Customer Notice
Customer Notice
Please be advised of the change in your customer agreement to reflect the addition of these terms:
1. Furthermore, Ability shall not be liable for interruptions of service due to Acts of God, work stoppages or shortages, power failures, failure of any telephone line, or other reasons that are not the fault of or are beyond the control of Ability.
2. Please allow 24 hours for a return call regarding inquiries regarding billing and service issues.
D: Ability may terminate this contract, and all services provided hereunder, with or without cause or breach by a subscriber, on 30 days’ notice.
E: If a toll-free number (TFN) is provided to the subscriber, it is provided only to facilitate the forwarding of the subscriber’s calls to Ability, and the subscriber shall not use the TFN in any type of advertising or solicitation.
Please be advised of a change in your message-sensitive rate plan effective 05/14/09:
The billing structure will be amended to increase a .10 increase in per out dial charge and a .10 decrease in per remote (e-mail, text, or fax) charge.
Regarding Alphanumeric Paging
As of July 1, 2009, Ability will phase out its support for new activations and replacement for alphanumeric paging units because we are unable to find reliable product vendors. Over the last few months, we have purchased dozens upon dozens of pagers only to experience unacceptable failure rates once these pagers reach the clients. Ability assures you that our Startel system is properly paging you with the message and receives a confirmation of the page being delivered; unfortunately, the pagers themselves are experiencing a high rate of failure.
Ability will still have an inventory of alphanumeric units but will no longer make any warranty to their performance. We highly suggest that you change your delivery of your messages to simply receiving a text message from your cell phone. With text messaging, Ability still receives a confirmation of delivery and any of the major cellular network’s coverage and integrity surpasses those of existing paging networks.
To encourage you to switch to text messaging, Ability will provide a monthly savings on your basic service based on your rate plan.
Effective April 1, 2023
Ability is adjusting rates of services due to inflationary pressures as well as the need to increase the pay rate for our valuable staff”
Effective July 15, 2020
There will be a $50.00 office closure charge per day and changes made to voice mail greetings are $15.00 per greeting.
Effective April 2, 2020
The wage/benefit surcharge will be changed to $7.50 per billing cycle
Effective June 11, 2009
Effective with your June 11, 2009 invoice, there will be a rate adjustment of between 4% to 6% in your rate package. This increase reflects Ability’s desire to provide more competitive wages and benefits to all of our dedicated staff.
Effective April 15, 2010
Effective with your April 15, 2010 invoice, there will be a rate adjustment of between 5% to 9% each billing cycle. This increase reflects Ability’s desire to augment our staffing and provide more competitive wages and benefits to them.
Effective July 1, 2010
All inbound calls may be recorded for training and customer service purposes with no charge to the subscriber. Retrieval of these recorded calls is charged at $10 per request or $ 25.00 for each billing period. If the subscriber wishes not to have their calls recorded, please contact our office to execute a waiver.
Effective September 1, 2010
The holiday coverage of $6.95 will increase to $10.00 per stated holiday.
Effective September 1, 2010
The staffing assessment charge will be $10.00 per holiday.
Effective with our 04/14/11 billing
There will be a slight increase in our service charges to provide for more competitive wages and benefits to our staff. In addition, Ability will initiate a per unit charge of $0.02 for accessing our Voice Services (voice mail and/or personalized auto attendant). Please note Voice Services charge are for clients not currently being billed for voice mail time usage.
Effective September 1, 2011
The holiday staffing charge will be $12.50 per holiday. In addition, there will be a slight increase for all maintenance and on-call updates and changes.
Effective April 12, 2012
Effective with this billing, there will be a slight increase in your basic service rate and overage fees. In addition, clients with past due balances may be subject to a $25.00 reminder service charge.
Effective August 1, 2012
Ability will have the option to charge for all inbound toll free usage based on the subscriber’s activity and rate structure. The usage fees will minimally reflect our long distance carrier’s direct cost plus an administrative billing fee.
Effective with our 12/20/12 billing
The service products of “Encrypted E Mail” and “Secure Messaging” are delivered by a third party aggregated carrier. Ability is not responsible nor liable for loss of transmitting the encryption of any or all messages delivered through these technologies. This extends to any hardware or software failures involved in these technologies.
Effective with our 01/17/13 billing
There will be a .10 charge per text, e mail and fax associated with every dispatch call for all clients designated as “Dispatch” or “Dispatch Rated”. Each .10 charge will be displayed as Remote charge on your invoice.
Effective with our 04/11/13 billing
There will be a slight increase in your charges to provide for planned increases for staff wage and benefit increases. Additionally, message and activity searches that are 60 days and older will be processed at management’s discretion and billed at $50.00 per hour.
Effective with our April 10, 2014 billing
There will be a 6 to 8% increase on your basic service rate as well as unit sensitive charges. These increases are required to keep our wages and benefits competitive in the marketplace.
Effective with the 12/18/14 billing
The charge of patching or connecting you to an inbound caller aka “PATCH” will be billed as a separate invoice line item. Previously, “PATCH” was included in the “OUTBOUND CHARGES” invoice line charge.
Effective with the 01/15/2015 billing
There will be an .10 charge increase per text, e mail and fax associated with every dispatched call for all clients designation as DISPATCH.
Effective with the 04/09/2015 billing
There will be a slight increase in our service charges, this increase allows Ability to augment their staffing as well as provide competitive wages and benefits. In addition, there will be a $10.00 charge for each requested “Resource Usage Report”.
Effective with the 10/22/2015 billing
There will be a 3-5% increase in usage charges in addition to clients who will be affected by the supplement charge of $3.50 for Business SMS. Furthermore , please note that requests for credit card receipts, activity and messaging reports and voice clips of messages will be subject to a discretionary charge of $10 per request.
Effective 12/17/2015
The California State mandatory minimum wage increase by one dollar per hour will have a significant impact on our wage structure. Ability utilizes the minimum wage as a benchmark for introductory and probationary employees. Therefore, our more experienced staff requires an adjustment based on this minimum wage increase. Please note that the retention of our staff is essential to providing transparency to your business image as well as the readiness and knowledge of handling critical emergencies for your profession. Ability is instituting a wage/benefit surcharge of $4.50 per billing cycle through 2016 and will forgo our traditional basic service rate increase in April. In addition to another probable increase in 2017 that Federal calls for $13 to $15 dollars per hour, it is prudent that Ability prepares for this spiraling increase in the near future.
Effective 7/12/2016
All billing disputes must be accompanied with payment of the current basic service rate. Any dispute must be presented with 30 day of the most current invoice. Ability reserves the right and sole discretion to resolve the dispute presented. Any requests for billing detail, call activity reports is subject to a $15.00 per report charge and are limited to the past 30 days of service.
Technical issues affecting your telephone system (such as hard down, unable to transfer/receive calls at your office)may be subject to up to a $200 incident charge depending on the adjustment of our staffing and the lengthen of the issue.
Effective 09/01/16
In order to create greater staff flexibility, on call adjustments and changes will be charged at 75 cents/minute. Ability highly recommends utilizing our automated “Intelli-Scheduler” to make the changes yourself. Intell-Scheduler can be accessed by choosing the option “Client Access” on the abilitymessaging website or simply going to the web site www.updateability.com. The site is secure and easy to manage all of your changes. Secondly, it is mandatory to notify our office if your telephone system is down during business hours. Lack of notice will result on placing your account in a prerecorded answering queue notifying the caller to call back. With notice, Ability can add staffing to handle your telephony issues.
Effective 02/09/17
The retention of our staff is paramount to the transparency in handling your calls. Existing staff has the experience and readiness to address service inquiries as well as critical emergencies. Therefore, Ability plans to aggressively increase the wage and benefits for our valued employees. The wage/benefit surcharge will become a mandatory $5.50 charge per billing cycle along with a review of your basic service charge. Ability appreciates your understanding that the value of our services lies with our staff.
Effective 07/27/17
Effective with this billing period, maintenance and any changes and updates to your answering template will be changed at .85/minute” Thank you
Ability appreciates your consideration regarding the surcharge, and as always Ability values your business.
Effective 02/08/18
There is a modest increase in the per unit charge for excess inbound and outbound calls. We appreciate your consideration.
Effective 10/18/2018
There will be an increase in basic and overage charges to reflect the need to upgrade and expand Ability’s technology requirements. We appreciate your understanding.
Effective March 7th, 2019
The per minute maintenance and on call charge will be $1.39. In addition, there will be an adjustment to your basic service rate and overage charge. These changes are needed to provide for continual upgrades to our telephony network and to provide competitive wages to our staff.
Effective November 15th, 2019
Any inquires made regarding a particular message and its associated dispatch will be charged at $25.00 plus a maintenance fee of $1.61 per minute of research time. Notwithstanding if the Ability call agent did not follow stated protocol, the fees will be waived.
Effective May 1st, 2021
Maintenance and on call changes will be billed at $1.91 per minute.
Effective July 22nd, 2021
There is a rate adjustment to offset increases in telephony taxes and surcharges as well as our need to increase agent compensation to keep competitive in the employment market. Ability appreciates your understanding.
Effective January 2022
There will be an adjustment rate to address inflationary charges and maintain competitive wages.
Effective with the 02/29/24
billing, there will be a 5 to 7% increase on all activity charges.
Effective 05/27 Memorial Day holiday, there will be a flat $10.00 to offset increased staffing expenses.
Thank you,
Ability Answering Service
Call for more information: TOLL-FREE: (800) 897-9880