Here's an interesting observation that one eagle-eyed reader pointed out to me this week (and in my view, yet more evidence of the ways in which comparison sites manipulate the results on their websites).
Take a look at the savings search engine on moneysupermarket.com - the UK's largest financial comparison site. It offers you lots of different types of accounts - ISAs, children's accounts, over 50s accounts - and gives you a few different options in terms of how accessible you need your money to be. All well and good.
At the bottom of the search box, there's a place to enter how much you have to deposit. However, rather strangely, ths box is not empty - it has an amount of money already in it, which changes depending on which account you go for. So if you say you want a children's account, it will automatically put £25 into the box of how much you want to invest. You can, of course, change it. But if you don't, the results you get from the search may be different.
For example, if you looking for a children's savings account and say that you have £25 to invest, the search will put Halifax at the top of the list. However, if you switch your minimum to £1, the best rate will be from Chorley Building Society.
Change it again, this time to £5,000 - and Halifax will be back at the top - even though its account has a maximum investment limit of £100 a month (just £1,200 a year). Meanwhile, Chorley's account will have disappeared due to its own maximum being set at £1,200.
As you can read on my last entry - this is just one of many anomalies on moneysupermarket.com and other comparison sites. Let us know if you spot any.
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