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

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi skygiftworldwide,

First of all, thanks for reporting this issue. As mentioned in my post to Jaipur_fashions, I believe the team has already taken action in this case. As I explained, it sometimes does take time for the action to be visible as we try and ensure that we do not take erroneous action against any account. However, rest assured that keeping eBay India a level playing field for all sellers is as much a priority for us as it important for you.
Best Regards
Rajan

[cobracable-india]

Hi Mr. Mehra,

I have been selling on eBay for over an year now. My journey so far has been more or less smooth. I am highly impressed by the attention eBay gives to its sellers. With the recent changes, the menance of NPBs has also been reduced to just 10% from the previous 50%. This is my personal observation and may not reflect the trend. The only problem that remains is the fear of a -ve feedback. We mostly have to surrender to unreasonable demands of the buyers for the fear of getting a-ve feedback. For example, I sold an item to a buyer from Mumbai. I had clearly written in my listing that the item only carried a one week testing warranty and any broken or missing part should be brought to my notice immediately upon receipt. The buyer, after one month, sent me a message that the item was sub-standard and that's why it broke just after one month of use. I told him to see the listing and he instead gave me a -ve feedback. Apart from that, he abused me and threatened me. Now, I had to refund him his full money including shipping and ebay fees to get the feedback withdrawn. Is there no way to save the sellers from such buyers? If not, then it means that each item automatically carries atleast a 3 month warranty irrespective of what the seller writes.

Thanks,

Anil
aktayal

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Dear amitava123gems,

Good to hear from you again. I totally agree with you that regular buyers are as important to eBay as are new buyers. There should never be an instant of a legitimate buyer ever being suspended from eBay. At times, a buyer warrants suspension because he has violated the site policies. Typically a buyer will get suspended when he does not pay for the products bought by him. In such cases if a buyer wishes to get re-instated all he needs to do is pay for the products.

While I will not be able to discuss the exact reason of suspension of these buyers on the boards, our Trust & Safety team would be happy to help get legitimate buyers back on the site.
Best Regards
Rajan

[amitava123gems]

Rajan Saheb,
Thanx.Buyers get that for not paying up for multiple purchases.
What I request,is,please give them some more time to react before you act.Probably an alert for 15/20 days will do the job.
Sometimes a buyer,such as 'qatar991'is too proud to ask for reinstatement.
The loss is permanent.Community has lost a repeat buying international buyer.
Anyways,just some more caution please.
Thanx very much,
Truly,
Amitava

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi coolbrasco,

Good to see you again!

I am sorry to hear that your sales have dropped - I wonder if this could be because the new buying flow has made the buying experience a lot easier for a buyer of fixed price products and consequently new buyers who may have only been experimenting will not complete the transaction. In the past, such buyers may have inadvertently completed the transaction but not made the payment, thereby requiring the seller to report the item as unpaid. The benefit of the new system with immediate payment is that while there will be no negative impact on completed transactions to sellers, the sellers will have the benefit of reduced reporting for unpaid items. Over time we believe tat the simplicity of the buying experience will actually increase the number of buyers willing to try the platform, as also improve the overall experience of both buyers and sellers on the site.

I hope your sales are back to normal and more soon :).

As regards your comment on shop vacation settings, I understand that our team was not able to replicate the issues. In case you have not done in already, I would request you to send sapana@ebay.com the screenshots of the issue so that she can get it investigated further.

Thanks for your numerous suggestions. Here are my point of view on them:

About handling New Customers – I think this is a very valid suggestion. In fact last month all top sellers had received some documents that gave various guidelines on better customer support. However, I also believe that the best people to teach other sellers about good customer service are the sellers themselves. I will ask the team to arrange for a seller led workshop where the seller can give tips and trade secrets on good customer service.

Marketing ideas – I totally agree with your basic premise that we need to encourage existing buyers. However, we need to execute any such program in a manner where we can be sure that the gifts reach the buyers. I know the buyer team is already on some exciting plans for our buyers and they will share them with the community once the plans crystallize.
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi jaan12132820,

Welcome to eBay! It is good to see a new seller on the boards. It will be an interesting idea to get established sellers to train new sellers. The team is already working on a similar idea. However, to help a new seller set up their eBay business and learn, we have a training team which trains sellers for free. I have passed on your user id to them, and you can expect to hear from them shortly.
Best Regards
Rajan

[skygiftworldwide]

Hi Mr. Rajan Mehra,

Thanks for answering to my questions. It will be really great fun to participate in I know eBay Contest. Last time I had won a prize.

Regarding false feedback of one seller, some fake feedbacks have been removed by your team but still some 38 false feedbacks are there.

I have noticed such case of one more PowerSeller too, his feedbacks are 1000+. Hope your team will take appropriate action soon.

Regards,
Mohib-uz-Zaman

[sitare_india]

Sir,

Feedback by Bogus Buyers inspite of Non-compliance
We are Power Seller in Jewellery Category. One system of Feedback is very irritating and arbitrary. When we sell an item and buyer donot pay, inspite of that he can left Feedback even Negative just to do fun. Due to this fear, as a seller we never give Negative Feedback to any bogus buyer inspite of non-compliance, and as a result, those buyer continue to disturb selling process of genuine sellers. In our opinion, the buyer who has not paid for the item should not be able to give feedback at all.

Thank You,
Ashok Agarwal
Proprietor
Ebay ID: Sitare_Jewels

[parle.d]

Respected Sir,

Thankyou for the quick response to my grievance, from your able staff. This is the kind of customer service I hope to receive always from you. I hope to find a satisfactory solution soon.

Good to be part of such a portal.

Thanks again.

Best,
Pearl Lobo

[cobracable-india]

Dear Sir,

I have participated for the first time in any online discussion organised by eBay. Please encourage me to take part again by replying to my concern I sent a little while ago.

Thanks,

Anil