Online-Business Watchdog Sites Lack Full Coverage
When the top online bookstore is named after a piranha- and anaconda-infested South American river and the name of one of the most visited Web sites describes an uneducated anti-intellectual, how is one to know that BuySafe.com lives up to its label?
While returning a purchase to a physical store simply means retracing your steps, it can get tricky for the online shopper when it’s not clear where the store is located or even what its telephone number is. The issue of trust has led to the creation of several online services that either rate or verify the integrity of an online business.
The Council of Better Business Bureaus has taken its traditional consumer watchdog role onto the Internet, using the same model it has with bricks-and-mortar stores: A retailer pays the Better Business Bureau a fee to be part of the service and for the privilege of using the group’s logo on the site.
Customers click on the logo and are taken to a part of the BBB site that includes the retailer’s physical address, telephone number and other basic information about the company. Also included is a name, phone number and e-mail address of the retailer’s customer service representative and a description of its complaint-handling record.
The site (https://www.bbbonlin.org) is handy if you’re visiting one of the more than 2,100 online retailers that participate in the BBB program, but it doesn’t help if the store hasn’t joined up. And the list of nonmembers is long, featuring 11 of the top 15 online retailers listed by Media Metrix Inc., an Internet audience measurement company, including Blue Mountain Arts, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
The privacy protection group TRUSTe uses a similar model to inform consumers of how the operators of a Web site use the personal information that is gathered. The TRUSTe seal of approval on the Web site means the company has been audited to make sure it adheres to its posted privacy statement.
But TRUSTe (https://www.truste.com), fails in the same way as the BBB in that coverage is nowhere near universal.
Market research firm BizRate.com rates Web sites based on customer and staff evaluations using questionnaires, in much the same way J.D. Power & Associates does in the automotive world. Under that model, BizRate makes money by using the data from the questionnaires to develop market research it sells back to the merchants.
Unlike TRUSTe and BBB, BizRate does not need, and doesn’t always get, the cooperation of the retailers in order to rate the merchants. While BizRate maintains that it is more independent than the BBB because it does not rely on membership fees from the stores, its claim should be looked at with a jaundiced eye, since one could argue that they are beholden to their market research clients, who are retailers.
BizRate (https://www.bizrate.com) ranks more than 830 stores on a scale of 1 to 5 in 10 categories, surveying thousands of customers from each store.
Glendale-based Public Eye has been doing similar ratings of online stores for several years. Instead of selling market research to pay the bills, Public Eye (https://www.thepubliceye.com) accepts advertising on its Web site.
Public Eye allows customers to not only rate an online retailer but also to contribute extensive comments about them. While the company does not claim to be comprehensive in its reviews, the gaps in coverage seem odd, leaving out almost all of the top online retailers.
Public Eye also reviews negative customer complaints before posting them on the Web site to make sure they are valid, although they do not take similar precautions with positive reviews.
Of course, the Internet is famous for its freewheeling nature, and sites like Reseller Ratings (https://www.resellerratings.com) allow customers to vent or praise with impunity. The site only ranks online retailers of computer products.
Corona del Mar-based Shopping.com, which Compaq Computer Corp. recently agreed to purchase for $220 million, has the distinction of being the worst-rated computer retailer on the Reseller Ratings site. BizRate gave it a similarly poor rating of half a star out of a possible five.
Shopping.com declined to comment for this report.
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Jonathan Gaw can be reached via e-mail at jonathan.gaw@latimes.com.
