Anyone who has relatives living out of State or in a different country altogether knows how the telephone companies charge them through the roof for all the long distance calls made. I have often considered stopping contact with my ‘distantly located’ relatives and friends to get rid of the hefty long distance bills, but you know it’s not a practical thing to do.
All you good souls who love maintaining contact with distantly located loved ones, don’t you worry. Today I am not here to suggest breaking ties with them. Instead I am here to share with you all the useful tips to slash the long distance telephone bills that I have since found.
Check your usage pattern
You will need your last 6 months phone bills for doing this. Review all of them and find out if there is a pattern emerging. Is there a time frame when you make the most long distance calls? Are you making more of out of State or out of country calls? What is the frequency and duration of the calls?
Use all of these info and then call up your telephone company to strike a deal. If your company does not provide any good deals, try other service providers and see what they can do to help you save money on your calls.
When you are calling the telephone companies, make sure that you use the toll free customer care number, or you would end up wasting money in the pursuit of discount deals.
Switch to VOIP
Voice over Internet Protocol or voice over telephony as it is commonly called, is an excellent way to cut short the long telephone bills you have been getting for your long distance telephone calls. Since VOIP makes use of the internet networks to transmit the voice data, the costs are cut back considerably.
There are various plans on offer by the VOIP companies. Some will charge you a flat rate (usually @ $0.01 per minute) for all types of calls (domestic and long distance) that you make through their network. Others will offer a very low amount ($ 6) as fixed cost per month but will provide you with the freedom to make as many domestic calls as you want and bundle this offer with 1 hour of long distance calls, totally free of charge.
So, you just need to find the plan that suits your needs best with VOIP.
Bundle Up Your Packages
You are already using cable, internet and telephone. But if you are using different service providers for all of them, you should consider bundling up all of the services into one single package. Buying a bundled up service from a single service provider will help save money and also save you the trouble of having to deal with 3 different companies for any customer support issues that you may face in the future.
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