Sunday, July 6, 2008

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods and services by offering them, taking bids and selling the item to the winning bidder. Nowadays, E-commerce has also provided E-auction service. E-auction is an electronic “reserve” auction where sellers use internet-based software bid to provide goods and services.

Recently, there have many fraud cases rising in e-commerce especially in e-auction. Therefore, a buyer should protect himself when he is participating in an e-auction
These are the ways to prevent the e-auction fraud:

1. User identity verification
Identify user personal information is important because it serve as evidence to proof whether the user has made the transaction. It can prevent people using other people account to make improper transaction.

2. Insurance policy
The e-auction should provide insurance policy to protect buyers who buy goods especially in higher price. By providing insurance policy, buyers are encouraged to purchase more products because the risk of fraud maybe reduced by compensates insurance and it will gain buyers confident. Therefore, it will win the buyer’s royalty on the company.

3. Escrow services
This service involved an intermediate third party between seller and buyer. It should be trusted because it serves as intermediate party to regulate the transaction between seller and buyer. It will make sure the transaction process is performed under the auction rules. Normally this kind of service required high value of transaction.

4. Feedback forum
Feedback forum provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals. Feedback forum allows users to read the comments that left by previous buyers on the seller or particular website. Users may evaluate the performance and eliminate the fraud risk without using the same website or same seller.

Buyers are advised to check the security of e-auction regularly because it will get better understanding about what types of fraud are occurred.

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