Team Partners Telecommunications

Is big business really best?

Posted on Mar 26, 2024

This may only be the case for the more aged amongst us, but do you remember a time when certain brands carried an air of respectability and dependability? The Post Office with its cheery red post boxes and vans; the RAC and its nouveau competitor, the AA; Hovis and Heinz, all brands that others would have paid fortunes for to be as trusted. And there used to be another one, British Telecom, with its jaunty ‘Piper’ logo, designed by Wolff Olins for some vast figure. British Telecoms, of course, was born out of the Post Office in 1981, so enjoyed a leg-up in life with a respected parent, it’s company, though, that has squandered its birth right through constant profit-seeking, often at the expense of its customers, all of which brings us to the sorry tale at the centre of this month’s blog.

The arm of British Telecom’s current iteration that most small businesses are likely to come across is BT Local Business. One would perhaps hope that, as professed Telecoms experts tasked with working with small businesses, they would have their customer’s interests at heart but no...

A local business we know has a small office used by two people on alternate days. The two people use a single phone and a personal mobile. All good so far, but what BT Local Business recommended and sold to this local business was

• Two high end desk phones with VoIP licences
• Five (yes) iPhones
• And an additional five VoIP licences

All of which would happily meet the needs of a staff of seven, and all, by the way, on 5 -year contracts with annual Consumer Price Inflation +3% increases thrown in. Oh, and they didn’t take over the personal mobile contract.

There’s a lesson or two to be learned here beyond the obvious ‘don’t trust BT Local Business as far as you can phone them’ and it’s this, only give your business to recommended local companies, that are willing to come and visit you, stop to read and understand what you are being sold and don’t agree to a 5-year contract, unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

So, if you know any business owners that are speaking to BT Local Business, ask them to stop and talk with us here at Team Partners Telecommunications. We cannot promise that we can help them but we do promise to take the time to understand what they need and give them the information they require to make an informed decision.