CMA lays down ground rules for price comparison sites

Regulator also announces it is investigating one unnamed website

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has laid down a series of ground rules to ensure people get a better deal with price comparison websites.

The CMA published a report today (26 September) following a year-long investigation of comparison sites and related smartphone apps, which found that while they help consumers shop around for better prices, some are not working in “people’s best interests”.

The CMA also confirmed it has launched a competition law investigation into one un-named website sets its contracts with insurers, because it suspects this may result in higher home insurance prices.

The report calls on all site operators to follow a series of ground rules to ensure services are clear, accurate and easy to use.

In particular, the report states a site should be clear about how it makes money and how results are ordered.

It also recommends sites should be clear about how they protect personal information and how customers can control its use.

The report also states sites should clearly display important information, like price and product descriptions.

“The good news is that more than 90 per cent of the people we surveyed were very or fairly satisfied with the sites they used,” said CMA chief executive, Andrea Coscelli.

“But we have also found that improvements are need to help people get even better deals,” she added. “We have set out ground rules for how sites should behave, as well as being clear on how regulators can ensure people have a better experience online.”

Speaking to Utility Week, the chief product officer for software firm Ctrlio, Dominic Strowbridge, said the CMA report highlighted a problem with ‘wide most-favoured nation’ clauses, which prevent suppliers from offering cheaper deals anywhere else, including on other price comparison websites.

“If they manage to get rid of the wide most-favoured nation clause that would make a big difference,” said Strowbridge. “And if more price comparison websites went in for the accreditation that’s on offer from the various regulators, that would also help.”

The co-founder of the Big Deal website, Will Hodson, said the CMA needs to say which site it is investigating, otherwise “how are any of us able to know who we can trust”.

“Decades of comparison sites have done nothing to stop exploitation in the energy market,” added Hodson. “It is hard enough for most people to simply compare deals, and now people have to compare comparison sites.”