Hello emailswarup
Firstly thanks a lot for the various comments, feedback and suggestions through your multiple posts in response to the thread. Would have loved to discuss with you during my session last Thursday but unfortunately that couldnโt happen.
Let me first start by addressing your feeling of lack of importance from eBay to discussion boards threads / suggestions. We always feel great about our community and if there is the one thing that distinguishes eBay from the rest of the organizations is the active engagement of our members in our policies and strategies on our very own discussion boards. Please be rest assured that no suggestion on the boards goes unnoticed and if there have been any slip ups in past we will make sure going forward the same does not happen again.
Secondly let me address your overall concern about eBay being inflexible and not considering the communityโs view point and suggestions before making major decisions by calling out a few BIG things we did in 2007. viz.
Fast integrated checkout and shopping cart
eBay Coupons
EMI payment option
Telephone based customer support
Television advertising
Introducing listing fees
Trust & Safety initiatives like out calling to non paying buyers
The genesis behind each of the above decisions was based on Community Suggestions and Inputs. Rest assured we listen to our community, understand their pulse, take suggestions, firm up a balanced point of view and implement decisions which are beneficial to the overall community
I request you to read through my earlier posts in this thread which should answer your questions on PaisaPay bugs, shipment timelines, NEFT charges and low sales. On The point of Feedback, you would have noticed that along with the recent Feedback changes, we also have a number of measures that would protect the sellers against unjustified negative feedback, including, but not limited to removing negative feedback from buyers who do not participate in the UPI process and removing the feedback of suspended members
Regarding your comment on Power Seller program criteria, we understand the intricacies and challenges in a nascent ecommerce market like India and have factored that into building the program. Also in the last few years many Power Sellers have seen growth in their business and our data shows an increase in the # of Power Sellers in 2007. Even post the revision I am sure you will appreciate that we have kept the current criteria 50% lower than global program criteria. We are reviewing our benefits package for India Power Sellers and look out for some exciting news on that front in the next 4-6 weeks
Now coming to your suggestion on allowing to optionally choose category for international listings, inherently as the product is listed on the eBay.in site it will have the category structure prevailing in the India site. However I have taken note of your suggestion and will pass it on to the teams working on category mapping and we will evaluate on what best can be done to deliver the most suitable category output for International listings. Regarding listing fees, we have seen an improvement in success rate for sellers post that and it has certainly improved findability of items for buyers. Having said that I take your suggestion on listing fee for a longer duration and am sure the team working on the pricing will keep this in mind while planning for future.
The suggestion of making eBay.in search global is interesting, while it has its benefits lets also understand that such a move can have its challenges in a few caregories. I would evaluate this very carefully before deciding conclusively.
As you would have seen in the recent global announcements there are some changes being made in the default sort order in the bigger eBay sites like US, Germany and UK. There is also a test pilot on some of the International sites for a Total cost sort (Item price + shipping). We will monitor the effectiveness, take global learnings and of course consult our community before firming up our decision.
Regarding your suggestion on offline advertising, I am sure you would have seen our first Television advertising campaign which was aired in Nov and Decโ07, we will continue to evaluate our marketing investments basis the returns we get and I am sure you will see a lot more offline marketing initiatives in 2008.
Its been my pleasure going through your posts and various suggestions and I hope my response has been all encompassing and answers your queries.
Best Regards,
Rajan
