors and contacted the Carrier involved to negotiate a credit.

So whether you do it, you hire someone else to do it or you have us do it – I urge you to audit your bills now and make sure you’re paying what you should for your services.

If there is one thing that our company is known for it’s being honest. So here is a little “tough love” for anyone out there who is going to relocate their offices - ORDER YOUR CARRIER SERVICES BEFORE THE INK DRIES ON THE LEASE. Seriously the number one reason most relocations don’t go smoothly has to do with the delivery of your carrier services e.g. voice T-1’s, PRI’s, Internet connections.

Think about it – you can work without furniture, carpet or paint on the walls but you can’t do anything without your phones and internet.

A guy that used to work for me used to joke around saying “hey, we’re not delivering a pizza here” and he was right. These services are not easily configured and there is a certain number of weeks required to get the job done right. I don’t know how many times we literally have had to call every day to push (and we don’t like to “push”) the client to order the circuits as soon as possible.

So what’s the amount of time you need to budget for installation? Our experience tells us  that you need to place your order 60 days in advance of your move. Now that’s not to say it won’t be installed in 30 days but trust me when I say that 9 times out of 10 there are issues that delay the installations.

The most frustrating thing for us is for the client to wait until the last minute to order the service and then expect that we can force the carrier to move quickly. Although we work with them every single day and know exactly what the process is and how to work through issues, at the end of the day the Carrier’s are so big that they just aren’t able to react to issues in the field as quickly as we need them to. Also keep in mind there is usually more than one company involved in coordinating the installation of services.

Inevitably when a client has installation issues the words “I’ll contact my attorney” come out. Another bit of honesty – good luck suing them. First off the contracts you sign all say, in very legal terms, “you (the customer) understand that we guarantee NOTHING”. Secondly did I mention they are BIG companies with in-house legal teams?

So what’s the message here? Simple – do everyone a favor, including yourself and order your Carrier Services as soon as humanly possible – they are complex and critical to your business and need to be the first item you take care of when relocating your office.

The news lately has been pretty bad when it comes to the economy. Gas is still well over $4.10 a gallon, food prices are up across the board, and today’s news tells us that the housing market and home sales continue to fall.

As you know, Unitel is a Massachusetts telecommunications expert with over 20 years of experience in the industry, installing business telephone systems, consulting on your VoIP and carrier needs, and more. We’ve done our part to counteract the bad news with some good news for businesses feeling a little bit of a crunch, and want to tell you about it.

The news?  Our innovative technology buy back program helps you stay current, and even cutting edge, with your office telecommunications systems.  Our Current Technology Assurance Plan (C-TAP) enables us to offer cash back to customers for their existing communications systems so you can manage your capital wisely now and in the future.

We’ve partnered up with Great America Leasing Corporation to offer this plan, and it’s a terrific opportunity for our clients to have the cash to reinvest where they might need the capital the most.  It’s key and crucial to many, if not most, small and medium size businesses (SMB) in this current economic environment.  It also helps businesses know they are not losing any competitive advantages because they are using antiquated technology.

Companies that take advantage of the C-TAP program immediately qualify for a wide array of benefits including unlimited in-house moves of and changes in their communications systems, unlimited remove programming, routine software upgrades, call accounting analysis, storage systems and backups, priority queuing for additions moves, and changes, guaranteed inventory availability, first in line maintenance and periodic replacement of handset and station cords.  There’s more, but this gives you an idea of the benefits of our C-TAP program.

To learn more about the C-TAP advantages, just ask.  Use our web site’s contact form, write to sales@askunitel.com, or call Mark at (800) 986-4835.