Price Quote Request

Scroll down for information about Centratel’s service guarantee, placing a price quote request, details of the 30 day free trial, Terms of Service Agreement, and pricing considerations.

We are sorry but we do not take applications for new or “start-up” 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 ten specialty categories. (Due to this careful screening process, our average client tenure is over six years.)

We do not ask for a term contract for service because we believe our clients should have the opportunity to evaluate their arrangement without constraint. Our Terms of Service are simple and straight-forward. Accounts are billed on a month-to-month basis. Your first month is free, with no obligation.

Important! 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 fixed recurring “base rate” which includes a set quantity of work units or minutes. Once this allotment is exceeded in a given monthly billing period, additional “over-call” charges begin in which the client is billed based on volume.

Comparing pricing among various telephone answering services is a difficult game as there are many ways to calculate unit charges; Each telephone answering service has its own formula.

In order to provide you with a cost estimate, we ask you to provide 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 messages 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 call traffic 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 one month 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. Note: During their free trial, many of our new accounts choose to continue to keep their current answering service account active, simply forwarding their phones to us for the duration of the trial. In the unlikely event that Centratel service is not satisfactory, returning to the original answering service is easy, just a matter of forwarding the phone lines back to the original service again. If the new account chooses to switch permanently to Centratel, we will credit the new account the monthly base charge billed from the former answering service during the trial.

Answering service quality is absolutely dependent on human decision making, and in the course of a day a multitude of human decisions are made. Sometimes these are “gray area” judgments. Errors can be made. Also, telecom equipment can fail. Note that Centratel’s error rate is light years ahead of industry standards. Our most recent customer reported error rate (April through June, 2010) was one reported error for every 11,230 message transactions processed.

To apply for service, fill out the form below which will help us to estimate your price quote. If we receive your request for a cost estimate on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 7am-3pm PT (10am-6pm ET), our New Accounts Manager, Andi Freeman, will do her best to call you back on the same day to discuss your specific requirements. She will then be able to give you a cost estimate over the phone.

(Yes, you can simply call us if that is more convenient: Call 1-800-664-7159 and ask for Andi.)

(Note: If you contact us about answering service, we will send you a free hard cover edition of Sam Carpenter’s book Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. There is more information regarding the book at workthesystem.com). Published in May 2009, it’s also available on Amazon.