What price comparison sites don't tell you

Buying through price comparison websites can lull you into a false sense of security, says Merryn Somerset Webb. You could be in for a nasty surprise.

I am an idiot. But, assuming you have not yet gone on holiday in Europe this year, I would like to help you be less of an idiot.

I ended up booking our car hire in Italy on the internet just a week before we left. By that time any of the vaguely familiar names in the car rental business were asking £400-plus for a car for the nine days we needed, before excess insurance and the like.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.