25 December 2009
You May Not Get The Best Deal at Comparison Sites
Posted by articleranks under: Money .
We’ve all seen the adverts, whether it’s an opera singer dancing around a coffee shop, or just Peter Jones walking around a multi-storey supermarket, the adverts for price comparison websites just get worse and worse (apart from Compare The Market advert with the meerkats).
The first few price comparison sites first popped onto our TV’s a few years ago, and they mainly just compared car insurance. However, as these sites get bigger, they have discovered how lazy the people of the UK really are and have widened their sites to offer anything and everything, from loans to small business insurance.
Although these sites do save you some time in your day while you’re on the hunt for everything from credit cards to salon insurance, as you can avoid filling out the same form dozens of times for different sites, but are these comparison sites really required? After you’ve completed the form, you get a nice long list of companies that will offer you the desired service at a cheap price, however, generally, the majority of this list is browsed over by the user because they’ve never heard of the companies. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if some of the companies listed were owned by the price comparison site.
Once you’ve chosen which deal is right for you, you can then purchase it via the comparison site, however, are you really getting the best deal? These days, you’ll find a number of insurance companies, one being Direct Line, are not listing themselves on price comparison sites.
You may think it’s strange that they don’t join these sites, surely they must lose some business as a result. However, due to the price comparison sites charging the companies a commission, Direct Line don’t have to pay this, meaning they can pass more savings onto you as the customer.
This means that if you are really looking for the best deals for, as an example, office insurance, not only do you have to visit the price comparison sites, but you also have to visit the websites that don’t like themselves on the price comparison sites. This will result in you filling out a number of forms, which is what the comparison sites are trying to avoid. So if you think about it, the sites themselves are just as pointless as their TV ads.