The hidden costs of a cheap answering service
The headline price on an answering service is rarely the price. That is not usually dishonesty — it is that the cheap tiers are priced per call, and neither you nor they know how many calls you will get or what will be on them.
What the invoice actually contains
Telemarketers and wrong numbers are answered, and on per-call pricing you pay for each one. You are buying the privilege of having a broker greeted politely.
A forty-second call billed as a minute is a fifty per cent premium on your most common call.
Quiet months cost the same as busy ones, which removes the flexibility the per-call model appeared to offer.
Evenings and weekends — the hours you most wanted covering — often carry a different rate.
The cost that never appears on the bill
A message is not a booking. Every call handled as a message becomes a task for you: read it, ring back, hope they answer, find the slot, take the details. You have paid to be told about the call and then done the work anyway — and in the gap between the message and your callback, some of those people have booked somewhere else.
The second one, also invisible
Whoever answers does not know your business. They cannot say what a treatment costs, whether you cover a postcode, or how long a job usually takes — so callers with simple questions get a promise that somebody will ring them back. Those were the easiest calls you had, converted into callbacks.
How to compare them honestly
Ignore the monthly figure entirely and work out cost per completed outcome — a booking made, or a question genuinely answered. A cheap service that turns eighty per cent of calls into callbacks is not cheap; it is a queue you pay for. Ask any provider what proportion of calls end without further work for you, and take the vagueness of the answer as information.
Frequently asked
Usually per-call pricing, rounding short calls up to a minute, minimum monthly commitments, and out-of-hours surcharges on exactly the hours you wanted covered.
On per-call pricing, generally yes — you are paying for a telemarketer to be greeted politely.
That a message is not a booking. You pay to be told about the call and then do the work anyway, and some of those callers book elsewhere in the meantime.
On cost per completed outcome — a booking made or a question actually answered — not monthly price. Ask what share of calls end with no further work for you.