FOR,
B. Muralikrishnan & John Donahoe,
Gentlemen,
This is my first experience with ebay India. It has turned out to be the single most horrifying and full of losses for me as a Seller. All because of ur policies for a seller. I would like to request your attention to my experience with ebay India, which raises some very fundamental questions about your commitment & integrity towards your Selling customers.
I have listed my one item by opting for BUY NOW & AUCTION format choices, twice is as of now. Both of these times after I got the first bid, the BUY NOW option along with its Price was not displayed. Turns out that it is your Policy.
The reason to list the same item second time was because the winning bidder who was the only bidder too, did not pay & denied to buy the item after the auction was over. This not only wasted my time but money and energy too. I am sure that both of you as Sr.Execs understand and realize the importance & value of time, money & energy spent.
My second attempt to list the same item got three bidders, of whom one was forced to bid as the BUY NOW option was not available to him, even when I had opted for it. Once again, this time the winning bidder did not pay me. Worse was the part when it was discovered that the telephone number and the address provided by the winning bidder were invalid, and there was no response received of the emails sent. All the contact information that you had about the Bidder/Buyer was wrong & even you were misled, fooled & lied upon. Upon inquiring I gathered that you do not have any verification & accountability methods, procedures, rules &/or processes whatsoever for the Buyers & Bidders. It turns out that such is your Policy. A Policy which allows any Tom, Dick & Harry lunatics/criminals to get an ebay ID by registering with an email address for free, bid on anything with the highest price bid, and then either simply vanish or untraceable or simply deny to pay. After the case is filed by the Seller, you may blacklist him/her at the most. In the event if you do blacklist that Buyer or Bidder, the same has the freedom & access to your site with a different ID & an email address. In all of this you do not care or bother to verify &/or held the Buyer or Bidder accountable as it is your Policy. Eventually & evidently you get your money from the Seller, the Buyer & Bidder can get away with anything wrong that they want to without being accountable for their actions, and the Seller suffers & bears all the losses & the brunt for the actions of the Buyer, Bidder & ebay India. You do not have any Policy to verify the actual contact information which includes the physical address, landline telephone no & cell phone no.of the Buyers & Bidders, except for sending a confirmation email for their registration. Neither you have a Policy where you can held Buyers & Bidders accountable by requiring them to submit their Bank account information with a token advance payment of 10% of their winning bid’s amount few hours before the auction ends from the same, which would confirm the Bid or the Sale Price that the Bidder or Buyer has posted. Rather you do have a Policy where you have given the freedom & flexibility to Buyers & Bidders where they can retract from their offer twelve hours before the auction ends. All of this while you still keep the Seller completely muted & under tight control, where depending on such situation they can adjust or lower their item price. After all you are not Sothebys or Christies and neither are your Buyers & Bidders the elite of the society & neither you sell/auction like these where verifications, confirmations, advance deposits & document evidences of minimum income and tax filings are mandatory for every Buyer & Bidder.
In comparison to this logic you could be considered as the rotten hooligans of the society & its economy like the ones hanging out at street corners & in parks juggling anything & everything, of anyone to anyone, with & without any rules, laws, procedures, responsibility & accountability, as far as you make your buck, even if it means for instance selling the Empire State Building as far as there is a Buyer, which is a real life incident of a street man selling the Empire State to a Japanese Businessman Tourist, to make a buck. What a convenient Policy, it is that you have for yourselves. One can make money, commit crime, spread losses, create havoc & horror, fool anyone & still not be held accountable & responsible. I choose to deter from the Economics of Free & Open Markets, in this case.
Gentlemen, as you know all of this is accelerated by you not having any industry regulator and another decade of Tax vacation and the internet technology being Man’s first half-baked invention. Though I agree with you that the pros of this technology are overwhelmingly more than its cons, but the cons in minority are the holes which facilitate a Rat or even a cockroach or an ant to penetrate & ruin the civility, peace, democracy & morality of our society. You have no one who enforces or regulates you, all your money & income goes to your wallets, you take advantage of & exploit the irony & duality of technology in its current immature stage, you are backed by our Free & open market economies and Economies of Scale, all of this while the innocents suffer & you thrive at their cost. Indeed, you facilitate genuine customers too inbetween, with the best of your intentions. And that’s because it’s the system & there has got to be a system. Or is it Anarchy ?
Gentlemen, if this message reaches you, then as you know, that its interpretations would be endless, which is what makes you survive & thrive and gives you the never ending luxury of time & which endlessly never ends as your interpretations keep on supporting you & your objectives & the markets & access to technologies is already free & open, depending on who is interpreting, in which context, for what purpose(s), who gains what & how much, who has to lose, who has to win as its just a game for you where nothing rightfully belongs to you except that you have a vested interest & respective purpose(s), only to gain from something/someone by victimizing them, who hides what, from whom, when, who & what is to be disguised/masked & all that, but the fact remains that your existence and select Policies exemplify the reality that you live in a self-evaluating environment at the cost of Sellers such as me. Certainly you don’t mind, if Buyers & Bidders take a few crumbs from this pie, which again is not yours, & of which the burden essentially exists on Sellers such as me, which you do not care as, Anarchy indeed it is which helps you thrive.
I would like you to refund the fees that I have already paid and the ones that you have invoiced me and which I do not intend to pay.
Baiju V.Pandit
1 Apsara Society
S.M.Road
Ahmedabad 380015
Tel. No. : (079)6544-3287
