The Problem with Comparison Sites

A recent article on the BBC News website has highlighted some of the problems with comparison websites. These include:

1. Many of the comparison sites have commercial arrangements with the companies they feature. This means the customer is not getting impartial advice
2. The companies featured on the sites confuse customers by offering the cheapest prices but stripping out the protection to do so..."You can very quickly click through to that and not realise, and take out a policy. Then an incident occurs where you have to claim against the policy, and you find you've got very limited cover or you've perhaps got to pay the first £1,000 of the claim." The danger with price comparison sites is that you may get a great up front price but could end up with a worthless product or service
3. Using price comparison sites can dramatically increase the number of unwanted sales calls. “You enter the comparison site, and within a few minutes your phone is ringing and somebody is trying to flog you something you don't want - and that's not acceptable.” Lord Lipsey
   

Editor of Which? Money, Martyn Hocking, say "Don't only visit one site as a result of seeing the TV commercial."

"In reality, the prices vary significantly between each site - and no one site has all the best deals, so you really need to visit two or three sites" and he says that customers need to look beyond price when making decisions.

"If it's something like insurance, you need to look at how much cover you are getting, because it could be that the cheapest product is cheap, because it actually doesn't offer adequate cover."

The Life UK Financial Difference

1. A completely free membership that does not cost the member a penny more to get the advice from our key partner advisers than it does doing all research themselves
2. Completely independent whole market advice by specialists in the requested market, ensuring the member buys the right product or service at the right price every time
3. Most of the time, paperwork and hassle of researching the market and managing their finances is removed
4. The member does not have to remember when their policies come up for renewal - it is all done for them
   

The BBC Money programme "Price Comparison Sites: deal or no deal?" will be aired at 7.30pm on BBC 2 on Friday, 5 December.

To read the full BBC News article, please visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7766798.stm.