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Why We Built TFOS

We're agency owners who got tired of being squeezed. So we built the phone system we actually needed—and now we're sharing it with agencies like yours.

The TFOS Team|SGEBCY Agency Owners
The Pattern We Kept Seeing

The industry is designed to squeeze agencies

This isn't about any one company. It's a pattern we've experienced repeatedly—as agency owners, not outside observers—across multiple vendors and platforms. Here's what we kept running into:

The Telecom Markup Game

Phone numbers cost a couple dollars at wholesale. By the time they reach you through most dialers, they're marked up 3-5x. And when your numbers get flagged? The solution is always to buy more—at those same inflated prices.

Legacy VoIP Dressed Up

Most 'modern' dialers are running on the same infrastructure that powered call centers in the 90s. They've added pretty dashboards and mobile apps, but the underlying technology—and its limitations—haven't fundamentally changed.

Compliance Theater

Toggle settings. Training slides. Checkbox acknowledgments. None of it actually prevents bad dials from going out. When something goes wrong, you discover that 'compliance features' meant 'we gave you settings you could have used.'

Misaligned Incentives

When your vendor profits from selling you more phone numbers, and your numbers get burned through faster when you use their tools more, whose interests are really being served? The business model is designed to extract value, not create it.

The Cost Opacity

Billing that requires a forensic accountant to understand. Charges that spike without warning. 'Packages' that lock you in while hiding the true per-unit costs. The complexity isn't accidental—it's profitable.

The Result

Agencies carry the risk and the bill

When the music stops, it's not the vendors who face the consequences. It's you. The compliance violation lands on your desk. The carrier reputation damage affects your numbers. The unpredictable costs come out of your margin.

The vendors have structured their businesses to profit regardless of whether you succeed. In fact, some of them profit more when things go wrong—because that's when you need to buy more of what they're selling.

We've been on the receiving end of this. We've felt the anxiety of not knowing if our compliance setup actually protected us. We've watched our phone numbers get burned through while being told to buy more. We've tried to forecast costs and failed because the billing was designed to be unpredictable.

So we built something different.

The Alternative

What if the phone system actually had your back?

TFOS is built on a simple idea: underwrite every dial before it happens.

Before any call goes out, TFOS checks your compliance rules. It validates consent. It respects quiet hours. It protects your number reputation. And it logs every decision with a clear reason code.

When a call is approved, you know exactly why. When a call is declined, you know exactly why. When someone asks "why did this call happen," you have a deterministic answer—not reconstructed guesses from incomplete logs.

We've also rethought warm transfers. Context travels with the call. Your closers see the full picture before they pick up. No more re-qualifying leads that were already qualified.

And the pricing? Transparent and predictable. No markup games. No hidden fees. No surprises. You know what you'll pay before you commit.

What We Believe

Our manifesto

Compliance should be enforced, not just available as an option
You shouldn't need to buy more phone numbers because your vendor's system burns through them
Pricing should be predictable and transparent, not a puzzle
Your phone system vendor's incentives should align with your success
Agency owners deserve tools built by people who understand their business
Warm transfers should actually work—context and all
Every call should have a clear audit trail, not reconstructed guesses
What We Refuse To Do

Lines we won't cross

We won't sell you a tool that recommends buying the thing we mark up
We won't hide our pricing in confusing packages and tiers
We won't call checkbox settings 'compliance protection'
We won't profit when your deliverability gets worse
We won't build features that look good in demos but break in production
We won't pretend our technology is revolutionary when it's running on 90s infrastructure
We won't make you dependent on us knowing more than you do

Ready to see Call Underwriting in action?

Book a demo and see how TFOS protects your agency while keeping your team moving fast. Or use our calculator to see what predictable pricing actually looks like.