Are you getting the best deal on your mobile?

There's a bit in that awful Link advert - it's still running, so watch out - where curious customer gets expert advice from a clean cut, level-headed, in-store salesman. (Said salesman is also flashing, like an LED charge bar on a phone, which is also annoying.)

The upshot is that this major mobile phone retailer satisfies the legions of question-asking punters that cross its threshold. They may be good or not so good at service, but research out today suggests the paying public is terrible at buying mobile services.

Orange has released figures which show one in five users believe they are on the wrong call plan but two-thirds never shop around.

Orange, by the way, has just launched 'Your Plan', a tailor-your-own-package service.

The UK's biggest mobile operator (by numbers of customer) points out that in a relatively short period of time, the mobile industry has joined financial services as an area where consumers get a bad deal by dint of not doing their homework.

The simple answer here is that people should be better consumers. So much business comes to a provider by the laziness of users who don't look elsewhere (though it can be argued that such inertia evens itself out across all the companies in a sector.)

Another way to look at it is to say providers, especially in an area like mobile telecoms, should do more.

'Your Plan' and similar offerings elsewhere, such as BT's new consumer deal, still use 'bundles' of minutes, set contract terms and monthly fees to bamboozle users.

As one leading mobile consultant recently told silicon.com: "Why not just let us pay for what we use? I don't want to have minutes go unused or pay above the odds when I go over my set allocation."

We agree. But in the meantime - be a good consumer, and do some research.