Short of cash? Try clicksave

In the season of the thin wallet, there's no shortage of websites promising to save you pounds. But do they?

It's a gas

Consumers are getting a bum deal on gas and electricity - so say MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee. We could be saving £670 million a year if only it wasn't so complicated.

Cue the web. All energy comparison sites follow the same procedure. Enter your postcode, current supplier and preferred payment method - fixed monthly direct debit is always the cheapest. It's also cheaper to get your gas and electricity from the same company.

Enter your annual gas or electricity usage (in pounds or energy units). My lot, Powergen, makes it easier by providing an estimate of my expected demand for the next year with my last bill - 3,863 units costing £291.47, less a tenner discount. EnergyOn ( energyon.co.uk ) revealed that the same electricity would cost £256 a year from Amerada, saving £25. It also came out top of the gas comparison, saving £12 on my yearly payments of £204, and offers online bill payment and account management too. But some customers (my dad) have found this to be an exceptionally cumbersome way of checking bills. Saved: £37.

Home-a-loan

Switching mortgages is easier than ever (though beware redemption penalties eating up any savings). Charcol Online ( charcolonline.co.uk ) provides access to 500 mortgages from 45 lenders. Be prepared to spend at least half an hour filling in online forms. The site presents the results clearly, but there's still a baffling number of choices. The lowest monthly payment, a three per cent to one per cent stepped discount from the Market Harborough Building Society, would knock £100 off my £586-a-month mortgage. But an Abbey National discount tracker, which costs £457.43 a month, would end up saving more over the long term. How does that work? Perhaps I should ask an independent financial adviser.

Saved: hard to say.

Household waste

MoneySupermarket.com can compare 999 household insurance policies at a stroke. Or at least it can when it's working. I entered my address and was told "The server threw an exception." Funnily enough, so did I. Rival finance site MoneyNet was no better. It has recently introduced a home-insurance finder, but despite letting users fill in six pages of questions, it could only say: "We regret that we are unable to offer a quotation for you at this time" and offer a phone number.

I finally managed to get a quote from Direct Choice ( directchoice.co.uk ), which compares policies from 15 insurers. Its best price for £20,500 of contents insurance was £109.07 from NU Club EDI, which is £20.05 cheaper than my current rate of £129.12 with First Direct. It all looked great until I got to the payment screen and found that an "instalment charge" of £16.22 had been added. Should I switch to a company I've never heard of to save the princely sum of £4.17? Er, no. Saved: nothing.

Car lot

HSBC's Auto Direct ( autodirect.co.uk ) compares prices from 14 big-name insurers and promises your money back if you can find a cheaper policy within 48 hours. Though why you d start looking after you ve signed up beats me. The cheapest deal I found was £326.30, with a whopping £375 excess, through Fortis. That's no comparison with the £277.32 from my current insurer, Eagle Star Direct, with only £250 excess.

MoneySupermarket compares 200 policies, but the site crashed on the final page, after I spent half an hour entering information about my clapped-out Corsa, no-claims bonus and speeding fine. Enough.

Saved: nothing.

Talk is cheaper

Buy.co.uk compares tariffs from BT Cellnet, Orange, One2One, Virgin and Vodafone. It revealed that for my typical usage - 275 minutes of peak and off-peak calls per month - One2One Anytime 200 would be £8 a month cheaper than my current choice of Orange Talk 150. But the site doesn't know that most of my friends and family are also on Orange, so I can call them for free using my 150 talk-plan minutes, or 5p a minute off-peak. It would cost 20p a minute to call them from One2One Anytime, which would reduce the savings. Buy.co.uk also doesn't reveal which handsets are available. It just dumps you at the Carphone Warehouse website.

Saved: nothing.