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Energy comparison sites will soon be more honest about who pays for listings
If you're on a UK price comparison site looking for a new energy deal, it's possible that some of the best options are being hidden from you. Last year, collective switching site The Big Deal revealed that many of the biggest sites are burying tariffs and instead promoting those that give them a commission from the UK's major energy providers. For some comparison sites, this means automatically filtering results pages to only show commission-linked deals if you opt to switch energy tariffs "today" or "now." While the practice is being investigated by the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, energy regulator Ofgem is hoping it can crack down on misleading sites with a new version of its opt-in Confidence Code.
Amazon Flow strikes low blow to brick and mortar, converts barcode scans to online sales
Remember when you had to "walk" to a "store" to buy things? Our grandkids are gonna weep uncontrollably when we explain queuing up at Our Price to buy VHS tapes. We'll recall the date the final nail was driven into brick and mortar's coffin: November 2nd, 2011 -- the day Amazon's A9 released Flow free on the App store. With Flow, you just walked into a store, scan the barcode of a book, DVD or jar of Nutella and it came back with Amazon's price, reviews and "multimedia content". It wasn't the first app to do the job, but we just couldn't help ourselves indulging in another. It wasn't long before the store detectives cottoned on to all the barcode snapping and started issuing automatic take-down tackles if they saw you holding a phone. After that, of course, war was inevitable. (But hey, it was worth it.)
