Open House Discussion with Gautam Thakar on Aug 25th (5-6 PM)

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Users,

We are pleased to announce the next session of our Open House Program, where users get an opportunity to chat with the eBay India Team.

Join Gautam Thakar, Country Manager – Marketplace, for an online discussion on buying and selling on eBay India.

Gautam will be available on this thread on Thursday, the 25th of August, 2006, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM IST, for an interactive discussion with our community members.

You can submit your questions before or during the event by clicking on Post a reply at top of the thread. For help on using the discussion boards, please click here - http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=300000542.

See you on the 25th at 5:00 PM!

Thanks and Regards,
Sapana,
Community Development Team

[superstores_tech]

Hi Gautam,

THe Live Help is really good , accept for matters relating to TnS.

THe CS was really good but offlate i feel the people replyign do not are fairly new to the system themselves.

The only think which requires attention is the Time taken by CS to revert back.

Offlate i had to go to ebay.com and then mail the CS to get a quick reply. However i feel its more of a perception that a real problem.

Regards Superstores_Tech

Ankur Agarwal

[gautam@ebay.com]

Dear bfdsouza,

I want to clarify that the reminder mails are sent by the seller from whom you have purchased the item, not from eBay. If you have bid / bought an item, then yes, you are required to pay for it. At the same time, if you have paid for an item, then the seller is required to ship it to you. In the event that you have not received the item (like you mentioned), then you need to file an Item Not Received Dispute within 60 days of the item closing, and you can be eligible for refund under of Buyer Protection Program. Please note that the 60 day period is from the time the item closes, not the time that a seller send you a payment reminder email. I understand that many of our users might not be aware of these details, and we will be working on educating our users about these going forward. Regards
Gautam

[gautam@ebay.com]

dear nmv2005
I have to say , i have heard of many cases where buyers have not received goods from sellers but not one where the courier system is a fault. Off the cuff what i think i will do is to consider whether it makes sense to have a panel of courier compnay's that we encourage sellers to use. Alternatively in the long term we could also consider building some system whereby buyers money doesnt go to the sellers unless they confirm receipt of goods. To be honest though these are just ideas that i thought of as i was typing. Let me get these to the right team in ebay and see if there is any merit in this. We certainly dont want to increase your stress by following up with courier companies.
Thanks for bringing this to our notice. Regards
Gautam

[gautam@ebay.com]

Dear rajivalways
I am sorry to hear that you had to face this unpleasant situation. However, I am also glad that there is already a readressal mechanism in place to take care of your concerns.

Your Item / Money not received - If a buyer does not get his product, or the product is significantly not as described, the best option for the buyer is to open a Item Not received dispute agasint the seller.
[My eBay >>> Dispute Console (left side bar)>>> open a dispute]

If the seller does not respond, or the communication fails at any point of time, the buyer needs to close the dispute and escalate the calim for Buyer Protection claim.

I am sure we will solve your issue - though i know that the best answer is to ensure that we do not let this issue happen in the first place. We will work harder to make sure that such instances dont happen again. Regards
Gautam

[gautam@ebay.com]

Folks,
Its been almost 100 minutes since i have been on the boards. I want to thank you for your time and inputs and queries. The feedback from the community is always valuable and i am glad i extended my time on the boards and answered all of you. I realise that in some cases i may have answered directly and to your satisfaction while in others you may not have liked the fact that i couldnt provide an immediate solution.

I always like to take the honest and direct approach with the community as i believe that you all appreciate that versus any false promises. Also the honest truth is that we dont always have the answers , or even if we do may not have all the resources to get the solutions in rapid time. Sometimes we do have an answer and it may not help all community members equally.

Either way me and my team are committed to being more transparent, pushing ourselves harder to help more of you more times and faster. I know we take great pride in tryinig to resolve your issues so that you have a great buying experience or help you grow your business. I also know that all my team is unhappy if they cant help you as fast as you would like. And we want to minimize those instances

We will work on all the ideas and i will send a summary of next steps in a month to update all of you.
Thank you again for being part of the ebay community and do keep contributing to help us jointly build the ecommerce market in India

I look forward to being on the boards again with you all soon. Regards
Gautam

[rohit@ebay.com]

A big Thank You to all our Community members, and to Gautam, for participating in this Open House Session.

Keep watching the boards for more such sessions in the coming months!
Thanks and Regards,
Rohit,
Community Development Team

[cramstergear]

Hi..

To keep it short and simple.

Ebay Allows people to buy fixed price items deducts the FVF in advance and then we have to wait for a few weeks in case the buyer doesn't pay up and doesn't even respond. In my case probably 70 Percent of the buyers default and it is a supreme waste of time to open a dispute wait wait wait and then end the transaction give the buyer a negative strike and get back our FVF.

Why should eBay allow them to mark anything as bought without the person paying for it online esp when the only payment option I have provided is PaisaPay.

Sellers should not get a 'Item Sold' notification unless the payment is processed and succesful. IT will surely help sellers save a lot of time and avoid bogus transactions.

Kj

[srinilayam]

hello

Ifound few strange thing on ebay
1) Ebay says we should not give our prsonal emaiol ids to the seller or we should contact seller with another id other than throug ebaysite. But many seller are giving theirpersonal email id and warning bidder not to bid weithout contacting them to the id mentioned in the decsrition of the product. how far it is justified?
2) Ebay suggests not pay any amount through westen union money tranfer or any direct money transfer or any methed not through ebay. But selller are clearly menting that they will not accept credit car or paypal, they are demanding direct tranfer of money. Why ebay is allowing such seller to display their items. Why can't you stop them .
3) when ever i bid for apple lop top from ebay .uk site, i will recieve a mail that the item is not in the list. when items are not in list why are they displayed?
4) There must be sortout facility dependending on shipping, ie whether seller can give world wide shipping or not
5) we need a better information about taxwes , shipping charges when we buy outside products is from other countries
hope Mr gowtham thakur look in to the matter to give a better bidding /buying on ebay
thank you

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi,

As promised by Gautam, here is a summary and action steps of the discussion points that were raised during the Open House discussion.

Gautam will be coming back to boards by 30th of September to provide detailed plans on action steps.

•CS issues – CS responses are delayed and often not upto the point.
Action Step - Detailed improvement plan related to Customer Support improvement and sharing the same with Community.

•TnS issues - Difficult in understanding TnS actions. Email communication from TnS not satisfactory.
Action Step – greater explanation around seller suspension and enhanced consequences guidelines

•Fraud concerns - Tighter Seller and Buyer verification
Action Step – Share plans about new verification modes that are being planned

•Difficulty in finding information - Easier access to information for new users / Direct source of help
Action Step – Share detailed plans on the planned programs that are aimed at providing greater handholding of new users

•PaisaPay – Direct transfer of PaisaPay amount to sellers bank account and Buy it now – immediate payment required via PaisaPay
Action Step – Provide timelines on when we can expect to have these features on site

•Product related - Integrated check out and making seller contact details more visible to the buyers.
Action Step – Share timelines for these plans to convert into action

•Listing fee - Review of gallery and Home Page fee ; Introduction of Listing Fee
Action Step – will be reviewd during 2007 Pricing change plans

•Third party rating review
While we did not hear many comments on the idea of having a panel of community members as the rating review panel, however we wanted to share that this is something that is being considered on a global scale.

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Members,

As promised earlier, in this session almost a month back. On Gautam’s behalf, I am posting an update on the next steps on the topics discussed.

For most of the issues raised, the teams have arrived at an action plan to address the issues. Some of these plans are already being actioned or will be actioned in near future. You had also asked for few features, and for those we have provided the timelines by which we expect to roll them on site.

•CS issues – CS responses are delayed and often not up to the point.
Action Steps –
•Greater and Easier access to Customer Support:
o Increased Live Chat link placements and also increased their visibility for easier access by users.

o We are also working on a project to improve the Contact Us interface, so as to increase the ease of usage of the section. We expect that project to go live on site by middle of next year.

•Improving Quality of Responses:
oWe have already hired and are in the process of hiring more Customer Support Reps (CSR), so that each CSR is able to give more quality time to user queries, and therefore give better responses.

o We continue to invest in greater training and development of individual CSRs so that they are more aware of site processes and are able to help the user better.

o We have made already made certain changes, by virtue of which; going forward, a CSR will be able to read the verbatim feedback received from the user. This will help them understand their mistakes easily and take corrective action.

•Increasing Community and Customer Support interaction:
o Customer Support team members are now participating in various user meets that we hold in various cities. This direct interaction with users help them in understanding user issues better, and therefore can lead to better resolutions.

o To continue this direct interaction with our community, Customer Support members will be also interacting on the discussion boards on a more regular basis.


•TnS issues - Difficult in understanding TnS actions. Email communication from TnS not satisfactory.
Action Step –
•Improving Communication from Trust and Safety team:
• We are in the process of revamping most Customer Support mails to make them more relevant for the users. We are reviewing the mails based on the priority, however, you will appreciate that given the number of mails itself, this will be a huge task. We are expecting to complete this project over the next three months.

• We are also reviewing and revamping some of the most commonly used Policy help pages to update them with relevant examples. 50% of this task has been already completed. We are expecting to complete the other half very soon.

•Site Policy and Suspension reinstatement

o In the past, we have heard of cases where genuine sellers were having difficulty in getting reinstated. We are currently in the process of reviewing the proofs required for reinstatement such that we accept the ones that are normally available with sellers.

o Some of you raised the topics of whether a policy itself was right one. Based on your feedback, we will continue to debate the policies. While we can debate various policies, we also need to ensure that we are adhering the existing policies.


•Fraud concerns - Tighter Seller and Buyer verification
Action Step –
o As Sharat announced in his workshop, we will be soon adding a landline based verification method for new sellers. Currently a new seller may verify himself basis his mobile phone, snail mail on physical address and credit card.

o We have also started work on identifying certain areas where fraud is more prevalent and we will be targeting to clear those areas. However, given the sensitivity of this project, I will not be able to discuss this further.

•Difficulty in finding information - Easier access to information for new users / Direct source of help:

o Direct Help from existing Sellers - We recently concluded a successful pilot of a new program whereby existing sellers are able to train new sellers thereby giving them greater guidance on the becoming a successful seller on eBay. The initial results have been very interesting. We are very excited about this new program and based on the pilot results, we plan to roll it out to various cities. Stay tuned for more on this program.

o Account management - As some of you might be aware, most of our Power Sellers already have a personal account manager. We are piloting to extend a similar support to even medium level sellers to help them improve their business on eBay.

o Video conferencing sessions - In past, we had piloted video conferencing sessions to increase education and awareness about various eBay features. We have seen positive results of the program and we intend to conduct more such sessions in future. This will help us reach out to sellers from various cities and towns.

o Help pages revamp – As mentioned earlier, we are revamping various key help pages, to make them user friendly and relevant.

•PaisaPay – Direct transfer of PaisaPay amount to sellers bank account and Buy it now – immediate payment required via PaisaPay
Action Step – We expect to have this feature on site in later half of 2007.

•Product related - Integrated check out and making seller contact details more visible to the buyers.
Action Step – We expect to see this feature on site by middle of 2007.

We hope the above actions will help us improve your experience on site. Once again, thanks you for being part of the ebay community and do keep contributing to help us jointly build the ecommerce market in India.

Regards,
Sapana