Skip to main content

Businesses Need Free Fast Advice

I have just come off the phone with a very helpful lady at the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB - staffed by volunteers - bless 'em all). As a business mentor I needed a quick piece of advice from Trading Standards (the government department responsible for making sure businesses in the UK trade within the law). The only phone number you can find on the web for advice is a call centre designed exclusively for consumers. The first two options on their IVR greeting is for utility supplies, the third and final option is 'anything else'. Naturally I got "All our operators are busy, but leave your name and number and we'll call you back...".

So when she called me the next morning I briefly explained the issue my client is experiencing. She stopped me and said the CAB are only able to offer advice to consumers, not businesses. She then gave me a number for Surrey Trading Standards who apparently will give me an hours free consultation and then charge me £67 for subsequent time. Fair enough. Apparently the deal depends on which part of the country you're in. Why not one charging  policy for all you might think?

I've not yet called them yet. But that's not the point of this gromble. I wanted advice about whether a trading practice was legal or not. Nothing more. Had my query led to a request for action from an official, that's another matter. But the fact that there's no national helpline for business advice about Trading Standards is a nonsense. My (trying to be) helpful CAB lady told me the advice they provide to the odd business caller is 'speak to a solicitor'. But all I wanted was advice on helping my client to ensure he was trading within the law. Lawyers I am sure would love to make money out this, but my client is a tiny start-up business who shouldn't have to pay for quick and simple advice to help him start trading. Anything more complicated and he either pays his local Trading Standards chaps, or indeed a solicitor. But surely not for the answer to a quick 'can I, or can't I...?' question.

So my point is, Mr Cable, instead of making it hard (depending on where you live) for businesses to obtain free, consistent advice about the legalities of trading in the UK, why not aggregate all the regional helplines under a central number (using sensible telecoms, you don't need to congregate the people). If you need some financial support for it, perhaps an 0870 or even higher rate number would be acceptable (the call revenue might cover a proportion of the costs). And publish that number for business advice on your Trading Standards website instead of restricting it to consumer information.

Make doing business easy! Perhaps then you'll reach that holy grail of growth we all sorely need.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking an interest.

Popular posts from this blog

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo
7 comments
Read more

Would we pay more for their stuff?

I'm confused. Brexiters argue the Germans, Italians and French will still want to sell us their cars, so continued free trade with the UK is in their best interests. But we'll have to negotiate this (with an EU unwilling to make leaving easy) by threatening to make their cars more expensive for British people to buy. We'll do this because WE need to make imports more expensive to try to restore our balance of payments. Are Brits prepared to pay more for their Audis, Fiats and Renaults in order to make British cars more appealing, or do Brexiters want to pay more in order to punish them for taxing our insurance and banking products? Either way, imports will cost more. While in the EU, we buy their cars because we like the choice and don't want our own government to tax them. Indeed it would be better for British car manufacturing if we went back to the good old days of being encouraged to buy cheaper British cars (made by foreign owned factories). Is that what Brexite
Post a Comment
Read more

Addictions. Porn, Drugs, Alcohol and Sex. Don't prevent it, make it safer.

In 1926 New York, during Prohibition, 1,200 people were poisoned by whiskey containing small quantities of wood alcohol (methanol). Around 400 died, the rest were blinded. The methanol they drank was in the moonshine they had bought illegally. In fact it had been added by law to industrial ethanol in order to make it undrinkable. Prohibition existed to protect everyone from the 'evils of the demon drink'. However, people still wanted to enjoy alcohol. So bootleggers bought cheap industrial alcohol and attempted to distill it to remove the impurities the state had added, but the process wasn't regulated. The state was inadvertently responsible for the suffering - although it was easy for them to blame the bootleggers and to justify escalating the war. This didn't stop the bootleggers. In fact it forced them to become more violent to protect their operations, and even less cautious about their production standards. Volumes of illicit alcohol, and therefore proportionat
Post a Comment
Read more