Economist Milton Friedman said, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Millions of shoppers come to eBay every day looking for a deal. But do you really know if what you're getting constitutes a bargain, and whether the lowest-priced item is offered by someone you can trust?

For sellers, the "expectations game" has always been a two-edged sword: crowds flock to eBay expecting deep discounts; but because they expect low prices, sellers have to keep their prices low just to get bids. Keeping prices low cuts down on profit margins, and that cycle makes it hard to make a living as a full-time seller on eBay.

Auction Trust Network (http://www.auctiontrustnetwork.com) has come up with a program called Reconnect that gives buying on eBay a new level of legitimacy. "We leave the actual definition of trust to the sellers or buyers themselves," says Kirk Langston, vice-president of sales and marketing for Auction Trust Network. "They use our software to populate a list of sellers they have a good experience with in the past. The list makes it easier to identify and find those trusted sellers."

Reconnect works as a browser plug-in. When you conduct a search of eBay's product listings through the Auction Trust Network (ATN) search pane (which is added to your browser window), the list you get is organized with the items from your trusted sellers at the top.

But wait, there's more - you also get pricing information. The real power of Reconnect comes when you do a search on one of the 20 off-eBay retail Web site supported by the program, including Craigslist, Costco.com, Walmart.com, Overstock.com, Amazon.com, Yahoo! Auctions, and many other sites.

The search results for the site you're searching appear in the main part of your browser window. At the same time, your search is also conducted on eBay. The eBay results turn up in the ATN search pane. If your trusted sellers have any items for sale that match your search terms, their items are added to the top of the list. Langston says as many as 40 percent of searches performed on Reconnect are generated from non-eBay sites.

While Reconnect increases exposure of eBay listings, at first glance it seems to primarily help buyers. But Reconnect also helps sellers by managing buyers' expectations. ATN is a tool that tells shoppers how much something is really worth. The only way you can have an economically sound marketplace like eBay is through information. ATN helps raise the bar and raise respectability for the entire auction community. The buyer can trust sellers even more because he or she can see how their prices compare to those on other ecommerce sites.

I'm not saying ATN is without problems, however - I ran into various technical glitches. I got several "Connection Error" messages, which forced me to do many searches twice. Because the ATN pane takes up at least a third of my browser window, I had to scroll to the right just to see whether or not a seller was on my "trusted" list. The miniature view of the item that appears when you pass your mouse over an auction title displayed in the ATN pane doesn't let you know if the seller is one of your trusted sellers through the User ID. (Langston explains that this data was not accessible with the version of the eBay API initially used by the software.)

While it's true that Google's Froogle service combines eBay product listings with those on other sites, the idea of creating a search mechanism that treats eBay on a par with sites like Walmart.com, Alibaba, and Craigslist is novel and may raise the level of trust on eBay.

Unless they are looking for one-of-a-kind collectibles, many people shop on eBay primarily for price alone. If the eBay seller's price is much lower than on other sites, shoppers will sacrifice personal service, color selection, and even condition to get a bargain. Now, with ATN, eBay trusted sellers are presented on an equal footing with respected, well-known retailers. It's possible that buyer's expectations will rise, and sellers can offer merchandise at reasonable profit margins. Hopefully, the whole system will benefit.