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

E-auction is getting more and more famous, consumer like to buy from e-auction is due to the price is lower comparing to market, easier to find the product and items they looking for by just using the search engine, and might due to more convenient and time saving.

Unfortunately, people start to misuse the e-auction. Type of fraud happens due to consumer not alert enough. The most common fraud is that buyer pay money and didn’t receive goods or seller sent the good but never receive money.

After e-auction company realize frauds are invading them, they have come up several methods to prevent frauds to bring up consumer’s confidence. A few methods that been undertaken and point out to the consumers are feedback forums, escrow service & physical inspection.

Feedback forums is actually an effective prevention where users and consumers can actually voice out the problem they facing and give a precaution to other user to take note such thing happen. For instant in Lelong.com.my, they have 1 topic on “Fraud Alert” where users report any fraud they detected to make precautions.

Escrow service, is a legal arrangement where the item is deposited into safekeeping under a trust party and once the condition (money paid) is met the item only will be send. In Lelong.com.my, they have their own escrow service where they call it SafeTrade.

Physical inspection normally only apply when the seller and the buyer are in the same location and it will be convenient for them to arrange for the inspection where make sure the item is in good condition.

Therefore users and consumers should always take precautions and prevent any frauds occurs on e-auction. As eldest always mention, taking precaution is better than cure, and so you should always remember it.

Further informations:

1. Lelong.com.my
2. Ec Lessons
3. Wikipedia

-William Hong Weei Loon-

A review on a post on Legal from My E-Commerce blog - How to lose your ID easily to fraudsters at home?

I've choosen Mr.Hen's post on "how to lose your Identity Card (ID) easily to frauster at home?" for the review.

The personal identity information is very important for us. Our parents will always tell us that we must keep our ID properly. The reason we must hold our ID with care is to avoid been stolen. If it is stolen there's a possibility that the person who steal it will use our ID to do illegal activity and it will create a lot of trouble for us. Therefore, in order to avoid all these things to happened, i will hold my ID with me whenever and wherever i go.

When I take part in any activities which needed my photo stated ID or passport such as applying to purchase insurance, applying to open bank account, applying for credit cards. I will always write a “sample” word on it to avoid other people from duplicating my ID and sell it for the foreigner or even terrorist. Even though if there is any documents which is already useless, try to destroy it. I believe that this could help us to avoid our personal information being used by others to register on something that may cause harm to us.

If you do not want your own personal data being use by fraudsters, you must always keep in mind that ID is the most important thing to let other identify who you are and must keep your ID properly with you all the time. Lastly, do remember that not to simply give out your personal information to others, it will cause alot of problems and harms to you.

Please take good care with your own propety at all time.

- Alvin Poon Chee Hau -

Mudah.com.my

A NEW BORN BABY of ecommerce in Malaysia. Everyone, or at least most of you guys know about eBay , and also lelong.com.my. Recently a new trading website has been implemented. Mudah.com.my is similar to eBay and also lelong.com.my. Is a place online market place where you can find different types of products and items which can be new or used items. Some of the user post new products that they want to introduce into the market and some of them post some used items that they do not want anymore.

From the website, you will able to find a lot of products that been categories into:

I) Vehicles

II) Properties

III) Electronics

IV) Home and personal items

V) Leisure/Sports/Hobbies

VI) Business to business

VII) Jobs and services

VIII) Others

Mudah.com.my downloading speed is amazing where you can actually load it in just a second every page on hour typical steamyx with 1mbps. As for any readers that never try such website before, let me guide you so that you won’t feel lost using it and get frustrated.

1) Link to this website – http://www.mudah.com.my/

2)This website will be showing in your screen.

3)Click which location you want to look your item for. Let’s say Kuala Lumpur, just press on it and it will lead to the next screen.

4) Type in the item you wan to look for in the searching bar. Let’s say you want to look for Sony products, type in Sony in the searching bar like what I do in the picture below and press search.

5) All the Sony product will be listed out as below.

6) You can also scope down the searching by category as below and also by places.

You can also advertise your items as well by click the Insert Ad in the top column. Fill in the forms and insert the item’s information and post it and it will be activate within 24 hours. The best part is that every advertisement you make is FREE!!! Yes, you hear me, it’s FREE!! However, beware of any frauds during any purchase or selling.

The layout of this ecommerce website is simple and comfortable. However, this design and layout of the website is not very attractive as in it looks very dull. It might caused by the color and logo is not attractive enough. However in overall it is good enough for a new build ecommerce website.

So, don’t miss out a big chance posting anything you wish to sell or look for something you want to buy.

To know further about it:
1) Mudah.com.my
2) Jacky Yong
3) SHVoong
4) JamieLiew

-William Hong Weei Loon-

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

Corporate blogging is increasingly used by companies to improve both internal and external communications, as well as for sheer promotional reasons.It is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. However, unlike a press release, advertisement in a magazine or a listing in the Yellow Pages, corporate blogs are two-way communications. Corporate blogging can benefit the organization such as:

· Position your business as a thought leader

One of the most effective marketing strategies is “Show, don’t tell”. It is a strategy by demonstrating your expertise and experience in your industry through commentary, guides, analysis, etc. The quality of your blog content reflects the quality of your organisation.

· Free feedback and suggestions from key constituents

Corporate blogging gives you insights to what people comment and discuss about your products, your brand, your competitors, your marketing from the comfort of your office chair.

· Build rapport with customers

Publishing a corporate blog give your customers a channel to interact and get to know your brand and organisation in a form that they’re familiar and comfortable with.

· Lead generation

Having your blog appear on the first page of Google’s results gives your organisation credibility in the eyes of your potential customers. Make sure that your contact details are easily accessible and you’ll be getting leads from your blog in no time.

· Increased website traffic from higher search engine rankings

Because blogs are so easy to publish, you’ll find yourself adding new content to your websites more frequently. Search engines favour websites with fresh content and ranks your blog higher in search results, which in turn results in a greater number of referrals from search engines to your website and blog.

However, not everyone is in favour of enterprise blogging and it is a risky strategy. The drawbacks of blogging in enterprises are illustrate below:

• There is a risk that an ill-judged comment could be seized upon by the media or disgruntled investors.
• It can be tricky to drag public comment out of a company without first routing through the sanitizing filter of a press office.
• The best non-corporate blogs are spontaneous and genuine. Poorly written corporate blogs can look fake - or perhaps worse, they reveal incompetence.
• There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on their knowledge, and the competitive edge - and thus the safety of everyone's jobs - is the thickness ofoffice rival is not really wise. a single good idea. Sharing it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival is not really wise.

These are the 15 Most Popular Corporate Blogs:

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These are a few useful resources on corporate blogging available from the Internet:

• Corporate Blogging
  
• About Corporate Blogging
  
• PeluangNiagaOnline
  

- Carmen Lee Jia Wen -

Review of Using Touch n Go to buy Fast Food In Malaysia

I never knew that Touch n Go have such an amazing plan where consumer actually can use the card as a payment for certain fast food retail shop. According to TheStar newspaper, state that consumer can use start using such service starting from 19^th April 2008. The outlets that adopt such system are A&W, Burger King, Dunkin Donut, 7-Eleven, Carrefour Hypermarket, Caltex convenience store and also Cineleisure. I used to hope Touch n Go can provide service and now it had came true.

The most attractive point of this new service is that no extra charges are is required. For instant if your A&W cost you RM 6.80, and then it will be only RM6.80 deducted from your card. So in the coming days we can see people using Touch n Go for all the purchases. Parents can also use this as a daily expenses card for their children instead of giving the children cash.

However there are some limitation that I feel unsafe using such service. As we know Touch n Go is used by just touching the card to the paying machine and it’ll be direct deducted. So what if we lost our card? Even though the manage mention that they will block the card immediately, but then the card is so convenient where you can actually used up all the money by 1 goal and of course without identification where else credit cards and debit cards have identity verification.

How ever whether this new service is a good or bad thing is all depend on the consumer, some thing that losing a card might be just a small lost and the main concern is the convenient where some think oppositely.

Let me know what you think by replying after reading.

Further Information:

<-Promos for buying Touch ’n Go

<-You can use Touch n Go card to buy burgers by next Saturday

<-Touch n Go Website

<-Reviewed Post

+William Hong Weei Loon+ “Predict the unpredicted"