Hi shreelaptop,
Following are my thoughts on the concerns raised by you:
You rightly said that in current scenario buyers finds too many listings and at times ends up making a wrong choice. This is exactly the point where we think listing fee will improve buyer experience. If eBay is a place where there are too many products and the product quality is low, buyer will be skeptical about buying on eBay. Today a seller can list a product at 1 re, with 500 shipping charge because he does not need to worry about getting a return on investment, since he is not investing any. With listing fee in picture he will be far more judicious about creating listings, thereby creating better listings which will be a good user experience for the buyers.
On your point of seller verification, I agree that it is very important to have quality sellers and ensure that the bad apples do not spoil the customer experience. Over the past once year we have taken significant steps towards the same. We worked with the Law enforcement agencies to catch sellers who were creating bad user experience. Based on our last year learnings, we are also taking pro-active steps to block such sellers. We are already seeing some benefits of the same. Given the sensitive nature of this topic, I will be unable to discuss this further. However, rest assured, improving the quality of sellers and removing bad sellers from the site is one of our top focus areas.
On PaisaPay payment front, did you know that only a few buyers are asked for payment verification? Now the question, why do we ask the buyer for verification? At times, it is important to asses if the payment is genuine. If there were a mis-authorized use of the buyer’s credit card, we can catch it at the beginning itself and the buyer will not have to worry about or go through the pains of filing for a chargeback. He should know that paying with PaisaPay is safe and secure for him. We understand that it means some inconvenience for few buyers as well as sellers. In the past we have taken steps to reduce the inconvenience. The PaisaPay payment processing team today works for 7 days to ensure faster processing of credit card payments. If a buyer is not reachable, the seller is informed of the same to ensure smooth communication. We welcome further ideas to create a better communication flow. However, we will continue to do payment verification where required because we believe that it is essential for a good user experience.
On promotion charges, as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, marketing expenses need to spread over more products, instead of one. At the cost of repetition, I will post the following here:
Lets have a look at the promotion cost and what it does for a seller. In an offline world, you give a print ad in newspaper or say distribute leaflets to popularise your shop. The expense is to spread your brand awareness. The success of the promotion will depend on various things like the messaging, timing of the message etc. It will not be possible for you to recover that cost from one product. Normally the promotion or marketing spend is budgeted as an expenditure in Profit n Loss and spread across various products sold.
Your eBay promotions are similar. You promote one product; however the visibility you receive is not restricted to one product. A user who comes to your one product and finds it interesting will probably land up on 'view other items from the seller' or on the promotional block at the bottom of the listing page. Thus it is not possible to assign the promotion cost to just one listing. In fact it is advisable to create a separate budget for marketing and use it on a planned basis. For example, if you have a marketing spend of 1000 Rs for a month, you can decide that every week you will spend 250 on promotion. On a weekly basis, you can decide that you will spend Rs 100 in featured promotion while 150 you will put up for products on 1 paisa auction. Similarly, you can set up your marketing expenses according to season. you may decide to promote certain kind of products during Valentine, while promote others during Diwali.
On the question of allowing 5 duplicate listing, eBay offers the option to list a product 5 times, so as to provide flexibility to a seller if required. For example, a seller may want to list the same product in buy it now, as well as auction and / or only for international buyers. Similarly, at times he might need the ability to ensure that his new listings start even before the earlier ones have closed, (in case he cannot create new listings due to time constraints). The above are just two examples, where sellers might need more flexibility in creating listings.
On your point on shop listings, while shop owners do pay extra fees, they also get the benefits like branding opportunity, longer listing duration, email marketing tool and other features that are not available to non shop listings. I do not agree that the shop listings should be free. On the contrary, if shop listings are free, it will create a huge arbitrage opportunity in shops and might dilute the intention of creating a healthy site.
On eBay’s dispute handling process, I agree with you that the process currently has a lot to be desired. The teams are working to see how we can make the process more efficient. Once we have more clarity on the new process, we shall update our members on the same.
On the feedback system, I understand members passion towards their feedback reputation. However, I do not agree that eBay’s intervention is a great idea.
The credibility of the feedback system comes from the fact that it is completely member generated and eBay does not interfere in the same. We did have a feature to edit ratings in Baazee days, and I don’t think the ratings in Baazee days were considered as fair as they are in eBay.
Having said that I also understand that there are community needs that the current feedback system does not fulfill. Honestly, I don’t think we have a ready answer for all of them. However, please allow me to assure you that the teams are constantly working to understand how best they may upgrade the feedback system to meet our user needs better. feedback 2.0 is just a step in that direction.
I hope the above helps you find some answers that you were seeking. Do feel free to post your further thoughts.
Regads,
Sapana
