Open House Chat with Rathin Lahiri - Head of Marketing, eBay India

[rohit@ebay.com]

Dear Users,

We are pleased to announce the next session of our Open House Program, where users get an opportunity to chat with the eBay India Team.

Join Rathin Lahiri, Head of Marketing for an online discussion on buying and selling on eBay India.

Rathin will be available on this thread on Thursday, the 2nd of Februaury, 2006, from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM IST, for an interactive discussion with our community members.

You can submit your questions before or during the event by making a post on this thread. For help on using the discussion boards, please click here - http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=300000542.

See you on the 2nd at 4:00 PM!

Thanks and Regards,
Rohit,
Community Development Team

[astrolifecom]

hi
I would like the category 'Astrology' under services to grow into a large business. It is currently clubbed with Real Estate, which does not allow direct sales.

I have written to your product team, but yet to get any feedback.

If somebody contacts me, I can share my plans!

take care,
raj rao

[franklin2k5]

hello sir,
im facing many problems with ebay.... ill give one by one here...

1) i din receive the buyer protection claim amt for the item 6422341366. claim found favour on me on sep 28th.. it already 4 months passed away.. till now i din receive it...

2) ebay had send a invoice for unsold items n make me to pay the FVF for the items 6445959771 and 6443110119... both the items are listed on oct/05 aftre 3 months i got a reply on jan/26/05 from ur side as FVF amt will be credited into my a/c in 24 - 48 hrs. now around 5 days passed away... nothing happend... i don kno wat u ppls r doing there...

3) im getting very late reply for the mails sending to the customer support...

pl give me a proper reply & pl resolve the above problems...
we r comming forward to earn money by doing business in ebay...
But i lost so much of money in this...

Franklin

[1jdcard]

Hello,
Sir some fo my item R sold but i have receved my payment from long time. i called the buyer, but on phon they r telling me or sir we r sending the payemtn but i have not receivd yet any thing.. pls take some strong for this tyip of buyer. wating for your reply
ITME NO > (7212102451)
ITEM NO > (7212856471)

[cameras_n_such]

Hello Rathin,

Congratulations to you and your team on the very sucessfull hoardings campaign and the current Valentine Promo on the site. The Valentine promo is really well thought out and designed. I had been asking for such a promo for last 3 years. As an offline gift retailer, I know what huge business opportunity Valentine is. We have to extend our store closing time for 9 p.m. to 12 p.m. and even 1 a.m. for Valentiine Shoppers.

There are a few issues I would like you to address:

1) Buyer Verification brought up by emailswarup. Atleast start optional verification and allow sellers the option to list producs only for verified buyers. If I list one product 3 times with homepage featuring on 1 Paisa No Reserve auction, only 1 gets fullfilled. I do not think I can keep spending RS.450/- to sell just one product. I would prefer to have only genuine and verified buyers for my 1 PNR auctions.

2) Lisitng Fees: A long standing demand by most experienced sellers and surprisingly a lot of newbies to introduce listing fees to curb the rampant abuse of the site via duplicate listings and slow moving inventory put infront of buyers.

3) Genuine verification of sellers selling high value branded products. I believe there is a procedure of asking sellers of high value products to provide proof of purchase. This should be make more stringent and a buyer of high value products should have to submit proof of purchase on a regullar basis to eBay. This will one prevent fraudsters from running away with hard earned money of buyers and two it will curb the rampant grey market sellers to some extent. Today not a single legally imported Sony or Nikon Camera is being sold on the site. Same is the case with Sony Handycams and I Pods. All these are heavily promoted products on the site as well on various other sites on the net by eBay. Wake up before its too late and some goverment depts. forces you to. (something akin to the MMS clip scandal)

Cameras_N_Such
A Gold PowerSeller (rarity on eBay.in) and Top Seller in my category.

[np2028]

Sir on 18 th Jan 06 I have seen through www.ebay.in that Mr.G Vadehera has given an advertisement that he wants to sheel his old blackberry phone in a price of Rs.8999/-(Shipping cost excluded Rs.550/-) Total cost of Rs.9549/-. After observing the attractive advertsement I have taken intrest to buy the phone and contacted with him through www.ebay.in to give his phone number.I got a sms on 19th jan then I contact ed with him & asked him how to pay? Then he gave me his account no of HDFC Bank And said to deposit,Though I knew that ebay.in is reputed service provide so I thought to deposit the amount ,In the evening Icould not deposited money due to delay.Again Mr.Vadehra gave me his ICICI Account no.I was very much excited to buy that phone so I deposited Rs.9600/- due to non availity of change currency in his ICICI account No.000401012116.After getting that payment Mr.Vadehra commited me that he will send the phone on 20th.But sir after regular folloup ,phone calls & mail I got assurance that I will get the phone soon.Till 22nd I could not get that phone.On that day I sent amail to Mr.Vadehra ,He confirmed me through email that I will get the phone on 23rd at 3 pm.But I did not get that.Then I followed up to send the phone several times but he did not responded intensionaly .Because hi had a malafide intention he wanted to cheat me.At last on 27th I got a packet from Mr.Vadehra ,In side that packet I got fake items (2 Mp3 pyrite Cds),As per his email that I should get the phone on 23rd but practically he has booked that packet on 23rd.With in that gap period he planned to cheat me.Sir I am a poor fellow I request you Kindly take this matter and unveil the trouth,Awaiting the justice.

[nisha_online]

Dear Mr. Rathin
Hope that eBay India , will be using all the feedback from members. Bcoz why im insisting on this is, eBay's development policies are in phase slower than snails.I admit that , eBay India has improved a lot.But it has a long way to reach the perfection.
The list of thing which i would suggest is,
1. Buyer verification, u people take a great care to verify sellers. why not the buyers, we waste our money and time to list an item. Fraudsters simply buy our products for fun.

2. You must DO SOMETHING about the nigerian fraudsters. they creat a hell a lot of problems.

3. Response,response from ebay is the slowest thing on earth, i suppose(not the automatic mail we recive,for every querry we sent). your people work very fast in getting the payments,but regarding our problems they work leisurely. the response facility should be tuned to a class standard.

4.You people should need to work out a lot to make eBay india, the best place for online shopping.

From,
Nisha_online

[kuriens123]

Dear Mr. Rathin Lahiri,
I am doubtful if I can be with you during the scheduled discussion forrum time.

Following in my querry or problem,

I had won bid for BRAND NEW BENQ S 670C TRIBAND CAMERA CLAMSHELL PHONE (#6475632480) sold by itwizard47 on 24-Jan-2006. I has send payment via Credit Card through your website link via Paisa Pay on 25th January 2006. Whenever I contacted you personnels at seller and customer service via online sms they responsed promptly with the messages that the payment is under clearance with Paisa Pay and once they intimate I will be delivered the above product in 24 hrs. I am also send messages again saying pay soon. Further I received a sms today from Mr. Satish Balu Yelawande to call on his cell no. 9892931090 and pay to his ICICI Bank Account No. 000401141704. I had purchased earlier too products from your site but never faced such difficult times as now. This instance fears me to login to your auction site again. I am available on 9821162338. Whats the situation like and how do I act to this.
Hope you will be able to solve this soon.
Dr.Kurien

[rajchopra316]

Dear Rathin,

This is my frist purchase at ebay and here come the problem, i purchasd a (Original Nokia 6600 with Battery and Charger,)item number 6479749241,from (simiagency) and made payment via credit card on the 31/1/06,
i recievd a message saying Your credit card payment of Rs. 7,242.00 to simiagency is pending approval by PaisaPay Customer Support. The seller will not ship the item till this payment is approved)

And then on 2/2/06 i get one more message saying that

Your credit card payment of Rs. 7,242.00 to simiagency has been rejected by PaisaPay Customer Support for the following reason: Item has been deleted / account problem. Please contact seller. Your purchase is currently not paid and the seller will not ship you the item(s).

I sent a mail to simiagency and they replied saying that
(ur ppayment is rejected so please try again by credit card payment)

When i confirmed with my creditcard department they said the charge of 7,242.00 has already been charged to account on the 31/1/06.

now when i informed this to simiagency they say that (we inform u our new ebay id by mail u can make payment through that easily.. we have little problem with paisa pay account so that ur payment is rejected,this is our new ebay id jennimobilecare

i cannot charge my card for the second time as the frist charge is already reflecting in my account.

WHAT DO I DO..KINDLY HELP !!!!

THANKING YOU
REGARDS
RAJ CHOPRA

[rathin@ebay.com]

Hello Everybody, My name is Rathin Lahiri, and I head the Marketing function at eBay India. My responsibilities include attracting new buyers to eBay to buy from our sellers, to retaining our users. One of the key elements in retaining our users is to ensure that they have a pleasant trading experience on eBay. This is another element that we are focused on. Finally, we offer the unique opportunity for our users to interact with each other, and with us, forming what we call our 'Community'.

This is the first time I am interacting you, our Community, and I look forward to an interesting and engaging one hour.

I shall begin with answering all the queries posted to me before the start of this session, and then answer the live questions.
warm regards

Rathin

[rathin@ebay.com]

Hello emailswarup,

Firstly, let me thank you for your regular contributions on the discussion boards. We need more dedicated members like you to help build up a vibrant Indian community of eBay users.

Let me try and address your points:
1. Improving Search - What you are referring to is what we call 'Item Specifics'. At the moment, we have Item Specifics in some categories such as Handsets within Mobiles & Accessories. If you go this sub category, you will see a 'Mobile Phone Finder' using which you can refine your seach for Mobile Phone Handsets. We presently do not have this for all the categories, but I shall forward your feedback to the team for their consideration when they roll out more Product Finders.
2. That's an interesting point! going forward in 2006 we plan to change the look and feel of the site or atleast a few pages to coincide with festivals etc : you will see some difference with the valentine day promotion which is begining soon.
3. We have started a similar promotion, wherein we are promoting one seller per category on the category home pages.
4. Lately, we have heard a lot of feedback on fraud bidders creating additional work for our sellers, especially new sellers. We are concerned about this. Let me assure you that we closely monitor activity of our users, and regularly suspend many users before they can bid on items. At the same time, as we are a nascent e-commerce market, many genuine users will have reservations about verifying themselves using credit cards, etc. This is a fine balance that we need to improve on, and we are committed to doing so. Till such time, we plan to focus on educating our sellers, especially new sellers about some of these risks. As always, we look forward to the support of our community members in this endeavour.
warm regards

Rathin