The following tips will help you reduce costs in the local phone service area.
First, become familiar with the seven areas for cost savings on local bills.  They include:

  • Billing Errors
  • Unclaimed Exemptions
  • Over provisioning
  • Sub-Optimum Rates
  • Sub-Optimum Vendors/Facilities
  • Abuse
  • Fraud

1) Local services are the least likely to be monitored. Be sure you check each of the seven areas when reviewing your bills.

2) A back-up or overflow line costs roughly half that of a flat line.
These lines will save you money and are perfect for alarms, metering services, or any line function that has very light use.

3) The “summary” section of your local telecom bill will reveal items that should not be there.  Fraud, (i.e. cramming, slamming, late payment charges, etc.) can be found in this section. ALWAYS thoroughly review the summary section when paying each monthly bill.

4) Always secure the Customer Service Records from your local carrier when conducting a thorough audit of your bills.
Simply looking at your monthly bill will not uncover costly errors that could be buried within the customer service records.