Consumer protection – criticism of comparison portals – economy

Many consumers rely on them, but according to competition watchdogs, comparison portals do not always work properly. The German competition center reported on Tuesday that it had found a total of 122 violations of competition law on 64 portals monitored since the spring. Important information about how rankings and customer ratings came about was most often left out. In addition, it is often not shown what proportion of the market is covered. In this way, providers could buy cheap places in the rankings without this being necessarily marked as advertising. Gold, silver and bronze entries can be booked, as can the title “Premium Partner” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/.” From our point of view, it is particularly worrying if portals conceal the fact that such providers are listed at the top who pay a commission,” explained lawyer Martin Bolm. On closer inspection, supposedly objective comparisons on finance portals would only have turned out to be collections of links to those providers who had previously paid for them.

source site