Legacies can often been seen as positive, right? The idea of leaving something good behind for posterity.
However, when it comes to conferencing, legacy rates based on outdated practices can add more than just a few pennies or pence to your bill. We’ll help you identify such outdated rates and fees that might still be appearing on your bill.
Minimum call rates
Some conferencing providers (though admittedly very few these days) implement a ‘minimum call charge’, which is applied to every call regardless of duration – even misdials. The justification for such minimum charges stemmed from the days before reservationless when each call was booked by a live operator at a certain time, with a certain number of guests and for a certain duration. These charges should be long gone, but do pop up now and again on older invoices.
Overages
Similarly, some conferencing providers implement overage charges which can be applied when you go over your monthly allowance of call time. While these fees may be relevant in some cases, the rate itself should be reasonable in comparison to your general per-minute rate. It goes without saying that most web conferencing subscriptions should offer you unlimited service.
Legacy dial-out rates
Until recently, the use of dial-out (where the conference service calls out to an attendee to bring them into the meeting) was fairly rare, and often required a paying a live operator to dial out to an important guest. The cost of employing live operators was the primary reason that rates for dial-out were extremely high.
Now, with modern dial-out technologies that can bring people into calls automatically and no live operators at the helm, such charges should have disappeared. And while there are always exceptions, you should be paying less for dial-out than dial-in. If not, it’s probably time to start comparing rates.
Other miscellaneous charges
Finally, there is the issue of the “other” charges. These could be listed as anything from “general administration,” “service support charges,” or even “environmental” fees. Do you really know what these fees include? Bottom line, if you’re seeing these regularly appear on your bill, it’s time to investigate.
To learn more about how to avoid these issues and others like web conferencing licenses, international dial-ins and more, read our white paper “Are You Throwing Away Money on Conferencing?”
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