Google will bill you for missed calls

Starting October 1, Google charges you for Local Services Ads calls you do not pick up during business hours, if the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds. That makes this a phone issue.

• The tool: every AI receptionist price we could verify, $49 to $799 a month
• The move: four things to do before October 1
• The story: a plumber that went from six CSRs to three, by the vendor's numbers
• The number: how many homeowners now ask an AI who to hire

The tool: AI receptionists, priced

Every home-services platform now sells one. Here is what they cost on their own pricing pages as of September 5, with the catch under each.

The price. Goodcall is $79 a month for one agent ($66 on annual), plus $0.50 for every customer over the tier's allowance. The overage is the line to read, not the headline. Every Trustpilot review is one star. One customer wrote in June: "We canceled this service in October 2025, yet the company continued charging our card month after month."

What else is in this aisle. Rosie is $49 to $299, priced by minutes rather than seats. Roofr's receptionist is $99 as an add-on to any plan, including the free one. Smith.ai runs $0 to $500, and a BBB complaint describes 100-plus silent spam calls billed at $2.20 each. Avoca and Netic, the two best-funded voice vendors in the trades, publish no price at all. Treat "call for pricing" as a finding. The full table, with every source, is in the directory.

Who it is for. A shop missing more than ten calls a week after hours or in season. Below that, a forwarding rule to a person's cell costs nothing.

The move: before October 1

Google's rule for a missed Local Services Ads call used to be no charge. From October 1, a business-hours call that goes unanswered while the caller waits more than 20 seconds is billed as a valid lead. Four steps, in order.

1. Pull your LSA call log for August. Count the business-hours calls that rang out or went to voicemail. That number times your cost per lead is the new bill.
2. Decide who answers when the desk is on another line. A person on staff, an answering service, or an AI receptionist. The table above prices the third option. The first two are usually cheaper under 200 calls a month.
3. Set a 15-second forward. Whatever you pick, an unanswered LSA call should reach a person or an AI before the 20-second line, not after. Test it from your own phone.
4. Check your LSA account this week. Google is also moving Local Services Ads into the Google Ads interface. Your budget and dispute settings may look different by the time the charge starts.

The story: six CSRs to three

Superior Plumbing ran six full-time customer service reps and one part-timer. It now runs three and a ServiceTitan AI agent it calls Piper. When Piper answers first, the company reports an 80% booking rate, with about 30% of calls escalated to a human.

"For the very first time in 40 years, I did not have a CSR work on Thanksgiving or Christmas," Melissa Mohr told ServiceTitan. An escalation manager stayed on call.

Read it straight. This is a ServiceTitan case study, so the numbers are the vendor's. It does say the headcount fell by attrition, not layoffs. Three things it does not say: what Piper costs a month, what the booking rate was before, and how many holiday calls the on-call manager still took. Ask any vendor who sends you a story like this those three.

The number: 45%

45% of consumers now use AI tools like ChatGPT to find local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. BrightLocal, February 2026, 1,002 US consumers surveyed. A third of them said they do not trust the answers.

This is the number behind "AI visibility": if the model cannot find your reviews, services and address on a page it can read, you are not in the answer.

Quick hits

• ServiceTitan is cutting off its Podium integration on September 15, which affects about 1,000 contractors. (Homepros)
• A Delaware judge ordered Verisk to keep pursuing its $2.35 billion purchase of AccuLynx. (Insurance Journal)
• Fulltime AI raised $1 million from Valsoft. It publishes no prices. (Grit Daily)
• A St. Louis County roofer found an AI-generated clone of its website, testimonials and all. (First Alert 4)

The poll

Who answers your phone after 5 p.m. today? Reply with one letter, we count them Thursday.

• A: A person on staff
• B: An answering service or AI
• C: Voicemail

Sources

Every claim above traces to one of these. Gathered September 4, 2026 and re-verified against the primary source on September 5. An outlet named without a URL is not a source.

• Google to charge for business-hours LSA calls missed while the caller holds more than 20 seconds, from October 1, 2026: Google's advertiser notice as quoted by Search Engine Land and Homepros, both August 25, 2026. LSA moving into the Google Ads interface: Google Ads help 17213585; Search Engine Journal, July 20, 2026.
• AI receptionist prices, from vendor pricing pages fetched September 5 and again September 6, 2026: Rosie, Goodcall, ServiceAgent, Roofr, Smith.ai, Signpost, Sameday, Broadly. ServiceAgent's $39/$95/$279 are annual-billing rates; month to month is $49/$119/$349. Avoca and Netic publish no pricing page.
• Goodcall's Trustpilot record, 2.5 overall with five reviews all one-star, three in the last twelve months; the cancellation-billing review is dated June 2, 2026: Trustpilot.
• Smith.ai spam-call billing dispute: BBB complaint filed November 25, 2025 on the Smith.ai profile.
• Superior Plumbing and Melissa Mohr: ServiceTitan blog, February 2, 2026.
• 45% use AI for local recommendations, up from 6%, and 32% distrust the answers: BrightLocal, February 11, 2026, n = 1,002.
• ServiceTitan ends its Podium integration September 15, 2026, affecting about 1,000 contractors: Homepros, August 18, 2026.
• Verisk ordered to keep pursuing its $2.35B AccuLynx acquisition, pending FTC approval: Insurance Journal, August 11, 2026. The appeal is on Bloomberg Law.
• Fulltime AI's $1M raise from Valsoft: Grit Daily, August 31, 2026.
• A St. Louis County roofing company's website cloned by AI: First Alert 4 / KMOV, August 25, 2026.

Reply to the email with the AI tool that let you down. We will name it, and check it.