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Setting up Tel3 for your Vacation Rental

We've been using the Tel3.com service for 18 months now at both of our Vacation Rentals in Florida and also at our home in California.

We've saved over $800 already and have had no complaints from guests. See why we chose Tel3 here.

In this article see how we're using the service and making it simple for our guests to use.

How Tel3 works - dialing

1. One account is required no matter how many places you want to use the service from
2. An Instant access number is dialed first - choose from a list, there are multiple ones available
3. If the phone you are dialing from has not been registered in the account then you will need to enter your account information and PIN
4. Up to 10 numbers can be registered
5. Dial the number you want to call and any follow-on calls

How Tel3 works - credit

1. Your account needs to be in credit for calls to be made
2. As minutes are used, your credit is reduced
3. The account can be credited manually with $10, $25, $50 or $100
4. The account can be credited automatically when the balance gets to $3 by $25, $50 or $100
5. Either via a PayPal or Credit Card charge

What we've done

1. We've set up our account with a $25 auto-credit recharge - so the account will always be in credit
   1. I was originally nervous that I would lose control - what if the guests used lots of credit and it just kept charging me $25.
   2. I kept checking the account after starting it and was happy to discover that next to nothing was being used and now I don't even look except to re-confirm how much money I am saving!
2. We had our local Management Company program 2 Instant Access numbers into the phone's address books in each VR and we did the same at home and in our cell phones
3. We blocked long distance and international calls from the phones in the Vacation Rentals and reduced the monthly rate to the minimum we could
4. We've registered each of the VR phone numbers, our home number and our cell numbers in the account
   1. This way our VR guests don't need to know the account information to dial
   2. It does mean that the guest gets to hear how much credit/how many minutes are left in the account. I'd prefer to be able to turn this off but that's not possible. As the amount of credit ends up being between $25 and $3 then the amount does not seem huge and, from our experience, does not encourage excessive use.
5. We provide the access numbers and some usage instructions in our arrival information for each guest
   1. Just in case the phone book entries get erased
6. There's also a Tel3 iPhone App too (fancy that!). It allows dialing from your Contacts directly (it does the instant access number dialing automatically).

Will you get the same benefits as us?

Maybe. As there are no up-front fees or equipment to install it's easy to try and see how it goes - it can all be done remotely except for programming Instant Access numbers into the VR phones.