Attention, Internet Shoppers! Seals of Approval May Mislead You
Should online consumers trust safe-shopping seals? Most emblems, we found, don't guarantee a secure shopping experience.
Seals to Ignore
Some companies dispensing seals do little to screen out potentially unscrupulous merchants and offer scant or no recourse for resolving complaints. In the worst cases, seal vendors merely "register" Web businesses in an online directory, although the seals may lead consumers to believe otherwise.
Consider Multicheck Internet Business Registration Center, which charges $46 for a database listing. The listing includes very basic information about Web merchants, such as a phone number, an address, and a description of the company and its wares. The merchants themselves supply this information, and Multicheck does not verify all of it, according to a statement on its Web site. Multicheck provided no address or phone number for itself on its Web site, and the company never responded to PC World's e-mail requests for an interview.
We also spoke to executives at BizRate, MasterCard, Netcheck Commerce Bureau, PublicEye, Web Assurance Bureau, and WebWatchdog, all of which award seals. These six firms were more forthcoming about their policies than Multicheck, but they could not match the pro-consumer policies of BBBOnline, Trust-e, or WebTrust.
Netcheck verifies an applicant's ground address by sending the company a letter, but it does no other screening, says Thomas B. Abbott, company president. If consumers file significant complaints about a site, Netcheck will post a warning.
The upshot: If you're a consumer, be skeptical of any seal, unless it comes from one of the three sites recommended in this article. If you're a business, do your homework, so you can avoid forking out some serious money for a seal that does little more than clutter your Web site.
