Telephone Query

[junejuno]

Hi All,
Not been on for a while, been busy working through the set up of our new salon. I hope that everyone is weathering the current financial climate as best they can.

Can anyone help with a question about telephone calls? We rent chairs and beauty rooms but don't work in the salon ourselves, We have a landline in the salon which is to be used for clients to ring in and make appointments and to operate the Streamline card payment machine.

We pay for the landline rental and any calls we make from the salon and the girls use their mobiles to contact their clients. The problem is that now the landline is being used to make their business calls, a cost they should be responsible for themselves as they are all self employed.

We don't mind this as long as they log their calls and pay for them at the quarter end. They need to be logging their own business calls if they want to use the landline in this way but I can see this being a problem. Can anyone suggest a different way of doing this? I thank you in advance for any advice anyone may be able to offer.

 

[champagne]

The salon I used to work in had incoming only & the staff contacted their clients via their personal mobiles.

Personally I would expect that I could make business calls within my rent payment. I thought & would expect that elec, water, rates & phone all came in with the rent.

 

[junejuno]

Hi Champagne,
All overheads such as water, rates, gas, elec are included and all this was discussed at the start. It is all very clear in their contracts. The girls are all independently working their businesses from our salon and I feel that it is one of their business expenses. We do pay for the line rental and the card payment rental as our contribution to the set up.
We also pay for a large amount of advertising to help promote their business for them and offer help in this regard in any way we can.

Perhaps the way forward is to go for incoming calls only.

 

[angelina221]

I pay £25 a month for my phone rental and that includes broadband and free calls.
Maybe you could get a better deal on your phone rental.
As for the PDQ machine, a lot of salons charge a % for every transaction.
My girls work on commission and i don't charge for using the phone.
My girls bring in a lot of business and i am under no illusion that without them i wouldn't have the business i have today.
I think if you are charging rent then things like phone calls should be factored into what you charge and that they can pay a set rent without worrying about extra charges.

 

[Blue Rose]

I pay £25 a month for my phone rental and that includes broadband and free calls.
Maybe you could get a better deal on your phone rental.
As for the PDQ machine, a lot of salons charge a % for every transaction.
My girls work on commission and i don't charge for using the phone.
My girls bring in a lot of business and i am under no illusion that without them i wouldn't have the business i have today.
I think if you are charging rent then things like phone calls should be factored into what you charge and that they can pay a set rent without worrying about extra charges.

That sounds a good deal. Who's that with & what sort of package?

 

[jes]

Hi,

I think it would be best to include a reasonable fixed price into their rent that would allow them use of all your facilities (electric, water, telephone, card machine etc) Obviously stipulate that there should be local calls only and no home calls.

Jes

 

[junejuno]

Thanks for all your replies. Local landline calls aren't really a problem it is mobile calls from a landline that soon spiral out of control. I'm not sure what the answer is.

 

[angelina221]

That sounds a good deal. Who's that with & what sort of package?

I'm with talk talk business.
My free calls don't include mobile calls.
Had another company come round the other day and they offered the same price and mobile calls were capped at 30p per minute.

Broadband & Phone Packages | Over 50% Saving on BT at XLN Telecom

 

[leonnib]

im with xln and it not bad for calling mobiles.