I just want to highlight a lawless area of big business stealing cash from small business. SMEs, remember them? The engine of the economy? Over the last three decades of running AXLR8 I must have wasted days documenting the theft of funds from our bank account by the telcos.
There seems no point in complaining and obtaining a complaint reference (if you even can get one these days). Ofcom is useless. Here are just two examples that should get you checking your bill!
Vodafone
Vodafone has added back in the subscriptions for services our business cancelled many years ago. Suddenly, they just come back on the bill. Although these services are unused, there is no check to see if the service (previously terminated) has been asked for and reordered by the client. This has happened on more than one occasion in the last 10 years. Vodafone also carried on charging for a phone purchase contract long after our business had paid it off. Those past “try-ons” add up to a four figure sum. Also, I have a current serious complaint with Vodafone and nothing has been done. The business moved and we cancelled our FTTP line to the old address and bought a new one at the new address in June last year. There cannot be any doubt and the email trail is clear as are the admissions of the agents we have spoken to. We are still paying A YEAR LATER the rental on the connection at the last address. The last address is a building site, by the way. At £50/month, that is a lot of money. There appears not to be email address for complaints so you need to telephone Vodafone. That is a marathon of at least 30 minutes and some times more than an hour every time. I am sure I am not the only one that has these problems with their Vodafone bill. I believe we have been a Vodafone client for 30 or more years. However, our spend with them has reduced considerably because of this lack of trust.
BT
BT is a huge drain on business productivity and will have wasted many man-days of precious senior management/owner time in SMEs in just the few minutes it has taken me to write this article.
Right now, our business cannot cancel a £250/month contract with the promised 50% cancellation charge. We have been with BT for 30 years and this 60 month contract had run 55 months when we gave notice. We are hardly a fly-by-night client. The bills have become random and two months ago we were charged double for some reason. Simple admin tasks like changing the commercial contact from me to our Group CEO are ignored. Billing refer us to the “Customer Success Team” They send us back to billing. All the time we are paying their bills for a service we have not used for months.
Like criminals, I am sure these large telcos will have lawyers who can tie me up in knots. They certainly train their staff to “brick wall” customers with legitimate complaints.
If you refuse to pay unfair bills, they will come after you with aggressive third party collections agencies. This actually happened to me with Gigaclear who dreamt up a loner notice period than I signed up to. There is always the possibility that they can somehow affect financial reputation of the most solvent and fiscally careful SME.
Regulation
I cannot believe I am calling for more regulation. However, for bullies, there has to be a big stick.
There is much discussion about why the UK cannot increase productivity in two decades. Depending upon the political views of the person talking, it is blamed on so many factors that they are too long to list but include everything from regulation and compliance, taxation, housing, transport, lazy youth, daft degree courses, Brexit (or not enough of it). Chasing clients who will not pay and chasing utilities for over charges has to be part of what saps the time and motivation of small business owners.
The telcos, upon which a modern economy relies, cannot be allowed to pinch £100 here and £1000 there and not have a manager in court. Like the water companies, fines just get added to our bills. There must be several board members who fear for their jobs and reputations when these crimes happen. Right now the systems of customer contact and the lack of options for escalation paint a picture of sociopathic management only beholden to share holder returns. No wonder people are screaming for privatisation. People of my age recall how awful nationalised industries became. So let’s strengthen the basic rules of accountability to which these behemoth monopoly suppliers have become accustomed. The managers must be held accountable. There is no point in fining the company. We cannot afford nationalisation. So regulation with proper powers to name and punish (like health and safety) it is.
