Are price comparison sites all they are cracked up to be?
January 17, 2008
The term price comparison site is something that we have all become used to over recent years, and the UK has seen a wide range of price comparison sites spring up over the last couple of years. The idea behind these sites is to enable consumers to compare prices on a range of services and products so that they can get the best deal possible, and many consumers have started using these sites for everything from loans and credit cards to utilities and insurance cover. But are price comparison sites really as effective as they make out?
There are many price comparison sites to choose from these days, with some of these sites dealing with a wide range of products and services, such as uswitch.com, and others dealing with specific products and services, such as travelsupermarket.com.
Between them price comparison sites allow us to check prices on services and products such as credit cards, loans, mobile phones, broadband, utilities, car insurance, home insurance, pet insurance, and more. In general, these price comparison sites to provide us with a useful tool, as they enable us to get an idea of how much we might be able to save on certain products or services. However, there are a few things to bear in mind when it comes to price comparison sites.
Firstly, one very important thing to remember is that price comparison sites do compare products and services across much of the market in some cases, but they do not cover all of the market. So, for example, you may be looking for cheaper home insurance cover, and you may go through a price comparison site that searches 70% of the market to find the cheapest provider for you based on the information that you provide. But what’s to say that you wouldn’t find an even cheaper deal amongst the providers in the 30% of the market that the price comparison site did not search?
Another thing that you need to remember is that with most price comparison sites the prices that you receive are not guaranteed. The idea is that you find the price that suits you, and then you link to the relevant provider’s website in order to purchase the product or service. However, you could find that the actual final quote that you receive from the provider is much higher than the one that you received via the price comparison site. For this reason, many people have branded the prices quotes on these comparison sites as misleading.
Suitability is another factor that needs to be considered when using price comparison sites. As the name suggests price comparison sites are there to help you compare prices on certain products and services, but you have to remember that price isn’t everything – suitability of a product or service is also an important consideration. You may find that although you find a cheap price on something such as insurance via a price comparison site the actual cover that the price related to is not actually suitable for your needs or circumstances.
Related Articles
- Price comparison insurance sites to come under investigation According to a recent report price comparison sites that deal with insurance services are to come under scrutiny from the Financial Services Authority following concerns
- Making use of price comparison sites Price comparison websites have become extremely popular across the UK over the past couple of years, and these sites have made it easier and more
- Increasing security when banking online Over the past decade we have started to conduct more and more of our business online. From booking holidays and applying for finance to arranging
- ASA receives complaints about Friends Provident The advertising regulator in the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority, has received a number of complaints about a financial services provider with regards to an
- Dual fuel not necessarily the best option In the past many consumers in the UK have taken both their gas and electricity from the same suppliers, and this is because this was
Comments
Got something to say?