Uswitch Limited is a UK-based

price comparison service A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare produ ...

and switching website founded in 2000. The site allows consumers to compare prices for a range of energy, personal finance, insurance, and communications services.

History

uSwitch.com was founded by Lord Milford Haven in September 2000 with an initial £4 million investment to take advantage of the UK’s

deregulated Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

gas and electricity markets. He partnered with Andrew Salmon, George Milford Haven and Vipul Amin. The company subsequently expanded into the telephony and communications markets in 2001. In the same year, it also bought competitor buy.co.uk followed by local community information website UpMyStreet.com in 2003. uSwitch.com was itself acquired by US media conglomerate,

E.W. Scripps Company The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

in March 2006 for £210 million ( $366 million). The purchase added a second freestanding interactive media business to its portfolio alongside leading US product price comparison site,

Shopzilla Connexity (formally Connexity Inc.) is a privately held Los Angeles operator of shopping web sites, including Shopzilla.com. Originally started as comparison shopping website Bizrate.com, the company changed its name to Shopzilla in 2004, and ch ...

. In February 2008, E.W. Scripps Company recorded a $411 million pre-tax charge related to the uSwitch acquisition, contributing to an overall $256 million loss for Scripps in the last quarter of 2007. The scale of the write-down reflects more realistic revenue expectations due to lower-than-expected levels of switching. In December 2009, uSwitch was acquired by forwarding Internet Group for $10.3 million in cash.Scripps Networks 10K
March 1, 2010 Forward is a privately funded collection of internet-based businesses focused on consumer engagement and innovation. Forward3D is the group's 3D search agency (formerly known as TrafficBroker) and Forward Innovations is the consumer division that focuses on price comparison and switching, including brands such as InvisibleHand and Omio. In June 2011, uSwitch acquired Top10.com. 2011 also saw uSwitch enter the Irish market with uSwitch.ie, which operates in the same way as the UK but currently offers switching services for broadband, TV, phone, and energy services and not insurance or financial services. In August 2013, LDC backed an MBO of uSwitch, the private equity firm acquired a significant stake in the business with forwarding Internet Group retaining a substantial minority holding. Both investors aligned with the existing management team who have a minority holding in the business. On 30 April 2015, the property website firm Zoopla agreed to purchase uSwitch from LDC for £160 million. In 2018, Red Ventures and the investment firm Silverlake purchased Uswitch from the property giant Zoopla to create RVU, a family of brands of which Uswitch is now a part.

Business model

uSwitch.com is a free, online, and telephone-based comparison and switching service, that helps consumers compare prices on energy, finance, insurance, and other services. There are no direct costs to consumers for the service, the company instead receives a commission from some suppliers when a customer chooses to switch to them. uSwitch provides several mechanisms designed to increase suppliers' visibility for a fee. uSwitch.com was the first comparison website to achieve the

Plain English Campaign The Plain English Campaign (PEC) is a commercial editing and training firm based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1979 by Chrissie Maher, the company is a world leader in plain-language advocacy, working to persuade organisations in the UK and ...

’s Internet Crystal Mark It also hosts guides advising the public on how to save money and releases research covering technology, the energy market, and financial developments. uSwitch.com also has a London-based call centre and a

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‘Send us your bill’ service, where customers can post their latest energy bills to receive comparison advice. In January 2018, the company launched a campaign featuring

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in ...

presenter Rachel Riley in Winkleigh, Devon.

Accreditation

uSwitch is accredited under the

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Confidence Code, a voluntary code of practice for online domestic price comparison services. uSwitch was involved in the formation of the Confidence Code in 2002 with Consumer Focus, which managed the code until Ofgem took over in 2013. uSwitch.com was previously accredited by

Consumer Focus The New National Consumer Council, operating as Consumer Futures, was a non-departmental public body and statutory consumer organisation in England, Wales, Scotland, and, for postal services, Northern Ireland. It was established by the Consumer ...

, and played a role in the industry consultation which led to the establishment of a voluntary code of practice — the Energywatch Confidence Code (now known as the Consumer Focus Confidence Code) — in 2002. The September 2007 minutes of the Consumer Focus Management Board Meeting, and press reports, show that the company was asked by Consumer Focus to change how it displays comparison results and information so that consumers receive unbiased results. The company complied with these requests and has remained accredited. In Ofgem's (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) September 2013 audit of the uSwitch.com website, it scored 100% for each of the nine code of practice requirements of the Confidence Code.

Partners and affiliates

Major partners include

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Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...

, People’s Champion and

Johnston Press Johnston Press plc was a multimedia company founded in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1767. Its flagship titles included UK-national newspaper the '' i'', '' The Scotsman'', the ''Yorkshire Post'', the ''Falkirk Herald'', and Belfast's ''The News Letter ...

References

External links