# Policies re. employee paid personal calls on work mobile?



## zag (17 Jan 2008)

This has been occupying my mind lately . . . is there any general practice out there that covers repayment of phone charges when an employee who has a work-provided mobile phone goes on holidays ?

I understand that most employers who give out phones don't put any effort into analysing the bills, looking for over use, etc . . .

I know that when I go on holidays and use my work phone I wouldn't mind paying for the calls I make, but none of my employers have ever taken me up on the offer so I have stopped offering.

So, I'm wondering whether *anyone* out there works for a company that asks (or allows) employees to pay the employer for personal calls.  Obviously, there are plenty or personal calls made every day in every office and the effort involved in charging employees for all these just isn't worth it, but I'm thinking of times when significant charges could arise (roaming isn't cheap on many plans) and when the employee is not working.

z


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## mf1 (17 Jan 2008)

My OH is involved in a medium sized company and they do monitor the mobile phone charges. They adopt the view that there is a "norm" as such ( a subjective "reasonable" personal use) which the employees know and don't delve beyond that mostly but they have had a couple of employees who have wholesale abused the phones and ended up with incurring bills maybe twice or three times the size of most of the others.  And all categorically personal calls. I think most of us know that its unacceptable to use a work phone to call ( in my case e.g.) a brothers mobile phone number in the States. 

mf


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## lightup (17 Jan 2008)

In a company I used to work for employees had to pay for all international, roaming and premium rate calls (unless they were higher management or could prove they were for legitimate work related reasons).  

These costs are taken directly from their wages.


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## beautfan (17 Jan 2008)

My boss pays for her personal calls and forwards the bill telling them to pay the remainder.  AFAIK she pay her portion online so there is two payments made within a few days of each other.


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## portboy (17 Jan 2008)

Generally if you have a work paid mobile phone there is ana cceptable limit. Good financial controll will pick up any bills that are outside the norm...manager should then decide whether it is significant enough or not to go after. In a lot of cases it is not the amount but rather the principle that dictates it. Also if you are responsible enough to have a company paid mobile you are responsible enough to know what is acceptable personal use and what is abusive personal use


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## Purple (17 Jan 2008)

It's a case of what is reasonable and even if there is some abuse it must be weighed the cost to the company of going through bills item by item.


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## RainyDay (17 Jan 2008)

I have the reverse problem. I don't have a work phone, so I end up making a fair few work calls from my personal mobile phone. My employer is prepared to pay for these calls if I can produce a detailed bill, but the effort of identifying the work calls and seperating out these costs exceeds the benefit.

It would be great to be able to identify a subset of frequently called numbers as work related, and get these calls pulled out seperately on my bill. Does any phone company offer this facility?


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## ClubMan (17 Jan 2008)

Could you route personal or work calls through something like [broken link removed] thus possibly saving money on them and leaving the relevant category of calls easily identifiable on your itemised bill (i.e. by scanning for the 13434.ie number that you call through)?

Alternatively there may be some official or kludged way to switch between dual _SIMs_ in a phone so that you could use one for work and one for personal calls...

I'm sure that some of the _AAM _lateral thinkers might come up with even more suggestions. Some of them might even be practical!


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## Lorrie (17 Jan 2008)

In my work place the facility to refund the company is available through your monthly travel claim for mileage. I don't often use my work mobile although I pay a set amount per month which is deducted from the claim. This also in my mind covers the few personal calls I would make from desk phone. Management do check mobile bills.


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## ajapale (17 Jan 2008)

up to about 2 years ago I was able to download my vodafone account to ms excel. It was a fairly simple matter to sort data and filter out work calls. For some reason vodafone withdrew this service and replaced it with pdf docs.

My personal calls were about 10% of the the total up to that point. Since then I have paid my employers about 10% of the bill. My employers have been happy with this approach. They would certainly be very unhappy if I were to spend hours sifting through mobile bills on company time!


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## Purple (17 Jan 2008)

I don't check employees’ bills. If I can trust them in a key role in the business I can trust them not to abuse a mobile phone. I would also consider it insulting if I worked my ass off for somebody and they sat me down every month to dissect a phone bill.


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## zag (18 Jan 2008)

Hmm, some interesting posts there.

Just in case someone mis-understood me, I am not coming from the perspective of an employer trying to squeeze money out of my employees, I am coming from the perspective of an employee who actively does want to refund the cost of personal calls I make.

I looked at a similar proposal to Rainydays one in a previous employer - specify a set of work and/or personal numbers and have your carrier report on them seperately.  That would work well in most circumstances.  Unfortunately it looks like none of the carriers offered this service at the time.  It should produce a report like this -
Personal calls
01-234-5678 1m20s 60c
021-345-678 0m15s 10c
Work calls
01-700-7000 15m20s 90c
Unknown calls
00800-800-8000 7m40s 140c

That would make it relatively easy to do the kind of analysis required to provide the refund or re-charge.

Purple - I know where you are coming from, but not all people with phones are trusted.  As an employer (assuming the cost of the calls is *significant*) do you not think that there is benefit to be had from addressing over-spending on calls ?  I know employees need to make calls for work and you don't want to be drilling down and wondering whether that call to the supplier could have taken 3m instead of 15m and saved you 60c or whether they really needed to ring their Granny in Donegal for 2 minutes.  If someone spends a long time on hold to a support number for Nintendo in the US (or worse, China) and runs up a call charge of €20-30 (and then does it again the next day and the next and the next) do you not think this is the same as them taking €20-30 worth of your stock for example and see it as something that should be addressed when it reaches a certain level ?  In one company I used to work for we had a situation where mobile call costs moved from €500 a month to €1,500 a month.  That was an extra €12,000 a year in calls.  If it's a small company and making less than €100,000 a year that is significant enough to warrant checking out.

z


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## Purple (18 Jan 2008)

I agree with you Zag. If I found that bills were getting very big I would do something about it. I just don't like the idea of going after €10-€20 a month worth of personal calls that people make on one of the few perks that you can give them without them being hit for BIK. If the odd month they put an extra €20 on top of that I’m not going to get upset about it.


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## RainyDay (18 Jan 2008)

ajapale said:


> up to about 2 years ago I was able to download my vodafone account to ms excel. It was a fairly simple matter to sort data and filter out work calls. For some reason vodafone withdrew this service and replaced it with pdf docs.


I can cut/paste my calls to Excel from Meteor billing interface, but it is still a bit of a pain to scan each new number called and identify whether work or not. Also, Meteor presents text numbers in a different format to voice numbers, so I have to record each called number twice!


ClubMan said:


> Could you route personal or work calls through something like [broken link removed] thus possibly saving money on them and leaving the relevant category of calls easily identifiable on your itemised bill (i.e. by scanning for the 13434.ie number that you call through)?


Thanks, looks promising. I'm registering now.


Purple said:


> I would also consider it insulting if I worked my ass off for somebody and they sat me down every month to dissect a phone bill.


But can't you imagine the whinging from the public sector bashers without this painful level of audit from public sector employers? "Ow, look at all those lazy public servants getting money for nuttin for the imaginary phone calls" etc etc



zag said:


> I looked at a similar proposal to Rainydays one in a previous employer - specify a set of work and/or personal numbers and have your carrier report on them seperately.  That would work well in most circumstances.  Unfortunately it looks like none of the carriers offered this service at the time.  It should produce a report like this -
> Personal calls
> 01-234-5678 1m20s 60c
> 021-345-678 0m15s 10c
> ...


I'm amazed that they haven't taken a really simple option of picking up the name that corresponds with frequently called numbers from the online texting phonebook, and printing call details by NAME rather than by number on bills. This would make bills much more user friendly.


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## Murt10 (18 Jan 2008)

I get a work 087 bill every month. I have to sign off on the invoice and send to Accounts  for payment. 

The itemised bill which accompanies the invoice specifies the calls and texts that originate abroad, and totals them up for me. Unless I have called a work number from abroad I pay all these. 

Mrs Murt and one of the kids have pay as you go mobiles. Last year, they were worrying about running out of credit on holidays and used my mobile for sending texts. I didn't know until I got home that foreign text cost 0.50c each. Not too expensive on its own, but when the kid starts playing text tennis with her friends, or sends them all the same joke, the costs soon mount up. I also sent a few texts to a US mobile and got hammered for it.

Normally my calls and texts on my mobile bill amount to less that E10 a month. I went through the bill once looking for personal and business calls. I soon gave up as I couldn't tell the difference and it was a complete waste of time trying to establish whether a 10c call was official or private. Now I just send a form off to Salaries every so often authorising them to deduct an amount to cover personal calls.

The system works well. Nobody, as far as I know abuses their phone. 

Personally, I hate using the mobile and stay on it for as short a time as I can. Putting a powerful battery and transmitter against my head, I don't believe that its not frying or damaging my brain. I also get a pain in my chest when I carry my mobile in an inside pocket (jacket or shirt) up against my body.


Murt


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## ClubMan (18 Jan 2008)

Murt10 said:


> Mrs Murt and one of the kids have pay as you go mobiles. Last year, they were worrying about running out of credit on holidays and used my mobile for sending texts. I didn't know until I got home that foreign text cost 0.50c each. Not too expensive on its own, but when the kid starts playing text tennis with her friends, or sends them all the same joke, the costs soon mount up.


If you mean _Vodafone _then _Vodafone Passport _might have helped here?


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## John Rambo (18 Jan 2008)

The first company to invent a mobile phone with two sim cards will make a fortune. Imagine the benefits...one could have a "work" and "personal" phone so splitting bills would be much easier. You could turn off the work phone part when you weren't working but have one phone for numbers, music, photos etc.


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## ClubMan (18 Jan 2008)

John Rambo said:


> The first company to invent a mobile phone with two sim cards will make a fortune.


As I mentioned earlier there are third party add-ons for some handsets that allow this. Here's an example. There may be others that are more or less flexibly/convenient.


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## John Rambo (18 Jan 2008)

ClubMan said:


> As I mentioned earlier there are third party add-ons for some handsets that allow this. Here's an example. There may be others that are more or less flexibly/convenient.


 
Damn...and I thought this time next year we'd be millionaires Rodney!


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## RainyDay (19 Jan 2008)

ClubMan said:


> Could you route personal or work calls through something like [broken link removed] thus possibly saving money on them and leaving the relevant category of calls easily identifiable on your itemised bill (i.e. by scanning for the 13434.ie number that you call through)?


OK - I've signed up for this, and it seems to work. The downside is that to use my saved numbers (as I would want to do for most work calls), I have to call the 13434 access number, wait for them to answer, choose 'send DTMF' from the 'options' menu, select the number from my address book, wait for the DTMF tones to go through, then hit '#' - so it is a bit cumbersome.

Is it possible to program numbers on a Nokia to include a pause, so I could program all these numbers to be played back just by selecting a name from the address book? I remember programming pauses on an old desk phone many years ago to navigate through a voicemail system.


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## Dearg Doom (19 Jan 2008)

RainyDay said:


> Is it possible to program numbers on a Nokia to include a pause, so I could program all these numbers to be played back just by selecting a name from the address book?



There is a 'pause' and 'wait' function. When dialling the number press the * key three times for 'p' (pause) and four times for 'w' (wait). Pause is meant to ait for three seconds, wait is meant to wait for a connection to be made before continuing. Try playing with these - I used to use them years ago when I lived in the US for accessing a long distance service and dialling extensions but haven't done so now for a long time. So something line <13434 access number>w<number># should do the trick.


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## RainyDay (20 Jan 2008)

Dearg Doom said:


> There is a 'pause' and 'wait' function. When dialling the number press the * key three times for 'p' (pause) and four times for 'w' (wait). Pause is meant to ait for three seconds, wait is meant to wait for a connection to be made before continuing. Try playing with these - I used to use them years ago when I lived in the US for accessing a long distance service and dialling extensions but haven't done so now for a long time. So something line <13434 access number>w<number># should do the trick.



You're a star, DD. I think I'm there. The 'w' function did indeed wait for the connection. The only catch is that I get prompted to confirm the sending of the DTMF tones with a 'Press send to send number' message on screen. 

HOwever, a single 'p' seems to wait for the desired duration, and the go ahead with the DTMF numbers without any confirmation. I just hope this works reliably all the time, and isn't dependant on any variables.


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## Dearg Doom (21 Jan 2008)

No problem. The only issue with using 'p' is if the call doesn't connect in the 3 seconds, then the tones will be sent anyway and that's going to make a mess of things. If it becomes a recurring problem, try two pauses in a row.


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## RainyDay (21 Jan 2008)

Dearg Doom said:


> No problem. The only issue with using 'p' is if the call doesn't connect in the 3 seconds, then the tones will be sent anyway and that's going to make a mess of things. If it becomes a recurring problem, try two pauses in a row.



Yeah, I was conscious that I might need a long pause. I had actually tried programming the numbers with three 'p's, but it didn't seem to like this at all at all.


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