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Frequently Asked Question

What is Gango ?
Whar is Gango not ?
What is so special about Gango ?
Which browsers are supported so far ?
Who may use Gango ?
Why can't I register here ?
Which requirements do I have to meet to become a member ?
What are the costs for using Gango ?
When are fees due ?
How and in which currency do I pay ?
What are Gango Credit Points ?
How can I profit from the new customer advertising program for example as service broker?
Why are my new customer invitations limited ?
Under which circumstances can I cash in my Gango Credit Points ?
What if I encounter a cheating member or fraudulence ?
What if I encounter an error ?
I've got an idea for a new category ?
I've got a question that is not answered here.
How can I protect myself from hackers, fraudulence and cybercrime?
What errors and problems are already known?

1. What is Gango ?

Gango is a global internet platform for the trade of services and orders in your geographic region.
Gango is a platform for submitting, placing and auctioning of orders and services, organized by different procurement processes.
Gango is the next generation of Yellow Pages. Here you find also price and quality information about service providers.
Gango is a quality rating database in which ratings of service providers and requesters of orders are stored.
Gango is a News-Service that informs interested subscribers about the publishing of new requests via email.
Gango turns the global service market not only in a more efficient one but especially in a more transparent and fairer one.
Gango delivers the contemporary processes that allow you to find the best possible performance, and the best quality at the most competitive price.
In short:
Gango is the next-generation service market and order procurement platform.

2. What is Gango not ?
Gango is not searching in external websites. Gango is not a payment platform for paying the contracted services provider. Gango does not participate in any form in the assignments or contracts. By providing the necessary information, Gango only supports the trading parties in their decision making regarding the procurement.

3. What is so special about Gango ?

Gango recombines aprooved internet service concepts like the ones of eBay, google maps, Yellowpages, skype and PayPal into one evolutionary internet marketplace for services and orders.
Gango turns the things upside down! Let find, instead of search yourself - Who is the most valuable, instead of who offers the highest price...
Gango leverages the conventional functions of the local mercantile directory Yellow Pages with efficient search, offering, order placing, trading and auctioning of orders and service contracts.
Gango functions - like the global market - across borders, address location, time, currency and language independent for all kind of services.
Gango was specially engineered to meet the local needs of service trading and uses a unique geographic information system for localizing service places and areas.
No other competitor yet can opperate international with that level of localization.
Gango leverages the fairness and transparency in the global service marked by delivering decision-relevant information on suppliers. Prices, service times, service places and areas, historical order ratings and other descision-relevant information support you in your search of a supplier.
Gango delivers fast and secure processes for order placing, including a sophisticated 'reverse auction' procurement mechanism.
Gango is an automatic market observer that informs interested parties about the placement of new orders that match their search parameters.
Gango is a platform for information and document exchange of every kind for an order, before, during and after the procurement process.
To date Gango is the only system that can give information relating to service procurements world-wide about: Who, Where, What, How, When, How Much and in Which Quality.
Gango is more than just 'ebay backwards': Trading of service orders is much more complex than the trading of goods.
When services are traded, parties discuss tariffs, hourly and daily rate, flat rate and cap prices, transport flat rate and price per km, inclusion or exclusion of VAT, tariff areas, service places and areas, delivery date, service and work times, etc. And this not only in multiple languages and currencies but also in countries with different legal and contract systems and in different local times.
Gango was constructed by a consortium of Swiss computer scientists and software engineers in cooperation with different Swiss Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences. Gango uses the latest and most efficient mathematical techniques and algorithms for the searching and trading of complex, multidimensional trading attributes of orders.
Gango uses algorithms from the fields of artificial intelligence and 'Fuzzy-Logic' for optimization of results.
The comfortable searching for contracts or suppliers is supported by intelligent, adaptive geographic search algorithms. A contemporary user interaction with the trading system is achieved by the new Web 2.0 technologies. A balanced cooperation of mature closed and open source software components is at the base of the trading platform.
Gango heralds the next generation of trading platfroms in the globalised economy and claims to leverage the globalization not only with efficiency, but also with transparency and fairness.
Gango will use all technical and legal resources at our disposal to combat shadow economy, price-rigging, unfair trades and, in particular, any orders that contradict good taste and applicable laws.. Clandestine workers and fraudulent use will be reported to the relevant law enforcement authorities.

4. Which Browsers are supported so far?
Currently the System is tested withfollowing browsers: Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ Opera 7.5+ Safari 1.3+ IE 5.5+ IE mobile und opera mini 3.0 with limitted functionality Additional browser support is in development, any browser problem report is warmy welcome under contact.

5. Who may use Gango ?

Gango may be used by every legally mature person. However, the System is currently running in a 'closed user group' pilot phase and is not yet publicly available. To get access to the System a new user must receive an invitation from an existing user. Sending of invitations is limitted during the beta phase.
Upon submitting the legal registration papers, official representatives of legal organizations may act on behalf of that organization.
Upon submitting the legal registration papers, official representatives of governmental organizations may act on behalf of that organization.
All personal data must be correct and will be verified. Users with incorrectly stated personal data or suspected fraudulence and cheating will be locked out of the system. Fraudulent use will be reported to the relevant law enforcement authorities.

6. Why can't I register here ?

The trading platform is currently running in a pilot phase and is therefore only open for registration to Swiss, Lichtenstein, German and Austrian citizens (with IP-addresses of these countries).
During the pilot phase a limitted number of engineers and architects of the SIA (Swiss Engineer and Architects Society), as well as new users that are invited by existing users are granted access.
This restriction in necessary to test the behavior of the system during this phase and to undertake the necessary amendments and corrections.

7. Which requirements do I have to meet to become a member ?

During the Beta Phase you must receive an email invitation to register.
You must be legally mature.
You must hand in correct personal data during the registration process.
You must have a valid email address.
As a service provider you need a Paypal internet banking account for the payment of the service fees that become due when your bid/offer was succefull. Credit Cards are accepted by Paypal.

8. What are the costs for using Gango ?

Standard Membership is free of charge.
Call for offers, submissions and auctions of service requests (orders) is free of charge.
For successful offers or bids of potential suppliers the winning supplier must pay - depending on his membership - the trading service placement fees. The amount of the placement fees depends on the contract volume and the type of membership. For further information on the placement and membership fees please refer to the current prices.
SIA Members may trade for free upon handing in a copy of their actualy SIA membership card and mentioning their username on the copy. After processing your membership card your account will be changed from 'standard' to SIA' membersip. Please check this in the menu 'my profile' under the subject 'my membership'.
During the registration process, each member receives a certain amount of disk memory space for the document management. Additional disk memory space can be acquired.
The system makes use of copyright- protected digital map data. Upon each access to these data we have to pay license fees to the owner. These costs are origin-charged. Upon the first time registration, each member receives a certain amount of data access - we call this 'mapviews' - free of charge. The amount should be enough for typical use. For extensive use, additional 'mapviews' may be acquired.
For the optional use of our planned SMS-messaging, service fees will be charged.

9. When are fees due ?

The order placement fees are charged at the end of a successful procurement to the winning supplier. As long as a supplier has not paid these fees, he/she will not be able to offer or bid to other placed orders. Users that attempt to cheat by using multiple accounts will be reported to the relevant law enforcement authorities for violation of the agreed terms and conditions.
Membership fees for privileged memberships (such as Silver and Gold Membership) are due at the beginning of a new membership period. Privileged memberships may upon request be renewed automatically and recurringly. In case of outstanding membership payments the privileged membership will be automatically converted back into free standard membership.

10. How and in which currency do I pay ?

Currently we accept only payments from the internet bank Paypal and from all creditcards that Paypal supports.
Prices for trading services of the trading platform are quoted in Euro and also are charged in Euro. For orders that are placed in a foreign currency, the Gango foreign exchange rates are used to calculate the equivalent amount in Euro for the the fees.
Gango Credit Points (GCP) are accepted as Euro-equivalent payment currency for the payment or installment of fees.

11. What are Gango Credit Points (GCP) ?

Gango Credit Points are paid into your Gango user account for certain benefits.
Gango Credit Points are Euro equivalents: 1 GCP = 1 Euro
Each Member receives at his first time registration a certain amount of credit points that may be used to acquire additional platform services. Such services may be for example; additional document storage memory.
For the recruitment of highly active new members, the user's account may be rewarded with Gango Credit Points. The activity of members is calculated based on their turnover and the turnover generated directly or indirectly by their recruited new members. Please check our Partner and Reseller conditions to benefit from this mechanism.
With your collected Gango Credit Points, you may pay for trading fees or acquire additional platform services.

12. How can I profit from the new customer recruitment program for example as service broker?

If you invite new members via the platform's e-mail messaging system or via your Gango Partner/Reseller Weblink from another website, you participate in the service fee turnover that your invited member will generate. For example you can act in the role of a service broker and search for service requests - or let you automatically inform by a NewsFeed mail - and then invite potential new suppliers. The mechanism is built in such a way that you will further participate in the turnover that the new member generates directly or indirectly by advertising further new members generate. The amount of these turnovers defines the amount of Gango Credit Points that are awarded to the users' account and can thus be regarded as commission- or loyalty points. These points are placed as Euro equivalents to your Gango user account. You can pay or pay installments with theses points for service fees or additional platform services.
According to Swiss law, such credit points may not be converted into cash payments to private persons.
Under certain restrictions, companies may receive cash payments of Gango Credit Points. For further information, please refer to the Partner or Reseller instructions.

13. Why are my new customer invitations limited ?

This is a protection mechanism against the internet e-mail spamming problem - it is to restrict spamming via this platform.
In addition we prefer a controlled load on and growth of our systems, so that we can react and plan technical expansion in time.
Also we wish users to use rather than abuse our platform. With this restriction in place, we can analyse the cost-performance ratio better.
The system ensures however that you’ll receive additional invitations as your new members generate a prosperous activity.

14. Under what circumstances can Icash in my Gango Credit Points ?
You have to fulfill the Partner or Reseller instructions.

15. What if I encounter or suspect fraudulence ?
Please report fraudulence via our contact link. If it can be found in a service request or in an offer, please also report us the request or offer number.

16. What if I encounter an error or a bug?

We seek to operate with a minimum of errors. If you found an error (bug) you are invited to report us the bug via the feedbak link. Please mention your username, the web page (browser link) in which the error occured and try to explain as acurate as possible how it happened. To solve an error we must be able to reproduce the error. Therefore it is important that you describe it as exact as possible.

17. I've got an idea for a new category ?
Please use our contact link.

18. I've got a question that is not answered here.
Please use our contact link.

19. How can I protect myself against hackers, fraudulence and cybercrime?
Please refer to the advices from the Cybercrime Coordination Unit Switzerland (CYCO).

20. What Errors and Problems are already known?

Currently the System runs in Beta Phase. During this phase the system is tested and further developed. According to SW-Developers and Engineers, it is common that users encounter errors or malfunction from time to time during this phase. Following is a list of known problems and malfunction.

Currently the service category tree is just filled with about 900 exemplarly categories. Technically any n-dimensional category tree structure can be defined. In other words, any category tree may be defined - the question is which one does the market want ? Then we should have the translations for all these categories. Where do we get them from ;-? Proposals for new categories or sub-categories are very welcome ;-)
The SMS-Service is not running yet.
Internationalization: Tough the System was designed and built for global, international use, during the beta phase certain planned features and functionality are not available yet. This generally results from missing Data. For example we do not support yet actual daily FX rate calculation. Further we have licensed so far just geographic address data for mapping the users Address to a geopoint within the European region. Also we have not yet translated the system into other languages than English and German. During the Beta Phase we intend to use the trading system in Switzerland and later in the European Union. As soon as the test results proof the concept we will enhance the system for correct international use.
Currently the relative and absolute minimal reduction steps cannot be defined manually by the service requester in the GUI. Currently a default minimal reduction step of 1% of the last bid is necessary.
Currently several offer restrictions that a service requester can set are not activated. Especially the minimal rating for offer acceptation cannot be specified yet. To activate these features we first must gather a reasonable amount of trading data.
The work on the AI-subsystem is still a work in progress. This is the reason why we encounter certain performance problems which result into unstandable long response times. If you encounter such (e.g. in complex search activities) please inform us about here. Please do not forget to explain whith which (search) parameters you encountered this problem.
The validity of user input parameters or values are not everywhere stricitly enough checked yet. Generally this is the reason for error cases. We strongly encourage you to report us such cases here.
The user interface (look and feel/GUI) is not fully web2.0/Ajax enabled. Due to cost reasons we have focused to use these techniques only where it was necessary for the functionality of the application. Should the application meet the market akceptance then we will allocate ressources to further optimize the user interface.