Open House with Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager - eBay India, 8 Oct 4–5 PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

On Ambareesh's behalf:

Hi Everyone

This is Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager of eBay India and I’d like to invite you to an Open House discussion with me on Thursday, 8th Oct 2009 from 4-5 PM IST.

At the outset let me say a big thank you to our buyers and sellers for your enthusiasm and commitment towards making eBay a great place to buy and sell; it is through the efforts of our members like you that eBay India has consistently been chosen India’s most preferred online shopping destination.

You’d be happy to know that our motto of providing Lots of Safe, Easy, Deals has resulted in strong business growth, some of the key steps in 2009 towards improving our user experience and growing our community further have been:

1. The marketing team has been busy driving new buyers to eBay India through partnerships with exciting high profile celebrity events like auctions linked to ‘Tere Mere Beach Main’

2. The effective use of eBay India coupons has helped generate trial thus helping us convert many more of our visitors into buyers

3. High impact marketing promotions have helped us deliver great value to our buyers, thus ensuring that an ever increasing part of a buyers overall spending is now on eBay

4. The recent launch of Global Easy Buy has further helped us increase variety for our buyers; Global Easy Buy gives our buyers access to a large pool of international items delivered conveniently at their doorstep

5. We’ve always believed that the key to having happy buyers is having happy and successful sellers; this year we’ve invested in our sellers’ success by enhancing our Category Management activities; the Category Management team has successfully ensured that they reach out to more and more sellers to help build a great business on eBay

6. To broad base seller success we initiated pricing changes like the removal of max cap; this change helped us increase visibility for the more sellable items. Further, to improve the return on investment for our shop sellers, we’ve made product changes to ensure that their shop listings get greater visibility in core search results.

7. Feedback disputes were a concern area for most of our members; to provide a fair dispute resolution process, we launched Community Court last year and as many of you might have already experienced, Community Court has successfully achieved its objective with more than 85% of cases getting resolved successfully

That said, we continue to seek areas of improvement so as to provide and deliver to a seamless marketplace experience for our buyers and sellers. I look forward to discussing your suggestions towards further improving our user experience and also answer your eBay related questions during the Open House discussion. You can post your questions in advance on this thread, or join me on 8th Oct at 4 PM for a live discussion.
See you on the 8th!

Regards
Ambareesh Murty
Country Manager – eBay India

[prince-chennai]

Hi Murthy,

I'm not sure but due to this upgrade, i'm facing problem in payment gateway where the CCAuth processor is down for the past 24 hours. It would be great if u could rectify it ASAP.

Many Thanks
Prince

[sitare_india]

Dear Murthy Sir,

Thank you for giving us an opportunity of talking to you directly. Till now I formed an impression that there are no responsible person exist in Ebay.

CUT-COPY-PASTE Irresponsible replies by Customer Care still exists since Many Years, No Serious Steps Taken:

Customer Care staffs do not care to read Very Very simple issues and problems raised by Ebayers and even by Power Sellers making the problem multiply and irritating for all concern.

Presently My simple concern - I sold an item listed in Ebay.com and buyer paid by Paypal. As per recent guideline, all Ebay Transactions are Eligible for seller protection. My transaction is mentioned NOT ELIGIBLE. I raised the query but First Staffs RACHAEL
gave me Full Seller Protection Tutorial then DAMON gave tutorial as if I donot Know the Policy. Then Mr Ajay K. wrote about Account Suspension and Tutorial on Reactivation. These all bogus replies multiplied my problem and creat grave irritation. This present writing is also a by product of that callousness. Instead of learning something from you, we have to use our Time-Money-Energy for this. These staffs should immediately charged in the greater interest of Ebay Community.

Thank You,
Ashok Agarwal
Proprietor
Ebay ID: Sitare_Jewels

[sitare_india]

Dear Murty Sir,

Grateful for giving this rare opportunity.

EBAY FEES IN GOLD JEWELLERY CATEGORY

We sell Real 22k Hall Marked Gold Jewelleries but many customers complain for high price. They are correct I know, because Gold price is open in air and Making Charge is added with them. Normally in market, Gold Jewelleries price are very competitive and genuine big sellers make only 6-8% profit. Whereas we have to Add 10% for Ebay & Paisapay fees making the price much higher. By giving genuine product, we cannot reduce the cost.

For Gold Jewelleries Ebay should make this charge 1% which will surely increase the volume all round.

Thanking You,
Ashok Agarwal
Proprietor
Sitare_Jewels

[sitare_india]

Dear Mr Murty,

INTERNATIONAL SALE DRASTICALLY REDUCED

I recent months say 6-7 months, International Sale has drastically came down for the reasons best known to you. Inspite of our best efforts inquiries are less from prospective buyers, less sales and we are going on paying International Fees with a Hope only. Please make a serious research on this.

Thanking You,
Ashok Agarwal

[sitare_india]

Dear Sir,

FLOOD OF UNPAID BUYERS

Since few months, new & unpaid buyers have flooded the Ebay sustem making it impossible to transact smoothly.
6 out of 10 Indian buyers are non-paying.

But Truly speaking there is no serious effort on the part of Ebay also to reduce the same. I suggested several times the following:

Whenever a New 0 rating buyer completes a transaction,we generally call him over phone which serves two purposes. One, it verifies the genuinity, and secondly, assistance in completing the transaction. But when we find that no such buyer exists at that number or 100% bogus address is given prima facie and when we write customer care, they start giving Tutorial and ask us to wait for several days and contact patiently with buyer without reading seller's concern.

When a seller specifically complain about any buyer's non-existence, Ebay should immediately verify the buyer over phone and take corrective steps instantly.

This single step will result in avoiding problem to seller who has to wait for 15 days to file UPI and then get credit.

Ashok Agarwal

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi All,

A warm welcome to today's Open House!

Today we have Ambareesh with us for next one hour to answer all your questions related to eBay.

Please welcome him and lets get started!

Regards,
Sapana

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Umang (indconcepts)

Nice to meet and connect with you again!
eBay is becoming popular and more buyers keep coming to our site; glad to hear that our Community Members are also seeing the benefit.

In my belief competition in the form of new entrants is overall good as it generates more buyer interest in the space and ensures that us service providers keep improving our services. Let me assure you that as the market leader we’ll continue to invest in bringing in more buyers and training more sellers to sell offline.

Thanks for your positive feedback on all the “Thumbs-Up” or positives of the eBay experience.

My take on the “Thumbs-Down” or improvement areas highlighted by you are as follows:

Power Seller program is dying:
An eBay PowerSeller status has been one of the most inspiring targets for many eBay sellers, therefore, we understand the importance of a PowerSeller Program.
However, there are ways in which the PowerSeller program can be improved and eBay worldwide is experimenting with a new program ‘eBay Top Rated Seller’ program whereby, sellers who have provided high buyer satisfaction will get more visibility and also discounted fees. Basis the success of the same, we will launch the same for India sellers as well in the course of time.

eBay's shipping integration program [The appointment of Authorized Logistics Partner is taking too long]:
We are committed to getting the shipping intermediation program in place and the team is as eager as you to get it started soon. There is a need to follow a thorough process to make a success of any initiative and we expect to be in a position to freeze the mechanism by mid next year.

After the introduction of iPIN by RBI, chargeback risks have gone down considerably but there is no sign / intentions of reducing the PaisaPay Fees:
3D secure / iPIN has helped make payments more secure, however, it has not eliminated chargeback risks.
PaisaPay fee includes components such as Operating costs, Chargeback risk provisions, Seller protection costs, Continuous investments in product improvements etc. For example, recently, in addition to credit cards and Online Bank Transfer, we have also added Debit Cards as a mode of payment. Therefore in my view, PaisaPay services are priced right.

Turbo Lister is the backbone of selling on ebay but the support for this Tool is zero:
Since Turbo Lister is an offline tool, eBay customer support does not have complete window on the issues that might have cropped up which are often due to other system changes on your desktop/laptop.
Thus it takes time to investigate issues and we depend on the seller to send us the log files.

There is No MRP Policy on ebay and many Sellers don't hesitate to sell Branded Items above MRP for which Buyers are unaware:
In the eBay world where competition is high, a seller sells best through providing great pricing coupled with great service.

Number of Workshops in the last couple of weeks. Am sure these are for general interaction and not a sign of some major change coming on ebay.

The core of eBay is its Community Members. We are here because our members are here and therefore it is very important for us to interact with them and listen to them. Increasing our interaction helps us make eBay better; I’ll encourage all members to continuously share with us your feedback and ideas on improving the site with us. Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Navneeth (snrama)

Good to meet you after a long time. I hope your personal issues have been resolved and we will get to see a lot more of you on Community Boards going forward.

Reduction of PaisaPay Fees as we are now paying quite a high prices for stores, listings, etc.:
As I had mentioned earlier, PaisaPay cost comprises of various costs including operations, customer support, chargeback risks, product upgradation etc. We continuously invest in adding greater value to PaisaPay [you might have read that we have added Debit Cards as a mode of payment) and will continue to invest in enhancing PaisaPay services in future as well. Given this context I think PaisaPay is right priced.

Payment Gateway: We need as much as payment methods like provided on Indiatimes, etc. This request has been raised from many members several times.
I agree that more payment methods will help us get more buyers and am happy that buyers will be now able to pay on PaisaPay using their debitcards.

EMI: Buyers need 1 year EMIs and offers from other banks like Citibank other than ICICI Credit cards. This will increase sales and eBay.in will be the first to introduced it in the e-commerce websites

This is an interesting suggestion, but I think that the interest cost and exposure risk for the banks will be high which will translate to a higher EMI fee.
That said, I have asked our team to evaluate the same. Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Yogen (mobileaccesories)

As you might have read, since yesterday onwards, buyers will be able to pay on PaisaPay using their debit cards. Now almost every buyer with a bank account and a debit card can buy on eBay.Rest assured that we continue to work on incorporating more payment options.
Great to hear that your eBay business is doing well. Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Amitava (amitava123gems)

It is good to meet you on boards; you are correct that the visibility of international listings is governed by individual sites and is decided by in-country teams based on the needs of their respective markets.

By the way, eBay.in does not surface international listings directly based on the domestic conditions.

Regards...Ambareesh