Every year Ina Steiner from EcommerceBytes undertakes a survey of online marketplaces. However, a flaw in the system has come to light.
The flaw is in the way that the results are calculated. Basically, the results are weighted on the basis of the average rating score given by each individual undertaking the survey.
What this means in real terms is that if just one person were to give 10/10 for each category to, say, Bidscammer, but then give 1/10 to every other site, Bidscammer would automatically appear above a site with 500 people giving an average of 9.7 across the board.
A fairer system would be to use a 'percentage-based' calculation, as used by many other survey sites.
This flaw opens-up the possibility of some less-than-popular sites encouraging their members to give the site perfect 10's, thus anyone reading the survey would consider them to be a better site than they actually are.
Having such a blatantly-open flaw does little to give credit to what should/could be a good consumer-rated guide to who are the the best 16 online marketplaces and may even damage the reputation of AuctionBytes itself.
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