Zoopla and uSwitch fly the flag for ZPG but it's no consumer champion

The company provides some incredibly useful services that add value. But it's still a business

uSwitch: Its ads are hard to miss

“The consumer champion at the heart of your home,” is how ZPG, formerly known as Zoopla, leads off its annual report. Right.

The group owns a portfolio of websites which are mostly focussed on property. Also among their number, however, is uSwitch, the price comparison website.

If you haven’t seen one of its ubiquitous ads by now, where have you been?

They’re not as good as MoneySuperMarket’s but they’re certainly irritating enough to get noticed.

And they have been doing very well for the group, which has just reported a 22 per cent rise in revenues and an 11 per cent rise in adjusted earnings on the back of record traffic (more than 314m visits of which a shade over two thirds came via mobile).

Headline pre tax profits were hit by acquisition costs (the company’s been on a bit of a spree) and other one offs, but the long term outlook is just dandy.

More and more people seem alive to what Zoopla’s businesses can do for them, and that’s a good thing, particularly when it comes to uSwitch. Far too few of us do switch.

It’s for that reason that politicians have been debating price caps on the big six energy providers, which have been busily boosting prices while continuing to provide a less than stellar service.

The only way to improve the often shabby treatment we get from the providers of vital services is to ditch them when they shaft us. uSwitch makes that easier, so more power to it and ZPG.

The Zoopla site, meanwhile, provides a handy tool for those searching to either buy or rent property, and for doing some of the homework on what they find that they need to do.

Great tools, both of them. The other sites among the portfolio also have value.

But let’s get real. Zoopla is not a consumer champion. It is a business that pays its executives handsomely, and is focussed on providing a return for shareholders.

It does that through the provision services that can be extremely useful to the consumer. But part of putting the consumer at the centre of what you do requires you to be straight with them.

That being the case, the next annual report should drop the talk of being a “champion” and kick off with something like this: “We make money through the provision a portfolio of tools designed to assist the consumer.”

That would actually make me more more comfortable with using ZPG’s sites because I’d be secure in the knowledge that the company was being up front with me.