September 6, 2007

Bad English cost business £14 billion per year

It is a sad fact that badly written letters and other sorts of communication materials from UK businesses are costing them heavily in fact according to the Plain English Campaign it is estimated that this sort of problem could be costing UK businesses around £14 billion per year, which is enough to make anyone look up and think about it.

Yet out of the 1,500 people surveyed around 83% actually believe that businesses use bad or at the very least poor English in an attempt to confuse consumers. For example if you take a standard credit card application form, the majority of people would not bother to read the terms and conditions. But even worse than that is around 36% of people actually admitted paying out more for services simply because they did not understand the terms and conditions.

But as a prime example of how businesses can change, the Royal Mail saved £500,000 in just nine months simply by redesigning its mail redirection form.

Source [The Herald]

Filed Under Consumers