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uSwitch.com UK is a free online comparison and switching service that helps customers compare prices on a range of services including gas, electricity, home phone, broadband providers and personal finance products. Their aim is to help customers take advantage of the best prices and services on offer from suppliers. They have developed a series of online savings calculators that evaluate a number of factors including price, location, service and payment method you would use. The range of markets that they cover continues to increase, originally only known for their gas and electric comparisons they now cover digital TVs, car insurance, credit cards, current bank accounts, mortgages and mobile phones. It remains to be seen whether this huge growth has affected the quality of the results they provide. Having been bought by a company in America their marketing drive has been pushed heavily in the past year and although no-one I know particularly likes the television adverts there is no other brand name that springs to mind for bill comparisons. There stats speak for themselves, at their peaks in 2007 15% of home phone switchers saved at least ?200, 22% of customers who switched their car insurance with uSwitch saved at least ?150 and 12% of dual fuel energy switching saving at least ?325.

So how does U Switch work? Firstly it should be pointed out that unlike comparison services for other products and services their gas and electricity calculator states that they search "all" licensed suppliers. A fear a lot of people have about online comparison services is that generally they will be only listing companies that are willing to pay to be listed in that comparison service. For gas and electric you answer a few questions and they bring up the cost of each supplier based on where you live (you must enter your postcode for this), how both gas and electricity are used in your home and how you want to pay your bill. For each they show a customer rating with reviews left by their site users, how big each company is in relation to age and customer base, the unit rate and any special conditions required by that supplier. You can view the results according to price, rating or their "green-ness". They have different calculators with different criteria for each market they compare, the full list as of time of writing: Gas & electricity, Heating cover, Water, Mobile phones, Broadband, Home phone, Digital TV, Car insurance, Loans, Credit cards, Current accounts, Debt advice and Mortgages. Once you find the plan you want, youswitch by filling in an application, which they state takes around five mintues, and then u-switch will do all the leg work for you. They pass your switching application to the new supplier, they contact your old supplier to tell them you have switched and then 4-6 weeks later it is all done. Obviously there will be no dead time when you-switch i.e. there will not be a period where you are without an electicity supply. Most energy suppliers do not have you in a 12 months contract when you sign up with them so when you switch there should be no penalties for doing so, normally such only occures when switching from a fixed or capper tariff.

This story is not the same for all other service compared on the U Switch site. Services like broadband are compared with ratings and cost evaluations but no assistance is given to switch providers. These new comparing areas like mobile phones fall into the regular style we have come to expect from comparison sites and normally you will have to visit each site in turn anyway to get the low down on exactly what is being offered and packages available. On a quick browse through we couldn't even find the mortgage or debt loans comparison service, all we could find was several articles on finding the best mortgage and debt advice. Why you would go to Uswitch for mortgage or debt advice I don't know but hopefully they won't pursue that line and will stick to what they are best known for. There is a reason Google is the number one search engine and Yahoo is the number one portal - they stick to what they do best and keep doing it. Expanding services on the same site is dangerous as core identity can be lost. But what do I know, I'm just a small time writer ;) †

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16/10/2008 I went on to the site to complain about their tacky adverts ... but ended up using it. Savings these days on electricity are not as huge as they were promising last year as far as I remember but cash is cash. I still complained about their tacky adverts but would use them again to compare other things in the future. (Are these just supposed to be insurance reviews?)

01/10/2008 Uswitch is a broker rather than a direct provider. Their website says that they guarantee to beat your home insurance renewal quote, which is a very confident thing to say. The form makes clear upfront what risks they can't insure online, which is helpful. I did feel the form was a bit lengthy though, and included an awful lot of small print. When I got to the end of the form, it seemed to take a long time to generate my quote. The quote it finally got me was from Royal and Sun Alliance, but it wasn't cheaper than a quote I'd got elsewhere.

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