Web Shopping: Bots and Beyond

Vendor Verification

"Trust, but verify," President Ronald Reagan used to say. I agree with him when it comes to picking online merchants. After choosing a product and finding the best price, you'll want to confirm that the seller you're dealing with is solid. This is crucial, since the lowest price might not always be the best deal in the end.

Nefarious online merchants are legion. The National Consumers League's Internet Fraud Watch reports that last year online scams cost consumers over $3.2 million. So read the fine print on everything, including shipping fees and taxes, the vendor's debit policy (choose a store that won't charge your credit card until your item ships), and complaint policy (it should be clearly defined and should include both an e-mail address and a phone number for customer service).

Vendor Trust

One way to verify an online vendor's trustworthiness is through ratings services like Gomez and BizRate, which appraise vendors based on such criteria as ease of use, on-time delivery, and customer feedback. Gomez bases its numbers not on user reports but on features included on a vendor's site--such as whether an online clothing store has a gift registry. The service does post a few user reports, but they're not always current. And Gomez strikes deals with some vendors, making suspicious shoppers like me wonder whether the ratings are entirely objective. At least Gomez discloses this practice, saying it "may receive compensation from or have other business arrangements with some of the businesses evaluated on the site."

BizRate takes the populist approach, collecting thousands of buyer surveys to score a store. Businesses voluntarily join BizRate's program by letting shoppers fill out a survey at the end of their transaction (BizRate also rates nonparticipating stores through an in-house panel of shoppers). But BizRate's ratings are very kind. The lowest-rated online electronics store, for example, still received a score of 6.7 out of 10. Grade inflation is rampant on all rating sites (see "Can You Trust E-Commerce Review Sites?"), so be skeptical and give more than a cursory glance to ratings. BizRate, for instance, gives one site's product selection an impressive 8+ score, but the site's on-time delivery rating was a (relatively) pathetic 6.4--a big consideration if you're doing last-minute shopping. And BizRate's new shopping bot feature--which allows vendors to pay for top placement in search results--raises further questions about the reliability of its ratings. But BizRate's CEO, Chuck Davis, says, "We rate no one.... Customers do. [Our ratings] are always unbiased."

The Last Word

You can search for a specific online store or cruise the categories on either site to locate the dealers you're considering. I used Gomez and BizRate as tiebreakers when the cost-comparison bots delivered vendors that were close in price. For instance, my confidence about buying at Outpost.com--which offered the lowest price on the digital camera--soared when I found that the site received ratings of 9.1 out of 10 at BizRate. The rating services also warned me against one site that offered a very low price on a Razor. Gomez ranked the store 24th out of 30 in its category. And BizRate has a handy shopping toolbar add-on (for Internet Explorer only) that makes vendor comparisons one-click easy. The service isn't perfect, however, and sometimes differences between stores seem minor, even though one may be rated higher than the other on the chart.

But even though Gomez rates more than 6000 online firms and BizRate rates 5000, they do not cover every Tom, Dick, and Harry.com. Several small-scale sites (like MyRazorScooter.com) that appeared on price bot lists didn't appear on either service's rankings. That's when it becomes your call whether to entrust your purchase to an unfamiliar site or shop elsewhere.

Best Vendor Ratings: Although BizRate's ratings can be too kind, it ranks vendors based on the experiences of thousands of consumers.