How we rank, and how we make money
We compare prices and earn commission on some of the clicks that lead on to a shop. That is a conflict of interest, and the only honest thing is to write down how it is handled.
The order
The recommendations are sorted by one thing: the total price delivered — the goods, the shipping, any fees and duty, for the delivery method you chose. Where two options cost the same, the one with fewest orders comes first, because two parcels are more bother than one.
There are no other parameters. Not commission, not paid placement, not the size of the shop.
- Shops that pay us nothing are included. Where a shop has no affiliate programme, we link to it directly and earn zero. A comparison that leaves out the cheapest shop because it does not pay is not worth being paid for.
- Shops we cannot price are left out — and named. At the bottom of the results page stands every shop we have left out, and why. “We have left out three shops, here is why” is a different sentence from “these are the three shops there are”, and the second is a lie if we cannot say the first.
- Some shops only state the shipping inside the basket. For those we cannot work out a total price, and then we do not guess. It is the most common reason a shop is missing.
The commission
When you click on to a shop, in some cases it happens through an affiliate link, and if you buy, we get a share of the amount. You do not pay more because of it — the price is the shop's, and it is the same however you got there.
The commission actually works against us, and that is worth knowing: when we split a basket across two or three shops, one large referral becomes two or three small ones, and that typically earns us less. We recommend the split anyway, when it is cheapest. That is the whole product — if we stopped doing it, there would be no reason to use the site.
The prices
Prices and shipping tariffs come from the shops' own pages and feeds. Every amount on the page shows when it was fetched, and every shipping rule shows when a person last checked it against the shop's delivery page. The final price is set by the shop — check it in the basket before you pay.
We take no payment and sell nothing ourselves. The purchase is between you and the shop, and it is also the shop that holds your rights as a consumer — cancellation, complaints, returns.