Our Service Promise

WhistleOut was started in 2008 with the single goal of providing easy-to-follow comparisons of complex telco service products, so people can get better mobile phone and internet plans.

Telecommunications is a complicated, confusing and constantly changing category. There are so many providers and plans, it’s easy to get lost, easy to make a mistake and difficult to know who to trust. Many people are on plans that aren’t best for them, some continue to use out-of-date plans, while others don’t even know what plan they are on.

The way we see it, you shouldn’t have to be a genius to make a great cell phone plan or internet provider choice. That’s why we put the work in to provide the facts, figures and tools so that our users can choose the connection and carrier that’s right for them.

We aim to provide an accurate, independent and comprehensive service. Our users deserve to have certainty and confidence in their choices. Since day one, we’ve always run a broad panel of service providers in our comparison engine, putting the most recognisable brands in the market side by side, regardless of commercial relationship.

That said, it’s practically impossible to run every single product and provider in a category as there can be many thousands of small providers who frequently come and go. We consistently maintain thousands of active products in our databases so consumers see a strong cross section of the market in their search results. Additionally, we guarantee to always include the top 10 service providers in each product category (and we always try to include more than that). Typically the top ten service providers typically cover 80% or more of the products sold in each vertical

Commercial Relationships

Comparison sites aren’t financially viable without some commercial relationships in place. In our business, wireless and internet providers are interested in receiving referrals to their websites from our comparison engine. Typically our users are quite serious about buying comparing and purchasing products so this works well for everyone.

A commercial partner can get three things from WhistleOut (examples are listed below).

• Referrals to purchase a product via a 'View Plan' or phone number
• Featured Results which offers the ability to list in a limited sponsored section at the top of the organic results tables
• Data about their market share in the comparison process

We do include service providers on our site who are not our commercial partners. We do this so that our users can always see a fair representation of the market. For those providers, we will show the provider's best matched product against the user's search request in the organic search results. Importantly these results won't show a referral link if a commercial agreement in not in place with the carrier, however it is important to note that the position in the table will not be altered if there is a referral link or not. These products are still audited and maintained by our team with the same regularity and attention to detail as every other service provider in our database.

Are There Service Providers That We Don’t Compare?

We can't cover all products in the market as the product maintenance burden is too large, but we always endeavour to include at least the top ten service providers and usually many more. We maintain pricing combinations (deals, promotions, products, fees) for the thousands of products in our database.

Analysis Paralysis

We're also aware that showing too many products can be a little confronting for some users, and might make browsing the results seem like a daunting task for them. We endeavour to make the results as accurate and comprehensive as we can, while making them easy to follow. To aid this process we include filter options and navigation tabs with each set of query results so users can best hone in on the results most suitable to them.

Guidelines for Comparison Sites

Each country has a different level of maturity with comparison sites. As the business was originally founded in Australia, we're very familiar with the guidelines from The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the guidelines set for Comparison Sites. WhistleOut strives to adhere to those guidelines. The ACCC has three key principles for comparison sites to adhere to:

• Principle 1: Facilitate honest, like-for-like comparisons
• Principle 2: Be transparent about commercial relationships
• Principle 3: Clearly disclose who and what is being compared

It is reasonable for consumers to expect that comparator websites provide access to information that is representative of the range of offers available in a certain sector. Consumers are also likely to seek comparator websites that cover a greater proportion of the market. As such, if operators do not appropriately inform consumers who or what is being compared, any purchasing decisions may be based on a distorted view of the market. Failure to make accurate or adequate disclosure about the nature or extent of the comparison service, including market coverage, may involve misleading or deceptive conduct, including by omission, and the making of false or misleading representations.

If you believe we are falling short in any of these areas, please contact us.

Comparison Sites vs Brokers / Agents

Many businesses call themselves comparison sites but are not actually consumer search engines. Instead, these type of sites only list products they earn commissions from. WhistleOut is not a broker / agent and does not sell any of the products compared on the site. We provide a powerful research tool that helps consumers find the best phone and internet plans for them. Users can then buy their preferred product from the service provider if they choose to.

Issues with Comparison Sites

WhistleOut has always believed in delivering a broad set of results where users can compare the prices and features of both big and small service providers in one place, so their products can be put to the test. Consumers are entitled to a fair comparison and need a way to get past marketing claims to see the differences between products stacked side-by-side.

In the UK, comparison sites were accused of misleading conduct for only showing products they sold or had commercial deals with, misleading consumers and hurting the industry. UK comparison sites are now forced to show a far wider spread of commercial and non-commercial results.

Identifying our Commercial Results

Please follow this link to see the advertising placements available to carriers

Non-Commercial Search Result

A standard organic result from our database result looks like this:

Commercial Search Result

An organic result where we have a commercial deal to refer the customer to the service provider includes a ‘View Plan’ button and looks like this:

Sponsored Result

A featured result is listed as a Promoted Match. It appears at the top of the results table and looks like this:

Users can hide this list of Promoted Matches at any time, and remove any service provider from their results using our filters.

Ranking & Sorting

Users can sort their results in a range of ways to suit different priorities:

24 Month Comparison Costs

In our results we calculate the 24-month comparison cost of having a product for 2 years (so that high upfront costs are normalised and contract costs are exposed) and users can make an informed decision. This is similar to the process of calculating a comparison rate in the finance industry.

Content

If you are a service provider and there is product information in our database that you would like to make changes to, please contact us.

Popularity of Service Providers

In any section of the site where we show a list of providers by popularity (popularity tables, or tools to sort by popularity), this is user generated popularity based on page views and clicks (purchasing intent) of each service provider on our site in the last 7 days. The popularity on our comparison site does not reflect real world market share.

Problems with Service Providers

When we list products in our database, we collect information about plans as disclosed by the service providers, and maintain the prices and features. We don't test each service or service plan and we rely on the fact that if a service provider says that they are offering 2GB for $20, we can take that as factually correct for the purposes of comparison.

If you have encountered any issues with service providers listed on our site, please contact us.