Chat with Rajan Mehra, Country Manager, eBay India (7 Feb, 5 - 6 PM)

[indraneel@ebay.com]

Dear Members

Join Rajan Mehra, Country Manager, eBay India for an Open House discussion on buying and selling on eBay India. Open House gives senior eBay staff members the opportunity to interact with members of the community and we presume that community would also be equally eager to do the same.

Rajan will be available on this thread on Thursday, the February, 07 2008, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM IST for an interactive discussion with our community members.
Click on 'Post a Reply' link at top of the page to submit your questions before or during the discussion.

Please read Rajan's message to the community.

See you on February, 07 2008 at 5:00 PM!

Regards,
Indraneel

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello ezzycyber,

I'm sorry to hear about your challenges. Someone from our Customer Support team will reach out to you help you with your specific concern.

I hope that the issue is satsifactorily resolved and I look forward to seeing you on the boards again.

Thanks,
Rajan

[assemblerz]

Sir,
You tried to answer all queries except VAT !
What about heavy VAT charged by some sellers without giving any invoice to buyers?
This is a standard practice which is followed by some sellers who cheat buyers and our Govt.
This is affecting our sales. The buy it now prices look lower to buyers and they buy the product of such sellers.

Request you to do KYC of powersellers who charge VAT.

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello e-techshop,

Thank you for your wishes and we are excited about the targets we have set for ourselves for 2008.

1. We would surely take into consideration your input for an added category under the main category of Consumer Electronics’. If we get enough listings to dedicate a category to them we would surely check for the feasibility of the same.
2. As regards your suggestion for EMI facility from other banks, we made our decision on ICICI based on their being the largest. We are currently evaluating options with other banks as well to get the EMI facility for their credit cards and will add them from time-to-time. We shall keep the community update on further developments.
3. Thank you for your suggestion on holding more promotions on International listings which we’ll surely look into while planning further promotions.

Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello auctionsjewelry,

I trust my responses above would have addressed your concerns. Thanks for participating on the boards.

Best Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello emailswarup,

Thanks for your very thoughtful and detailed posts. I think you raise some interesting issues in your multiple posts and I want to ensure that our response is complete and addresses the issues you raise. We have run over on time and I expect my response to your post to take some time. I'll ensure that I get my response to your post posted by Monday.

I trust that's ok.

Best Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi cochinmall,

I saw the articles in print media on your air guitar and I think it was quite cool! Congratulations! I hope you continue to come up with more such creative and fun listings 🙂

As I've discussed earlier, the New PaisaPay did have some bugs related to SM Pro. However, you will be glad to know that other than one bug highlighted above, most of the bugs have been resolved.

Regarding your question on fees, we have made lot of modifications to Paisa Pay like providing Phone Support, Charge Back coverage, dispute resolution, etc. and am sure you understand that all of these have a cost implication. For most past of last 3 years from 2005 to 2007 the Paisa Pay fees were constant and were recently hiked in November’07 to cover for the additional costs that are incurred in providing the service to the community.

Best Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Folks,

Clearly the number of posts are way over that which I expected. I'm glad that we've been able to get such well thought out posts and it seems like it'll take me some time to get through the remainder posts. We're now way over the time we'd allotted for the Open House and I have another engagement that I need to get to. I'll make sure that I attend to each of your posts in the coming days. Please check this thread for further responses. Thanks once again for taking the time to provide us this feedback, it is invaluable and we will incorporate the same into our planning process.

Best Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello veedeedirect,

Thank you for welcoming me on the boards.

I’ll be more than happy to be able to address your concerns.

Express Remittance is a privilege we are offering as a reward to those sellers who have consistently outperformed in providing good buyer experience over a period of time. We understand your concern for small sellers, however if we were to make this available to all then this facility will not be a privilege but a system feature. Parallely, let me reiterate that we would surely look into revising the Express Remittance criteria with an objective to expanding our base of qualified sellers for this facility. Look forward to hearing more in the coming 4 - 6 weeks.

We appreciate your dedication to get the VAT issue resolve. We are totally against the misuse of VAT by sellers and are looking into this matter seriously and have been working with our legal team to find the best solution thereby creating an honest platform.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, our data shows an increase in business. I would like to take this opportunity to parallely address some concerns on site traffic basis Alexa data mentioned by a few of our community members like gizmozindia, techniwas, subhash.unique. Alexa data is a better reflection of site traffic from Non India visitors and not local India traffic. I am sure you appreciate that during Christmas and New year holidays most people are either out on holidays or taking an annual break and this does have an effect on Non India site traffic in December and early part of January. I just had a look at the domestic traffic data for the same period and it shows no change traffic patterns for the month of January’08

Now coming to back to the philosophical question on comparison between offline discount store & eBay, Firstly I don’t think this is a right comparison. In an offline sale lets admit it that the buyer gets the product instantly on making the payment, irrespective of the experience he/she has had either while shopping or standing in queue to make the payment. The fundamental difference in online is the buyer makes the first move by paying upfront and then waits for the product to get delivered. It then becomes highly imperative that buyers expect the best experience in terms of regular communication from seller, timely delivery, good packaging and after sale service to feel happy and come back and repeat and also spread good word of mouth. In my view Trust, Seller Service and Customer Satisfaction are hygiene factors in online business or for that matter in any business.
Regarding product prices a marketplace by nature itself provides competitive pricing from seller perspective and “great deals” are ONE of the big reasons buyers buy online.

Hope I was able to answer your questions 🙂

Best Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello punjabimall, gems4party & mysalesoffer

I see that all 3 of you have more or less the same concerns which is around paisa pay timelines for shipments and I request you to read through my earlier posts on initiatives that we are working on to make the operations smoother especially in the areas of Shipping Integration with 3rd party vendors and addressing the concerns around International shipping & delivery timelines .

Now I will address the specific question raised by each one of you

1. Scheduled listings - on ebay.in incur a cost of Re. 1/listing. There is no Scheduled Listings fee for Turbo Lister, Selling Manager, Selling Manager Pro, and Shop users. The point on the challenges around scheduling listings on our International sites is noted and unfortunately, there is no immediate resolve to this. My team will keep the community updated on the progress we make on this front.

2. NEFT Charges - let me state that we have seen this is happening only to a few sellers and it could be an issue specifically related to a bank, branch or even account type and is not due to eBay or Paisa Pay changes. I suggest sellers facing this issue to please discuss the matter with your bank branch. Having said that we are also investigating the matter and discussing with our bank partners to understand the issue better and will update you if we get any information

3. Closing disputes post resolution - To address this concern we have started an activity as part of our Trust & Safety initiatives wherein we contact the buyers who have opened disputes against the sellers and guide them through the process. We stress them on contacting the sellers for their issues. We also contact them on a periodical basis as a follow up and ensure that they close the disputes if their issues have been resolved. We are confident that we’d be able to provide security to our sellers and buyers and help them resolve issues in a better way.

Best Regards,
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello coolbrasco,

Thank you for welcoming me and it’s always nice for me too to interact with the community members and I feel privileged to have such an engaging community.

We understand that sellers have had to increase their workload in line with the new Paisa Pay but I would like to reiterate what I stated in one of my earlier post. We have upgraded the PaisaPay payment system with enhanced features with the primary aim of building buyer trust and also included features that our seller community had asked for a long while like EMI, Online Remittances, Coupons etc. We are very confident that the new PaisaPay is a significant improvement over the old system and a best in class payment system.

The primary focus in building the new payment system was to build buyer trust which I am sure we all agree is a basic hygiene requirement in an online transaction. Our initial Paisa Pay data shows an increase in business which is clearly a reflection of greater buyer acceptance of the new system and we are confident that it will only grow as time progresses.

Having said the above, I agree that the new PaisaPay has modified some work processes for our sellers & we are looking at ways as to how best this can be smoothened out. We are working on a few initiatives which I am sure will help sellers viz.

1. Making PaisaPay easier: the team has identified areas in My PaisaPay that can be improved to make it simpler.
2. Explore Shipping tie ups with 3rd party logistics provider.
3. Relook at Express Remittance criteria to make it inclusive for more good sellers.
4. Monitor and evaluate the request for relooking at dispatch and delivery timelines for International Shipments.
5. Launch Seller Protection Program to protect sellers as much as we protect buyers.

We would never want any member leave us and especially a seller like you who have shown such dignity in providing buyers on our platform with the best experience and am sure you will continue to sell even more successfully on our site.


Best Regards,
Rajan