About Honesty.com


Who runs Honesty.com? Are you guys for real?

Honesty is developed and run by the people at Andale (ON-duh-lay), a California-headquartered company that's been making software and research tools for online sellers since 1999. Since then, Andale (www.andale.com) has served literally millions of customers with everything from eBay page counters to advanced auction sales management tools. Andale also sells sophisticated eBay research tools for sellers who need to know how to determine and set prices accurately.

When we looked at our software offerings, we realized that we were ignoring buyers, and the lack of information was making some buyers uncomfortable about using eBay. After all, who wants to buy something and then find out they paid too much? And how much are fuzzy pink bedroom slippers worth, anyway? Well, the "light bulb" went on, we spent thousands of engineering hours creating a Website just for buyers, and Honesty.com was born.


Is Honesty.com really free?

Honesty.com is free to users. How? If you see a bargain and buy it, eBay pays us a small amount as a "thank you" for referring you to eBay. (This does not affect our search results at all, and we determine bargains completely independently from eBay.) eBay gets more buyers on its site, you buy things that are good values, and we get to run a fun and useful Website. You could call this a "win-win-win" Website. Honestly!


How do you decide what's a "bargain?"

Honesty takes historical information on eBay sales and analyzes it with our proprietary algorithms to identify:
  • What is the range of prices for which items have sold?
  • What is the statistical distribution of those prices?
  • Which items currently on eBay are likely to sell successfully, and at what prices?
  • Other proprietary data analysis we won't discuss because it's, well, proprietary. No one else does what we do!
When you search for a particular item, we complete our analysis - it takes just a few seconds in most cases - and show you the current range of eBay prices for your item. We then identify the bargains among what is currently for sale on eBay. Bargains are identified with the Bargain Deal icon. Of course, prices are affected by condition, shipping costs (we show shipping costs if that information is available), buyer demand, and other factors. Auction prices often change rapidly, which is why we provide the most current information possible.

Occasionally, you may search for an item that is just too rare or unusual for Honesty to be able to identify a bargain price. In such cases, Honesty will show you current auctions that match your search criteria, but bargains will not be shown.


Do you collect personal information about me?

Nope. We invite you to read our privacy policy where we explain what information we do and do not collect. Basically, we only track aggregate information such as "What are the most popular items for which our visitors search?" We also set cookies to tell eBay "Hey, we sent you a potential buyer, and, if they do buy something, please don't forget to send us that "thank you" fee we're supposed to get, OK?" We don't collect any personally-identifiable information: who you are; specifically what *you* are searching for; etc. We're only interested in how our users, in total, are using Honesty. So if you're searching for fuzzy pink bedroom slippers, you can relax: we won't tell anyone.

How are we doing? Please send us feedback on how you like Honesty, and any suggestions for future enhancements. You can click here or click the feedback link on the results page (top right corner, the icon looks like a paper and pencil).