Fixing the Fair Use Policy warning

VoIPline has warned us twice about our outbound traffic. The clause they can actually enforce applies only to unlimited call plans. Ten of our twenty-three lines are doing cold-call work on an unlimited plan. Those ten have to move. Nobody else needs to change anything.

lines are cold-calling on an unlimited plan. This is the breach, and these are the only lines we propose changing.

other VAs stay exactly as they are. Nothing changes for them.

of the ten get more expensive. Those clients need telling first.

Every VA's bill is paid by their own client, so we look at each line on its own. Company totals are not the measure here. What matters is whether an individual VA's monthly cost moves, because that lands on one client's invoice. See Cost per VA.

The short version. Move the ten cold callers off Unlimited Australia Plus onto Timed X or Timed MAX, whichever is cheaper for that person. It is a setting change per user in the VoIPline portal. No new numbers, no porting, no new hardware, no downtime. Everyone else is left alone.

The ten, and what it does to each client's bill

VA	Today	On the metered plan	Plan	Change
Dianne	$53.42	$73.18	Timed MAX	+$19.76
Richie	$40.85	$51.15	Timed MAX	+$10.30
Ham	$22.90	$33.04	Timed MAX	+$10.14
Nekie	$65.50	$70.50	Timed MAX	+$5.00
Jiselle	$40.85	$42.79	Timed MAX	+$1.94
Michelle Bermejo	$40.85	$42.04	Timed MAX	+$1.19
Saied	$40.85	$39.62	Timed X	-$1.23
Bevan	$40.85	$26.90	Timed X	-$13.95
Racquel	$40.85	$25.76	Timed X	-$15.09
Kervin	$40.85	$22.35	Timed X	-$18.50

June to August 2026 average, Australian dollars including GST. Dianne is the worst affected at $19.76 a month. The heavier the caller, the more the unlimited plan was subsidising them.

Why we are being warned

The clause we can fix today

The policy bars "call centre operations or high call volumes" - but only under unlimited business call plans. All 23 of our lines are on an unlimited plan. That is the breach, and it is the one we can close this week by moving the cold callers onto a metered plan.

The clause no provider will drop

The same policy also bans "telemarketing" outright, with no plan qualifier. We checked Dialpad, Crazytel, Zoom, 8x8, SIPcity and Vonex. Every one of them carries an equivalent clause. There is no Australian carrier whose terms welcome this traffic. Switching provider does not buy us safety, so we should not pay a premium chasing it. See The vendor bans.

Where we stand against the three numbers they cite

The warning letters name three measurements. Across the full six months we pass all three, but not with the comfort our earlier draft claimed, and two individual months did breach.

Measure	VoIPline threshold	Whole company	10 cold callers	Result
Answer rate (ASR)	Must be above 40%	85.0%	83.5%	Pass, comfortably
Average call length (ALOC)	Must be above 15 seconds	43.8s	35.3s	Pass, comfortably
Short calls under 6 seconds (SCP)	Must be below 15%	13.5%	14.8%	Pass by 0.2 points

Correction to what we said earlier, and it changes the argument. An earlier draft quoted 8.4% short calls and described us as passing comfortably. Rebuilt from VoIPline's 1 September export and filtered to our 23 active lines, the six-month figure is 13.5%, the ten cold-calling lines on their own sit at 14.8% against a 15% ceiling, and two months went well over it:

Month	Calls	Answer	Avg call	Short calls <6s	vs 15% ceiling
March 2026	470	95.1%	44.8s	15.0%	Pass
April 2026	251	90.0%	76.8s	8.0%	Pass
May 2026	2,907	82.2%	41.4s	32.0%	Breach
June 2026	4,144	82.9%	44.1s	27.7%	Breach
July 2026	11,552	85.6%	45.9s	10.1%	Pass
August 2026	14,493	85.3%	41.8s	8.7%	Pass

Do not walk into the meeting or into VoIPline claiming a clean sheet. The honest version is stronger anyway: we breached the short-call ceiling twice, we fixed it without being told to, and we are now moving the traffic onto a plan built for it.

What we recommend

Step 1, this week. Move the ten cold callers to Timed X or Timed MAX, each on whichever is cheaper for their own volume. This closes the clause VoIPline can enforce. The per-person list to work from is what to put each cold caller on for September.

Step 2. Speak to the 6 clients whose bill goes up before the change lands on an invoice. Nothing changes for the other thirteen VAs.

Step 3. Write to VoIPline confirming our outbound sales traffic is off unlimited plans and onto their Call centre rate card, and quote our ASR, ALOC and SCP figures including the two months we breached and fixed.

Step 4, next month. Get a written quote from Crazytel. Their CrazyPBX P.A.Y.G plan is the only product we found from any Australian provider that expressly permits outbound sales, at $1 per extension with 7c a minute to mobiles. See What it costs.

Do not move to Dialpad. More expensive than today, no Australian mobile numbers, and its own terms bar sales call centres.

The workings

Every figure in this pack comes out of VoIPline's own export. These are the spreadsheets behind it.

File	What is in it
01-monthly-by-line.csv	Every VA, every month: calls, minutes, SMS, what they cost and what each metered plan would have cost.
02-cold-caller-evidence.csv	The call-pattern scores behind the cold-caller classification, per VA.
03-per-va-plan-recommendation.csv	Each VA's cost today and on the recommended plan, split into plan, calls and SMS, with the change to that client's bill.
04-cold-callers-last-3-months.csv	The ten cold callers for June, July and August: what each month cost, and what Timed X and Timed MAX would each have cost, calls and SMS split out.

Who moves →

Built from the VoIPline export dated 1 September 2026 covering 2 March to 1 September 2026. All prices are Australian dollars including GST. Usage figures are the June-August 2026 average unless a month is named.