Cuge

cuge is a coinage that stands for "customer-generated evaluation". The expression is the eponym of the international "cuge project", which was launched on the official [http://www.cuge.org cuge.org] website in february 2008. cuge is a free and public nonprofit internet service for the evaluation of the service quality and reliability of any website in the world by the customers of the appropriate websites themselves.

History

The idea of creating a reliable and fast information source about the reliability of all websites that are publicly reachable on the world wide web and to offer an efficient fraud detection tool to all consumers, was born at the beginning of 2007 by gecomedia, an internet agency located at Genoa, Italy. It was then planned in cooperation with voluntary web developers, consumer protection experts, lawyers and translators in Italy, Germany, France, the USA and Canada. In february 2008, the cuge project was officially launched in English, German, Italian and French language.

Website evaluation by the site's customers

Customers of any website on the world wide web may use cuge to evaluate a website's service quality and reliability based on the experiences they have made with the appropriate website. The evaluations are made on a 1 to 10 scale of six evaluation criteria. Based on these evaluation criteria, cuge calculates the so-called "cugerank" of the entire website. Additionally, three informative statements can be made.

Six evaluation criteria

To be evaluated on a 1 to 10 scale:

- Delivered goods / services as described
- In time delivery of goods/services
- Claim treatment
- In time response
- Response quality (helpful?)
- Advertisement promises fulfillment

The cugerank of the entire website

Based on the six evaluation criteria, cuge calculates the so-called "cugerank" of the entire website.

The cugerank calculation:

Three additional informative statements

To be entered in hours or days:

- Actual delivery time
- Actual response time

To be added in appropriate cases:

- No-delivery / Fraud warning

Website check for all consumers

Every consumer can use cuge to check the service quality and the reliability of any website on the world wide web before making her/his decision to purchase goods or services from it.

Service quality and reliability

As the check result the consumer will see, what experiences existing customers of the appropriate website have made with it. The results are displayed as evaluations on a 1 to 10 scale of six criteria (see above).

Actual delivery and response times

Since the customers of a certain website may also state the site's actual delivery and response times, each consumer can gather information on these facts before deciding to order something on that website.

Detection of fraudulent websites

cuge's additional statement "No-delivery / Fraud warning" brings an efficient fraud protection tool to every consumer. If a warning of that kind was left on cuge, cuge will display it bolded and in red above all evaluation details that were left for the appropriate site.

cugerank display on every website

Website owners, who possess a good cugerank, may advertise with their customer satisfaction rate expressed in the cugerank. cuge offers to all site owners the free and live display of the cugerank on their website.

Website owner protection

In order to protect site owners from unjustified evaluations and possible damages of their reputation, cuge offers to all site owners an extensive claim functionality. Whenever a site owner doubts the correctness of an evaluation detail left for his website, he may file an evaluation claim on cuge. cuge then asks the evaluator to specify the evaluation. In some cases, the evaluator may also be asked to document some details. Depending in the details cuge receives, a doubted evaluation may be upgraded or even deleted.

References

* [http://www.openpr.de/news/246296/cuge-org-setzt-neue-Massstaebe-beim-Verbraucherschutz-im-Internet.html cuge.org sets the pattern for internet consumer protection (Press release in German)]
* [http://www.cuge.org/customers/ cuge Information for website customers]

* [http://www.cuge.org/site_owners/ cuge Information for website owners]

* [http://www.cuge.org/terms_of_use.php cuge Terms of use]

External links

http://www.cuge.org