Watchdog Backs Utilities Comparison

Gas and elecitricity comparison sites have come under scrutiny recently, although the energy watchdog is here to help. For other comparisons, you just need to ask the right questions.

The Internet often seems to be a gathering of the curious and the cocksure: one tenth of users are asking questions and the rest are offering violently different opinions. This is certainly the case when it comes to utilities comparison, particularly when it comes to the questions of its effectiveness, reliability and trustworthiness. Recently, I've been looking at these questions myself.

And the good news is that the watchdog Energywatch has made it easier to figure out what's going on. The regulator has issued a new code for utilities-comparison websites, and for the past few weeks each website has done a little tinkering (or a lot of tinkering in some cases!) in order to get their services up to scratch and to make them consistent.

On the latter point, you may have read recently how some sites include one-off discounts in their results, which makes them look cheaper. Thanks to Energywatch, this is no longer the case.

The good news is that Energywatch has been able to grant Confidence Code accreditation to the provider of The Motley Fool's utilities tool (which is supplied by Xelector, also known as Unravelit). Not that I'm surprised. I've hammered, prodded and poked our new utilities centre frequently since it arrived, asking questions and looking for flaws, but I've come up with nothing. Which is great!

The changes Energywatch asked of our search were minor. The biggest of these was that they wanted our providers, Xelector, to add a green tariff search. This they did, but they went one better than other comparison engines. You can now do a complete search and then drill down into a green search (or even an Internet only search). This saves you having to run two separate searches for 'brown' tariffs and green ones, which used to get my goat, frankly!

Coming back to my earlier point about questions, asking them is important when buying utilities and financial products. If you don't understand what you're comparing, you may come off worse for using comparison sites.

However, the knowledge you need is simple. When it's explained in plain English and not in advisers' jargon, we can learn all we need to know ourselves and get a better deal as a result. That's why one of The Fool's main goals is to educate you through guides, which you can find next to our comparison tables, and by writing articles (such as this cracking one). Then you're ready to compare products.

We make an exception in our 'no advice' rule for mortgages, because it's such a big purchase and a complicated decision. There are over 8,000 to choose from, each with different terms and fees in order to confuse you. That's why we combine our popular mortgage guides and mortgage comparison tables with our no-fee mortgage service that compares the whole market to find the best mortgage for you. You can pick and choose what level of support you need. Oh yes, and that goes some way to explaining why we won the Best Mortgage Site of the Year in the 2006 Online Finance Awards!

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