Over the past few years an increasing number of price comparison websites have been launched in the UK, and this created a switching revolution where consumers began looking for better deals on everything from their insurance cover to their utilities providers. Today there are plenty of price comparison engines out there, but how do you know that the prices you’re getting are actually the best deals?
Price comparison sites claim to search the market to find you the best deals on a range of financial and operating services. But are they just price comparison sites with a huge range of financial and operating services covered?
Price comparison sites claim to search the market to find you the best deals on a range of financial and operating services. But are they just price comparison sites with a huge range of financial and operating services covered?
The answer is yes, in many respects they are price comparison sites providing financial and operating advice based on the beholder’s Buying Decisions. But just because they provide advice on products you have yet to buy is no reason why they should get your cash.
Imagine using price comparison sites to compare the cost of your holidays to various holiday destinations. The average holiday cost is likely to be largely determined by the location of stay and the number of breaks you would have had if you were staying in a hotel. Yet using price comparison sites to compare the cost of your flights to and from airlines regularly over several years would show that getting to your destination costs less, not more.
Perhaps because of this there is a growing number of regulators, including the Financial Services Authority, looking for ways to crack down on holiday price comparison sites. The problem is that those sites may not always be as effective in identifying bargains as the regulators believe. For example, flightooks.com.uk doesn’t only list prices of flight tickets, but it also lists what the allowances are for baggage, ringtones and other items. A comparison of flight prices at Herald Square in New York can list the cost of a one-year lease for a 2,000 pound flat screen television, but it can’t say for how much the tickets cost if you visit the store in person. Consumer protection laws don’t apply to internet clicks, so you can’t use price comparison sites to compare the price of your electrical appliances, hi-tech gadgets or games.
Regulators say that price comparison sites are not themselves to blame for anti-social behaviour or fraud, because it is often the retailers themselves who set up price comparison sites in an effort to attract new customers to their sites. encourage shoppers to be more cautious about how they shop online, by popping up pop-up ads or garish ‘pages’ that are hard to decipher. Besides this, it is also claim that internet prices are too high, although some would disagree with this and say that retailers are only competition-savvy enough to need a guide to help them differentiate their prices.
But perhaps the biggest problem is that price comparison sites often don’t do the homework for you. The patiently waiting customer often has to wait for more than an eighth of an hour on average to complete their search, and retailers frequently don’t get the results they want for other reasons.
The report,Which Price Comparison Guide Is the Best, was researched by Price Capture and the results produced included:
The report comes with a RollAid approach, meaning that the research took into account the roll of the dice. The research involved surfing top price comparison sites and collecting e-mail addresses of shoppers who’d Anita Amazon to participate in the survey.
The results of the survey were then collated and the results posted on the price comparison sites in the most appropriate format.
The research found that 65% of the shoppers involved in the survey (and presumably all ordinary customers) had received a bogus email in relation to the survey.
The top ten results (out of hundreds) included the following:
1.Comparison of $5 e-books Amazon to Barnes & Noble competition.
2.Comparison of Nectar Online (amascommerce.com.au) to eBay.
3.Comparison of a $1500 Investing Summit event to the exactly same Investing Summit event (visited one hour before event and made payment online).
4.amelior.com.au vs dealwriting.com.au – shows large discounts and limited time offers.
5.allandall.com vs dealmaker.com.au – this competitor has no fees to speak of and delivers the goods (and gets paid lots of commissions on this).
6.pricecheck.com vs punters twisting the rules – this has fees, but unlike the other big players, has no competition, and no commission to be had… hard to call which is the best price checking site?
