Tips to Prevent E-auction Fraud

When you bid on something that's thousands of miles away, you can't easily inspect it. Alternatively, sellers don't know their buyers, and could be swindled. How can you protect yourself?

In fact, auction sites will never be able to offer complete protection against fraud. Ultimately, you have to learn to PROTECT YOURSELF.

1. If you are bidding on expensive collectibles, you should be using escrow services. These are commonly offered by online auctions. An escrow service will hold your money until you are certain that the item you bought is genuine.

2. If you're going to pay with a money order or a check, use an escrow service. Otherwise, the seller could be gone with your money when you realize the goods are not what you expected.

3. Use a credit card. If the goods are unacceptable, you can challenge payment through the credit card company.

4. Ask the seller when delivery can be expected and if the merchandise can be covered by a warranty or exchanged if damaged.

5. Find out if shipping and delivery are included in the auction price or are there additional costs.

6. There should be no reason to give out your IC number or driving license number to the seller.

For those who are still new to E-auction, here is a piece of advice for you. Be cautious of buying from people selling high value items in bulk. You would have been tentative, thus you are encouraged to try single, low value items initially. Hope you do gain a worthy bargain! (=

By SueHui

CORPORATE BLOGGING: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

There are more than 100million blogs worldwide. (Top 15 Corporate Blog :Google, Adobe, Flickr, Facebook, Yahoo! Search, Dell, Digg, LinkedIn, Ask, General Motors, Yahoo!, Delta, Kodak, Monster, Boeing,) Corporate blogging, give customers a channel to interact and get to know the brand and company in a format that they’re familiar and comfortable with because you speak their language. With this, company can have closer relationship with their customer.

Besides that, company can get also get free feedback and suggestion to what people are saying about their products, brand, competitors, marketing that take place in the forms of comments on the blog or commentary and discussions that take place on other blogs. Besides that, information about competitor can also be known easily.

High-quality content on your blog goes further to reinforce the value your organisation can provide and reduces the need to “hard sell” your product or services. If your contact details are easily accessible u will be well known in every corner of the world...

When there is so much benefit in corporate blogging, there are sure some limitation. For example, the comment given by people may something insulting or replies in an unprofessional manner, the usefulness of the information become suspecious because we do not know whether people take blogs seriously.

A majority of employers surveyed are worried that corporate blogs may result in security breaches and loss of company confidentiality. Although this is primarily a concern for external blogs, there is the potential for internal breaches of security as well.

Another issue corporations appear to have reservations about is loss of productivity. Blogging is taking time away from employee's "real" jobs. Bosses always prefer their employee to do something that involves "real" money such as making sales or collecting on delinquent accounts.

However, corporate blogging is still a powerful marketing communications tool for many organisation. It doesn’t matter small or large, SMEs or corporates, for-profit or non profit type of company, corporate blogging can give you a massive Return On Blog.

CLICK HERE on:

-How to start corporate blogging

-Ways to have best practice in corporate blogging

-How to increase sales with corporate blogging

By Cherly Khu

Piracy in Malaysia

Piracy is indeed a common state in Malaysia as we can find pirated CD, DVD and software easily, especially in Pasar Malam.

Government has launched “Sikap Tulen” from 2005 until now to cultivating the culture of using and purchase original legal software. There are 6 components of Sikap Tulen Campaign:

1. Sikap Tulen Professional

2. Sikap Tulen Director

3. Sikap Tulen Company

4. Sikap Tulen Society

5. Sikap Tulen IT Mall

6. Ops Tulen

How successful of the “Sikap Tulen” campaign?

It may be easier to raid the firms that using pirated business software by enforces them to conduct a software audit and report the audit to the authorities. The reward of RM20,000 for the piracy reporter also encourage people, such as employees, to report whoever is using illegal software. Moreover, the successful of government deploy sniffer dogs to combat the illegal software also contribute to the decrease of piracy software.

However, how the government ensures the public not purchasing any piracy software or disc?

It is indeed a tough job. The primary reason is that the cost of purchases the original software is higher than the pirated software. The original software costs you at least hundreds while the pirated software only RM10. Although the pirated software does not as good as original, the cost and benefits analysis underline the pirated software is in terms more cost effective and enough for the users.

Moreover, handful of free download software, programs and digital format files available in Internet induce the piracy problem. Piracy bogeyman can download all the files from Internet, copy it into optical disc and sell it. Even public can easily download the files and enjoy it.

Thus, to successfully solve piracy problem, the purchase price of original should not be too high and affordable for the public. For instance, iTunes that offer cheap legal music files (1 song for 99¢) can encourage public to download legal music files. Government and authorities can also learn from UK by cutoff the Internet connection of illegal downloader.

By Fui Chin

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen’s adoption strategies.

E-government also known as online government, it refers to the use of internet technology for exchanging information, providing services and transacting with citizens, businesses and other governments of other countries and it maybe applied by legislature, judiciary, or administration. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government (G2G) & Government-to-Employees (G2E). The implementation of electronic government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)by the Malaysian government. The current applications of e-Government in Malaysia such as e-Filling, Renewing Road Tax and Driving License online, KWSP’s i-Akaun, E-Perolehan, Electronic Labour Exchange and so on.

There are some common problems encountered by consumers such as the languages available of e-Government applications are more on English and Malay. Some Chinese consumers are not proficient in those languages, so they are rarely or even do not using the e-Government applications. Besides, lack of computer knowledge is another factor for those who reluctant to adopt the applications, this especially holds true for the senior citizens. Furthermore, some consumers do hold the traditional opinion that is not secured deal with computer rather than people (internet security problems).

In order to encourage more citizens to use the e-government applications, the government can implement Chinese version to those consumers who are not proficient in English and Malay. Moreover, it can also promote the e-Government services through media such as advertisement of television, radio, newspaper and so forth. Whereas creating E-campaign for asking people to join the activities by giving free gift to consumers is also another way to encourage more citizens to use the e-government applications. In addition, organising road show at shopping mall during weekend and teaching them to use computer are indeed good strategies, too.

In short, using the e-Government applications can create awareness about the convenience of internet because it brings several benefits such as no traffic jam, save time and cost, and user friendly. The implementation of these good strategies must be addressed carefully. Otherwise, e-Government will possibly mislead the citizens instead of achieving its main aim: empowering the citizens to complete their transactions anytime at anywhere!

By PeiCin