That is gross profit, not takings, worked out on cautious numbers you can change just below. Cover is £189 a month for 400 minutes: about 133 calls, or £1.42 each.
Two numbers you already know, and every assumption behind them set against us and left where you can drag it. If it does not pay for itself, it says so.
These are set against us on purpose. Drag them to whatever you think is true — the answer moves, and nothing here is hidden behind it.
Every figure below is what you pay.
The phone answered when nobody can get to it.
£/month
One site, one pair of hands, and a phone that rings while they are under a car.
Get CoverThe booking written in, not handed to you.
£/month
Everything in Cover, and then:
A busy single site that lives out of the diary.
Get DiaryTwo to four sites, one set of numbers.
from£/month
Everything in Diary, and then:
Minutes vary too much across sites to put one honest figure on, so this one is quoted.
Ask for a quotePay yearly and it is twelve months for the price of ten — £1,890 for Cover, £2,990 for Diary. Whenever you join, it is this price.
Your phone provider sends it the calls nobody picks up, and we go through the setting with you on the phone. Every call your own people answer stays theirs, and you can widen it to the evenings or to every call whenever you like.
The setup fee is invoiced on the day your line goes live and you have heard it answer. Not before.
If it has not earned its keep in the first thirty days, stop, and we refund the setup fee. One email, no form, no argument. The exact terms.
Not a shortlist, and not the bits that sound best. If it is on this page it is in the product, and where something needs a bigger plan it says so on the line.
What your customer gets when nobody can reach the phone.
Your greeting, in your words — day, night, weekend, lunch.
Character by character, until your customer agrees it. The dullest part of the call and the one that decides whether the booking is any use.
The make and model checked back with them rather than assumed.
The services and prices you set. Where a job depends on the car it says you will confirm, rather than inventing a figure you then have to honour.
Your opening hours and your appointment length, so a time it offers is a time you have.
The number, what they want and when suits them — so a call it cannot deal with is still not a call you lost.
A warning light books a diagnostic. It never tells your customer it is probably a sensor.
No make, model, colour or year that did not come from your customer or the lookup.
Nothing is paid over the phone, so there is nothing to be given away over the phone.
That it is an assistant and the call is recorded. Nobody is tricked into talking to it.
The screen you check with a coffee, and everything behind it.
The job, the vehicle, the time they asked for, the name and the number.
One address to point it at, so it lands where your day already happens.
Somebody who rang, asked and hung up is the call worth knowing about.
Word for word, so a disagreement about what was said takes ten seconds to settle.
Tap the number to ring them, tap again when it is done.
Needs confirming, confirmed, done, cancelled, no show — so what is on screen is what is left to do.
Your calls and your bookings, whenever you want them, no asking.
Changed by you, in a minute, without ringing anybody.
Add one, price it, reorder them, switch one off. A blank price is allowed and means you will confirm.
No password to remember, lose, or write on the wall by the kettle.
The difference between a message and a booking.
What is genuinely free, rather than a preference somebody has to ring back about.
Sent when it is booked, so they turn up on the right day.
Published, because you should be able to count what you are buying.
However busy it gets, a month cannot cost more than the next plan up.
We will not charge you for Diary until the booking is landing in your diary and the text has gone to your customer.
The first row is the one you are on today. Every other one answers the phone, and the difference between them is how many minutes the money buys — the column most of them do not print.
| Answering your phone | A month | Minutes | A minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nobody answers itWhat it costs to leave it ringing: £980 a month of gross profit, on the assumptions above. | £0 | none answered | — |
| RepairRingMetered, and the meter is on this page. | £189 | 400 | 47p |
| ReceptionMate AssistThe same allowance, published the same way. | £200 | 400 | 50p |
| ARROWCheaper on the headline, twice the price a minute. | £99 | 150 | 66p |
| Garage ReceptionistAllowance not published. Setup £249 to £899. | £159 | not published | not published |
| TorqueflowA whole garage system with voice inside it. 700 credits. | £249 | not published | not published |
| A human answering serviceStanding charge, then about £1 a minute on top.Reported, not from their own page. | £90 | not published | £1 |
There is a product in this market at £99 with unlimited minutes on it. A garage routing thirty calls a day through it would use more than that in cost alone. You are being sold an average, and the bill lands on whoever turns out not to be one.
A human answering service charges a standing fee and then bills by the minute. The same 400 minutes lands around £490 a month, and they cannot take a registration back to you character by character.
Workshop software runs £109 to £415 a month before per-user licences. Against that, £189 for the phone is not a new category of spending — it is a line item you will stop noticing.
It answers as a demo garage. Give it a registration, change your mind halfway through, mumble the postcode, ask it something it has no business answering. The things it refuses to do are the reason it is worth £189.
Ring it now01362 701592Then stop. The setup fee is not invoiced until you have heard it answer your own phone, and if it has not earned its keep inside thirty days of going live we refund the setup. The calculator above tells you the same on your own numbers, and it is built to be able to say no.
No, unless you want it to. The usual setting sends it only the calls nobody picks up, so anything your team gets to stays with your team. Your phone provider does the diverting and we go through it with you on the phone. You can change it whenever you like: every call, the lunch break, the evenings, or only the ones that ring out.
No. The price on this page is the price, and it is the same one the garage after you will be quoted. A supplier who drops their price because you hesitated has told you what it was really worth, and we would rather not start that way.
Every minute over Cover’s 400 is 20p, and it is capped at the price of the tier above — so the very worst month you can have on Cover is £299. Nobody opens a shock bill, and if you are over every month we will tell you to move up rather than let it run.
Because a call costs real money to answer, so unlimited is either capped somewhere nobody mentioned or it is a price that has to change later. A garage taking thirty calls a day would run up more cost than the whole fee. You are buying minutes; you should be able to count them.
Your hours, your services, your prices, the way you answer the phone and the words it uses — set up with you rather than guessed. It is £249 once on Cover, it is under every garage-specific competitor that publishes one, and it is not invoiced until you have heard it answer your own phone.
Yes — twelve months for the price of ten. £1,890 for Cover, £2,990 for Diary.
It takes under a minute to join, costs nothing and never asks for a card. The price you have just read is the price you pay.