Giving BellSouth the Finger

I hate hearing “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

It’s wrong. And I’m convinced whoever said it was not a business owner.

A business owner knows that saving a penny is better than earning a penny, all else being equal. That’s because it takes more than a penny of sales to generate a penny of pure net profit. Every penny in sales gets whittled down by taxes, marketing costs, backoffice admin, and other expenses.

Switching to Low Cost Vendors

One way to save some extra pennies is to re-evaluate vendors from time to time and switch to new ones if it makes sense.

My wife has been dying to call up BellSouth and tell them to cram it. We pay out the nose for service, plus taxes on top of taxes on top of extraneous fees.

We have high speed internet through the cable company (love it) and we each have a cell phone.

So our plan is to:

• Set up Vonage at my new office
• Use our cell phones at home
• Use free (or nearly free) software for sending and receiving faxes

Whether you’re a startup entrepreneur or you’ve been successful for years, trimming the fat every once in a while is a great idea. I look at my automated charges and shake my head at some of the stuff I’m still paying for, like old unused hosting accounts.

Closing the door on the phone company is a big cost savings, but it’s not worth it if I end up with a horrible connection and a patchwork of second rate solutions that only frustrate my clients (and me).

Vonage Review

Whenever I contemplate a big purchase or important vendor decision, I see what real customers have to say. So I went to Cnet.com and found a ton of reviews.

Let me save you the time of reading through the reviews. I’ll sum it up for you:

Vonage is like Hillary Clinton, people either love it or hate it.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Some people report crystal clear service
• Low cost to start

Cons

• Tech support outsourced to India
• “Support” personnel are very pushy
• Some report horrible service

There were tones of reviews, and they were all over the map. But with the free month offer, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

What I’ll share in my next post is exactly what I found out, and I’ll also share with you how I saved myself $34 right off the top.