Open Discussion with Rajan Mehra, Country Manager, eBay.in, 18 July 4-5 PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

On behalf of Rajan Mehra:


Hi everyone, this is Rajan Mehra, Country Manager for eBay India. I’d like to invite you to my next Open House discussion on Wednesday, 18th July 2007 from 4-5 PM IST.

At the outset I’d like to offer a big thank you to our sellers for your enthusiasm and commitment in helping us improve the buyer experience on eBay. The fee change we implemented in April’07 has significantly helped us improve the quality of supply on our site, resulting in a better finding experience for buyers and more business for our sellers. As a result of this and other marketing initiatives, we have seen a rapid sales growth and for this I’d like to thank you.

Our community of sellers work tirelessly day-in and day-out to make eBay a great place to shop. Based on your feedback, we have introduced some product changes including requiring Immediate Payments to complete checkout and other changes that will improve your experience on eBay.

Business at eBay is growing and I believe the healthy growth trend shown by the e-commerce industry is a cause for optimism for all of us. ASSOCHAM, an industry body, has forecasted that the e-commerce market size will grow to Rs. 5500 crores in 2007 – 08 from its current Rs. 2200 crores.

I am also pleased to share with you some of the recent accolades received by eBay India. JuxtConsult, a third party research firm, has recognised eBay as the most popular shopping site for the third year in a row and also the most user friendly website. PC World Web Awards have recognised eBay India as the best auction website. I want to thank you for your support in helping us make this happen.

I’d like to take this opportunity to revisit the priorities I’d set out for our team in January this year and measure the progress we’ve made so far:

1. A key priority we’d set out was to make our site simpler and more convenient. We recently launched a simplified buying flow for Fixed Price items and introduced a Shopping Cart. The exciting marketing campaigns like ‘Bid for a Buck’, ‘Cricket Mania’, ‘1 Rupee Free Shipping Auction block’ has further helped in a healthy growth rate in buyers, repeat buying and overall buyer satisfaction

The next steps towards making eBay simple, fun and convenient shall be a completely new Home Page and Phone Support for PaisaPay users.

2. Providing a great experience to our buyers also means providing a safe and trustworthy trading platform. The TnS team has done lot of work in the past six months to ensure that bad buyer experiences are reduced. While they are proactively eliminating sellers who could cause bad experience, they are also ensuring that buyers who have a bad experience are reached out to and an appropriate resolution is provided to them under eBay’s Buyer Protection Program. We will continue to introduce measures that keep eBay a safe place to buy and sell.

3. Global trade on the eBay platform has been growing rapidly and India is poised to gain significantly from this phenomenon. Many of you would have participated in the promotions that we run around International Listing Fee. In addition, we plan to improve the existing Export Resource Centre, launch an all new Global Trade Tutorial and re-launch the International Selling Discussion Board.

4. Getting more users aware and experienced about eBay is another of our key priorities. Since 35% of India’s population access the Internet from cyber café’s, we have successfully initiated a program where Internet users at Reliance World centres are educated and encouraged to buy on eBay. Today this channel has become a major contributor to new buyers on site. The current coverage spans 16 major cities and shall be further expanded in coming months. We are exploring ways and means to extend this infrastructure to get and support new sellers on the site.

Having said all of the above, I also know that there are lot of things we still need to do to deliver on a seamless experience for our buyers and sellers. I’ll be happy to discuss the same with you in the Open House discussion. You can post your question in advance on this thread, or join me on July 18th at 4 PM for a live discussion.

See you on the 18th!

Thank You,
Rajan Mehra,
Country Manager – eBay India

[skygiftworldwide]

Hi Rajan Mehra,

Welcome to the boards once again. We have seen lot of changes on eBay recently that are beneficial for both buyers and sellers.

Introducing the Shopping Cart is one of the long awaited dream come true. Hope this will eliminate the boring UPI dispute procedure.

I have a question, if a buyer buys an item and it is added to the Shopping Cart then for how much time it will remain in the Shopping Cart if the buyer do not pays immediately?

Regards,
Mohib-uz-Zaman

[indconcepts]

Hello Mr. Rajan Mehra,

A warm welcome on the Community Boards.

You and your Team are really doing a great job.
The recent changes are the Turning Point for ebay India.

If new features and essential requirements are rolled out at this speed then ebay India would leave behind all competition.

I think your Roll-Outs must be quaterly rather than half yearly to keep pace with the fast changing e-commerce Industry.

Mr. Mehra ..... one thing which many of us have been asking on site is ..... GIFT Vouchers / Royalty schemes.

Introducing these can change the whole scenario. Most of the other shopping Portals have already introduced it. Many of these Portals are collaborating with Leading Institutions so as to rake in their HUGE Customer Base.
For example ICICI , SBI etc., I suppose have this kind of arrangement.

FeedBack score is the USP of ebay but for a Buyer there is no Royalty Programme of any sort to encourage him/her to be back on site again and again.

The Concept of Points redemption is fast catching up.

I would like to know if ebay India has any such Plan of Vouchers / Royalty Schemes ?

Hope to hear a positive reply from your side. .


best regards

Umang Midha

[jaipur_fashions]

Hello Mr. Mehra

Welcome to the boards ! 🙂

My dear fellow ebayers have already pointed out the things I was thinking about. However, I still have one more question.

Although after the introduction of the listing fee, the UPI's have reduced to a greater extent, but Shill Bidding has increased tremendously. Sellers are taking full advantage of this and becoming Power Sellers within a span of just 5-6 months. Mr. Mohib-uz-Zaman has already pointed out one such case, but unfortunately no action has been taken as yet !!

Sometimes I feel the TnS team isnt that actively taking steps to resolve the issues which actually are highlighted to them by our fellow ebayers. Forget the ones which arent in the limelight.
-------------------------------------------------------

I think the idea that Umang ji has come up with is worth appreciating.

Initiatives such as the introduction of Phone Support by Paisa Pay & new home page will certainly let us work in a better & enhanced way. The new look of the Community hub is COOL ! 🙂

The promotional schemes such as the Business Baadshah and the 1 Paisa -bid for a buck were truly fruitful.

I also, take this opportunity to suggest you guys to think upon introducing a phone support for the buyers on a toll free number. This way the hesitant Indian buyers can clarify their thousands of doubts before bidding or buying an item. This is important specially in our country where there is a lack of awareness specially in the Developing parts of India like Jaipur, Kanpur, Lucknow etc.


Lastly, I congratulate you and your team for the outstanding efforts you people have put in the past year.

Keep up the good work !

Regards
Meenu Jain

[bijibuys]

Hello,
I have been a user of eBay since 2004 and have had reasonable good experience so far as is evident from my feedback rating of 17 (100% positive).
I bought the following items from eBay user ganesh_2007_bbsr this month and paid by depositing cash into his ICICI bank account.
Item #230148605507 (Yamaha Keyboard) and 230149498260 (TFT monitor). These were "second chance offers" as he claimed that the original winner was not interested.
However, after getting my payment he has not been contactable by phone or mail and the items have not been recieved.
It is noted that he has been given a negative feedback by the winner of the Yamaha keyboard (Item #230148605507 ) whose eBay ID is shawn.pinto
It is evident that he has sold the same item to many people and taken money for the same and not delivered to anyone.
Therefore, this man seems to be a cheat who lives by cheating customers on eBay.
I request that police action be initiated and my money and that of poor shawn.pinto is recovered and given back.
The contact details which I have of this cheat is:
Anil kumar murmu
Madhusudan Nagar
Back side of Central school
Khurda road
Jatni
Orissa-752050
Mob:-9853458239
I hope this will help to get this man behind bars soon.
Regards,
Dr. Biji Thomas George,
Trivandrum

[ashish-verma]

Hello Mr. Mehra

I'm very new user of ebay.in and having enjoying to buying goods on ebay.in, but surpringly I found few sellers are self-bidding to increasing amount of their products, which is totally unethical. Can you please do something about this?

Regards, Ashish

[snrama]

Hi Mr. Rajan Mehra,

A warm welcome on the Community Boards.

Many congratulations for the PC World Web Awards.

You and your team are really doing a great job. The recent changes have made ebay India a beautiful place to make purchases. I am very happy with the changes.

Cricket Mania, the Business Baadshah promotions were too good (though I didn't win any).. But I personally think that no one should be disappointed with the prizes. At least an award certificate of appreciation should be given to all participation. This will be a good encouragement to sellers.

I totally agree with Mr.Umang's post which indeed I wanted to post the same issue. It would be better for buyers if Plan of Vouchers / Royalty Schemes are introduced. ---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉

[wellness_store]

Hello Mr. Mehra,

I've been using eBay for several years, although using my husband's login. So, let me state up front that eBay is one of my favourite shopping spaces on-line.

But I'm left shocked, when for the first time I signed up as a seller.

Why do you bar selling nutrition when you allow selling viagra and such other items? Especially when most of the other eBay sites (US, etc) have sections for health and nutrition?

If this has any logic at all, share it with us. Otherwise, it seems nothing else but a 'Gora Sahib ne bola syndrome'. Racial discrimination.

Please do not take this as personal or an affront. But in an information driven world, the question must be asked, I believe.

Incidentally, your minions can only quote the rule instead of addressing the question raised. Apparently, escalating queries to the right decision making levels must be negative scores for your 'customer care' judging by the stone-walling I received.

If you wish to see my exchange on the subject, please ask your 'customer care'?

Regards,
Wellness Store (without one)

[skygiftworldwide]

Hi Mr. Rajan Mehra once again!

I know there is no use in bringing this issue to your notice because NO ACTION will be taken by you. You will just forward this issue to the concerning team without any follow-up and that team will just look at it and snore, snore and snore!!!!

I had raised a voice against the seller harshcorp05 last week regarding his feedback ratings. On 24th June the seller has posted 7 Positive Feedbacks on 25th June 18 feedbacks and on 29th June 23 feedbacks for himself, all feedbacks in the name of unique buyers that were created 6-8 days ago.

Just take a look at his ratings here http://feedback.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=harshcorp05&ftab=AllFeedback

On 12th July one of your team staff protecto@ebay.com responded saying:
Thanks for brining this to our notice. I agree that this seems to be an unusual behaviour and we did various investigations. While I will not be able to share the results of our findings or the exact action taken against the user (given our strict privacy policy), please allow me to assure you that we have thoroughly investigated the case and taken action as appropriate.

But to our utter surprise today the seller is enrolled for PowerSeller Program and is standing among genuine, respected and reputed sellers.

Now, I have a question, how far this is correct taking into consideration of eBay Policies?

In this way all fake and fraud sellers will become a PowerSeller overnight. This means we all are fool waiting for a year or more to become a PowerSeller.

[jaipur_fashions]

CONGRATULATIONS TO harshcorp05 !!

CELEBRATION TIME ... WHAT SAY EBAYERS ??