Kerry Ritz

London

MD, Vonage UK

I'm not surprised that most companies are overpaying for their utilities, particularly telecoms, but it's wrong to put the blame fully at the door of SMEs. Of course, they have to take responsibility for their own business decisions but the telecoms companies certainly don't make it easy for them - deliberately so.

Most telecoms companies (i.e. BT) use complication and confusion to drive inertia amongst consumers to reduce churn. After all, who has the time to look through all the different tariff options available when you're running a small business? Plus the industry is adept at hiding the true cost of a service in acres of small print; they publicise low call charges but ignore the hiked up line rental; they rarely mention call connection charges; and extras such as call waiting are never listed in the headline price. With all this going on it's inevitable that most UK companies are overpaying for what they get.