Business vs. Individual account?

[ascsimon]

Anyone out there have trouble setting up a business account and know the advantages to having a business account vs. an individual account (or 2) with a family plan?

I will provide some background:

I work at a school in NYS and there is something about working for a school and being able to receive a 20% discount. 1 rep said that she can get my business account a 20% discount, while another rep said that a business account only qualifies for 8% and that I need to use an individual account to get my 20% discount.

I wanted to try for a business account but I was getting the run around about this 20% thing vs. 8% so I decided to open an individual account. It was easy to do the individual account and receive my 20% discount but I now have to open up a second individual account because of the number of users I have on my first account.

So in the end I will end up maintaining two individual accounts containing family plans, each account receives a 20% discount on its main line, which by the way is the family plan, but that means two bills, and two charges on the credit card to keep track off. In addition it limits users’ ability to control their own plans having to go through me as the main account holder.

I will contend with the extra work for 20% off the family plan(s) amount if I am not really missing out on not having a business account.

Forgot to mention that all the users have BlackBerry's and we all have the BB buisness unlimited plans for the accounts in question. So it is really a pricing issue since AT&T charges $45 a phone for its plan.

[chinesecatt]

A friend of mine who works with AT&T wanted me to get a business account with them. Said that I can get better pricing with this set up. Having 8 Tmobile lines myself, that would be a huge investment for me transferring all of my phones to them. Imagine getting rid of all my existing phone .. grrrr.

With your current set up, seems pretty neat. Though I totally agree with you in regards to making changes with your plan. They really can't do anything unless it is through you, being the account manager. I do this is my Sprint accounts too. They want to change their voicemail password, change number and whatever else, needs to go through me! *sighs* But hey, discount is a discount. Sometimes weighing which one is better and deciding if it is worth it, makes all the troubles ,not a trouble at all.

[ascsimon]

Thank you for the reply.

Since I posted the question one of the reps I was working with stated that she had set my business account up with a 20% discount rate instead of the 8% but has not returned my calls or emails yet so I have not done anything. Also makes me a little suspicious since it takes like 3 days for her to get back with me on anything.
My wife also stated that instead of me opening up another account she would just open up one instead. We are going to put each other on as an authorized rep to make changes to the account so at least there will be two people to handle the blackberry phone accounts. I kind of like that actually, the BlackBerry accounts, the company’s other phones are currently on Verizon so the only phones I am dealing with at the moment are BlackBerry’s. With any luck that will be all I deal with.

[NoMoreWindows]

I have a Business account and personal account with Rogers. There are some benefits of both, some plans are not available to business accounts.

[lush242000]

I would do some more checking into the discounts. I know AT&T gives discounts for company employees with accounts in their own names, alumni association members, professional society members, and such. I don't know if they allow you stack them or not. As far as the $45 data plan, that is for the BES accounts. If you don't use enterprise, then they won't sell it to you because your phone would be useless. In the long run, they can charge what they want to business users because they know that we want the service and we will get reimbursed for it. I think the BIS data plan is about $10 cheaper but i'm not 100% on that since I don't use it.

[Fiji]

it would probably depend on how many lines are on the business account and your ability to negotiate....best people to talk to would be business care.