Shedding Some Light -- Pretty Logos

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Buying Cameras &
  Electronics Online

• Search-sites
       and ratings

• Some well-known
       dealers

• Dealer strategies:
       a few examples

• All those
       pretty logos

• The fine print

• Relevant reading

Or, The Bling Factor

They inspire trust, they sure make a website look great, but what do they mean?

We need help. We've been unable to identify a few of these. If the knowledgable among you could fill us in, we (and your fellow readers) would be grateful. And feel free to email us any notable decorations we have missed.

A warning: Some websites display logos they are not entitiled to use. Viewers can question the validity of any website's use of any logo by emailing the logo's sponsoring company. In particular, if a logo provides a clickable link which doesn't work, it is unauthorized. (New Trick: We have found "Click To Verify" logos which, when clicked, link to the verifiers' home pages, not their verification pages.) Please make a fuss.

	Merchant is rated by the sponsoring shopping comparison site, or search-site. Each one's criteria are different; some have no apparent basis for their ratings. Shown are: BizRate, shopzilla (BizRate's new name), CNET, PriceScan, PriceHead, MySimon, PriceGrabber, PriceCheck, PriceRunner, EveryPrice, LowPriceDigital, Smarter, NexTag, Shopping.com, ShopCartUSA, DigitalSaver, and Yahoo Shopping. See this page for our observations about the limited credibility of many search-sites. See this page for a discussion of ShopCartUSA and DigitalSaver.
	These resemble search-site ratings, but we haven't identified them.
	These dealers have access to nice clip-art, or are really good with Illustrator.
	These link to customer reviews the dealer has posted on another page on its website. (We have no doubt they are authentic and objective.)
	Membership in the Better Business Bureau's voluntary national evaluation program. This merchant makes an effort to provide a high quality service and agrees to allow the BBB to monitor it.
	These services provide security for online credit card transactions. They inspect a site's SSL encryption integrity and hacker defenses. They do not monitor service quality, order accuracy, or customer satisfaction.
	AEIP, the Association of Ethical Internet Professionals, is defunct and its domain is for sale. The consensus on programmers' forums was that the organization licensed its logo but never enforced the standards it claimed to promote. (Thanks to Bill, Wes, Dale, David and Michael for their research.)
	Credit cards offer their users certain protections without regard to who the dealer is. Display of these logos does not affect the degree of protection.

Logos on this page are reproduced without permission of their respective owners. They are displayed here for educational purposes. If you are one of the owners and wish to have your logo removed, please inform us and we will comply.