One of my duties as a Network Administrator at the company I work for is to assist with activation and configuration of mobile phone devices with different service providers. Our company has been dealing with Nextel, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile as “main” providers of cell phone plans for our employees through the years and all have been at approximately the same level of overall customer service – DISMAL!
- We had 30 cell phone lines under contract with the service provider;
- Each of the phone lines were on its own plan – usually around 450 – 500 minutes/month per line @ $40/ mo per line;
- The majority of the phone lines were underutilized, as the majority of devices are Blackberry units, with separate unlimited data plans/email service already activated. If you have ever used the old style Blackberry device (7510, 7520 models) for a phone call you know it is no fun. Theses devices were used for email and that’s all;
- The average combined monthly usage on all our phones was 750min/mo!!! The absolute maximum for the last 7 months was 1150 minutes in one month in the busiest for our company period;
- There were phones placed on Standby for the last 6 months or more at $6/mo for ...hmmm – I don’t know what?!?
Single 1400 Shared Minutes plan of $80/mo for the first device and 26 add-on lines for $25 ea., where all minutes are shared between all 27 lines. All phone lines on Standby were canceled and there was no penalty for this as they were outside any contracts.
Same was repeated with 3 other phone lines with a different service provider to bring the total amount of savings to $380/mo ($350 from Provider 1 and $30 from Provider 2), which is a whopping $4560 / y Savings just from cell phone bills!!!
- Check with your cell phone provider if Shared Minutes service plans are available. Some providers may have limitations of the total number of lines you can add per such plan;
- Check if there are phones placed on Standby and cancel them if they are not under any service contract. Keep them if still under contract and the cancellation fee is too steep OR argue for the cancellation fee to be waived as you are a business customer with great relationship with the provider;
- Consolidate ALL your cell phone lines under a single Share Minutes plan to save your company some money.