You don’t need to spend very long watching television these days to come across an advert from one of the UK’s many price comparing services, promising to get you the best possible deal on your insurance if you use their website. This article looks at how useful these sites actually are, and whether there are better ways to find the right insurance for you.

More than 10 million people use price comparison sites each year in the UK. Thanks to constant advertising and the post-recession money-saving climate, these sites have become the first stop for a large proportion of the population when the time comes to buy or renew insurance.

The first question to consider when deciding on whether to use these sites is how reliable are they? Given that the whole reason to use them is to get the best value for money, it is important to establish whether they really do give you the best prices possible.

The way these sites work is by letting insurers feature in their listings in return for a commission on any sales the listing generates. The average commission charged is around 25%, and sometimes the insurance company will pass this on to the customer, meaning that the customer who uses a comparison site will end up paying 25% more than one who goes direct to the insurer’s website.

However, it is not always the case that you pay more, because often the commission will be built into insurance firm prices, so it makes no difference whether you go direct to their site or come via comparison sites. In fact, some price comparison websites will actually forego some of the commission in order to undercut their rivals, so going the price comparison route might even end up cheaper!

Consider also that several of the leading insurance companies have taken the decision not to feature on price comparison websites, in order to save on the commission and charge their customers a lower price.

Evidently it’s a very unclear picture, and there’s guaranteed way to get the best price without spending an awful lot of time collecting quotes.

The other big question with which comparison websites should be measured is do they actually save you time? It’s one of their key selling points – the idea that you use these sites to save you the time otherwise spent trawling the web for good deals.

It is certainly true that running a price comparison offers you the relief of only having to enter your details once, and then gives a long list of quotes from many different sources, and this is much quicker than getting all those quotes individually.

However, the process is not always as quick and painless as it is advertised, because you have to endure the hassle of creating your account, putting in your details and fending off sales phone calls from the numerous insurance companies that the comparison site passed your number on to.

In summary, there are arguments for and against using price comparison companies. It’s undoubtedly a useful tool in your bargain hunting arsenal, but it cannot be relied upon to find the cheapest deal for you every time.