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.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.
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. Note that Centratel's error rate is far better than industry standards. (From January through June 2008, we received one customer reported error per 7,135 message transactions processed). See Terms of Service.
Please fill out the form below. If we receive your request for a cost estimate on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 8am-4pm PST (11am-7pm EST), our Account Manager, Hollee Wilson, will call you back within an hour to briefly discuss your specific requirements. She will then be able to give you a price quote over the phone.
If we receive your request for a cost estimate on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 6am-3pm PST (9am-6pm EST), our Account Manager, Hollee Wilson, will call you back within an hour to discuss your specific requirements and to give you an estimated cost.
Thank you.
