Price Quote
Included here is information regarding the general arrangement, 30 day free trial, service guarantee, Terms of Service, pricing considerations and placing an inquiry for service.Updated April 21, 2008.
For an overview of Centratel, see "Why Centratel?," a message from Centratel's president. For an overview of the telephone answering service industry see "About the Industry."
We are sorry but we do not take applications for new or "startup" companies. Note also that Centratel does not accept all applications for service. Additional consideration is given to the business or professional office that has been in operation over two years and is clearly searching for quality rather than simply price-shopping. Also, in order to keep our service quality high, we only accept new accounts that fit into one of our nine specialty categories. Due to this careful screening process, our average client tenure is over seven years.
We do not ask for a term contract for service (our clients should have the opportunity to evaluate their arrangement with us each month). Our Terms of Service are simple and straight forward. Accounts are billed on a month-to-month basis. New accounts have a one month, no-fault, money-back guarantee.
There is a one-time deposit of $100.00 (complex accounts may be more). This deposit is refunded should the new account not elect to continue after the one month free trial or when the account has been active for a period of three months (the deposit will be refunded as a credit on the 4th month's billing).
Note! At Centratel, we use a “monthly" billing cycle in which invoices are compiled from the first day of the month to the last day of the month. When soliciting quotes from other telephone answering services be sure to ask if the base rate charges are monthly, or if they are billed on a “28 day" billing cycle. 28 day billing cycles have become popular with many answering services as some customers, without careful consideration, assume 28 days is equal to a month. Customers billed on a 28 day cycle actually receive 13 billings per year and therefore overall costs for service are higher.
Comparing apples and oranges:
Centratel and most other answering services charge by the "work unit." Some charge by "time." With both billing methods there is a recurring (28 day or monthly) "base rate" which includes a fixed quantity of work units or minutes. Once this allotment is exceeded, "overcall" charges begin.
Comparing pricing among various telephone answering services is a difficult game as there are many ways to calculate unit charges and each telephone answering service has its own formula.
In order to provide you with a cost estimate, we ask you to give us the average number of calls you expect Centratel to process in a monthly period as well as a description of how your current service delivers call information to your office and your on-call staff. Please consider that even with this information it may still be difficult to provide you with an exact figure. We won't have a truly accurate estimate of your account's monthly costs until we have handled your calls for at least a month. So, despite the initial difficulty in estimating charges, we should have a good idea of what your average monthly cost will be by the end of your free trial period.
Remember, the first month of service is at no charge: Whether you decide to stay with Centratel or not, you will NOT pay for this first month of service.
Any answering service is highly dependent on human decision making and in the course of a day a multitude of human decisions are made; sometimes these are "grey area" decisions. Errors can be made. Also, telecom equipment can fail. Although Centratel's error rate is far below industry standards with one customer reported error per 8,900+ message transactions (January-March 2008) See Terms of Service.
Please fill out the form below. If we receive your request for a cost estimate between the hours of 8am-4pm PST (11am-7pm EST), Monday through Friday, our Account Manager, Andi Freeman, will call you back within an hour to discuss your specific requirements and to give you a general price quote.
Submit the above form and, if during regular business hours
8am-4pm PST(11am-7pm EST), Mon-Fri, we'll get back to you within the hour!
Thank you.
