The 1 800 numbers can be a great feature for a business phone systems. It makes some difference what kind of business you own. For example, if you own a restaurant, or a coffee shop, you do not need a 1 800 number, because local customers can call you toll free anyway, and why would someone call you from another state or another country.
But If you own a business that does international shipping, or provides communication services, a 1 800 number is essential. There are a variety of different companies that offer 1 800 numbers to businesses.
They are usually priced by the number of minutes per month they afford. If you are only going to be using the phone for 100 minutes or less each month, you can pay as little as ten dollars monthly, but if you own a large business with lots of phone lines, you'll have to likely pay more in the range of $100 a month. It all depends on what kind of service you need.
If you want to be available internationally, you might have to pay even more, but fortunately, international 1 800 numbers are rarely needed by most businesses. It just isn't practical. Even if you are a large shipping company, you will only have to talk to people in large companies a moderate amount, and they will gladly pay the cost to call you internationally as part of the cost of doing business.
It is in the end much better to let them foot the bill than paying the high and often extreme rates for international toll free numbers.
As a consumer, be wary of 1 800 numbers. I remember when I was growing up, they were all free that was what "1 800" meant. And most of them are still free. Most people are not aware of it, but sometimes people will get a number that starts with those numbers, but charge a high toll to call it.
They will tell you somewhere that there is a toll usually at least they are supposed to, but even if they do, they will hide it, in small print at the end of a commercial or something like that so that you do not notice, and then, when you call, you might be paying as high as $2.00 a minute when you thought you were doing something for free.
This is especially popular overseas where the regulations controlling the phones and the phone companies are not as tight as they are over here.
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