Open House Discussion with Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager, 12 Jan, 4-5PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

Message from Ambareesh...

Hi Everyone

This is Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager of eBay India and I’d like to invite you to an Open House discussion with me on Wednesday, 12th Jan 2011 from 4-5 PM IST.

At the outset I will like to thank all of you for your continued passionate support and in helping us reinforce eBay as India's most preferred online shopping destination. With your support we made tremendous strides in 2010 and continued to deliver on our promise of making lots of safe easy deals available to our buyers. A BIG thanks to our seller community for expanding the available range of products, providing compelling deals and delivering high levels of service to make buying enjoyable on eBay.

1. Our 360 degree marketing campaigns ensured that a lot more users bought for the first time on eBay. 2010 was packed with TV ads, coupons, social media engagement and several high profile charity auctions.

2. The Category Team’s efforts towards ensuring wide spread seller success yielded positive results. More entrepreneurs started successful eBay businesses and existing sellers benefited from increased sales.

3. To enhance our user experience and give buyers more ways to pay, we expanded PaisaPay payment options with more OBT banks, more EMI options and also introduced the PaisaPay COD option.

4. The launch of eBay Guarantee* made it easier, faster and convenient for buyers to resolve their concerns in the off chance that they had a problematic transaction, thereby increasing trust on eBay.

I recognize that there is still lots to be done to deliver a seamless marketplace experience for our buyers and sellers and in 2011 we will continue to provide lots more safe easy deals to buyers to ensure that even more online Indian's try out eBay.

Our community has always been our most vocal supporter and our strongest critic and I look forward to your suggestions for further improving our user experience and answer your eBay related questions during my Open House discussion.

You can post your questions in advance on this thread, or join me live on 12th Jan at 4 PM. See you on the 12th!

Regards
Ambareesh Murty
Country Manager – eBay India

[jarwe23242]

why the coupons of 15% max 1000 stopped ?

[sales.india]

sir in one simple sentence i think you have to really spend sometime or rather money in education and training of your customer support.!!please do that..rather ill suggest make dummy calls on 1800 number

[linusstudios]

@ singh.manas

Its not seller who has to pay, eBay adjusts it from his remittance, dont worry and keep following with eBay. Your money is safe once you have paid with paisapay.

In fact there is no other website where you are so assured with your purchases as much on eBay.

.

[nihit2010]

Hi,

During the Diwali 2010 promotion, I purchased products and used the promotional gift code. I have not yet received the gift, although it is over 2months now. I have been calling customer care since Dec 6th, but the response is very poor and unsatisfactory. They keep saying, that they sent the gift to someone else in Mumbai (I am in Kolkata) and they are sorry. Its over a month and no progress. i am very upset with Ebay, and have lost faith. They cust care are saying "wait..since it is a gift..and we are very busy". Its is not the response i expected. During the promotion, it was mentioned that the gift would be received within 45days.

Please help me..

[17-9-13-3]

I don't think that Our BOSS gonna listen to all these to make things loose. So far so good its not enough to get trust from buyers espicially from sellers. Here in ebay india "paisapay" rules, its dominating all the sectors, lot of messy policies making it one of the worst payment system along with "quick payment system".

Paisapay should be clean and simple to attract buyers from B&C locatoins like small towns. Paisapay is nothing but time consuming every dispute, request etc takes days and days. Its a very good that buyer refund remittance is became fast, its just one part of the success.

I am asking U onething. U made it mandatory that the seller should submitt the KYC veryfication docs, but whats the use of it when there is no recognizon or quick payment facility to such sellers who became trust worthy..?

I gotta solution for this, for professional sellers U have to open a desk and reqest all the necessary documents and proofs(even U can ask to sign a contract & some serurity refundable desposite) and make him "trustworthy" in ebay along with fast communication between that seller and ebay incase of any problem between buyer&seller to resolve at fast rate.

This way U can easily make Ur appearance bold and underlined instead as "selling bay".

All makes mistakes no matter who U are. Just suspending or closing the account either the general or paisapay is not the solution. Instead U have to disclose the fact that what mistake he did, and give him a penalty to learn from the mistakes. It gives sellers/buyers a feelings like U are kind and their money/efforts is safe with U.

There is lot of other things U need to correct but I wonder U got that much time in this year?? atleast U have to consider the major sideeffects to treat the diesease.

Ur faithfully.

[vinayaga_raman]

I do have a few suggestions. I have been a power user of ebay for the last 12 years, right from the time I stayed in the US and now for the past 6 years in India. Im just a buyer, never sold anything on ebay, but there is no other site or shop that gives me more pleasure that ebay does ! But with all nice things, there are a few irritants that I would like to mention :

1. What I notice over time is that when everything is going good with your transactions, eBay is the best place to shop. But the moment you have a issue with a certain order and need help, all hell breaks loose. Customer support keeps saying nice things about being sorry for the trouble, but nothing ever moves in time. Every issue gets escalated with the promise of a callback that never happens. This needs to be tightened up.

2. eBay is so frantically trying to reach out and sign in newer users that it keeps ignoring old time users. A simple example is that I buy two or three times a week and my wife hardly buys once in three month. Yet, I never receive any coupons from ebay and her email box is flooded with coupons and offers. So what is the message eBay is trying to tell me ? The more I use ebay, the less the company cares about retaining my account ?

3. Global ebay is a complete hit or miss. If the order is received, it brings joy. When the order does not come, it becomes a nightmare. There is no way to reach to anyone to figure out where the package is as all tracking information on iccworld is a complete sham. And when a refund request is raised, the ebay team makes sure that their Global ebay is protected and immediately puts it on hold. Run around, run around, make calls, make more calls and then the money is refunded after a full 45 days of paying. Its a shame.

[jewel96810]

To,
Mr. Ambareesh Murty,

Dear Sir,

Please read my entire letter from your valuable time.I am a member of ebay since 7 years. My ebay id- ecell_kolkata.In ebay I buy & sell items specially Mobiles, memory card & sometimes other computer peripherals. Right now I am suspended due to seller non performance.This is happened because recently I got many –ve feedbacks.

The negative feedbacks most are unjustified & some of them are falls. I have given valid proof to community court & my all –ve feedbacks now is removed from my feedback list.

Sir, the important things of this matter is buyer’s -ve feedbacks to seller.Whether it’s falls or unfair. If any seller get –ve feedback then his/her a/c going to be suspended. The ebay TnS just see the DSR not the right thing.On the basis of –ve feedbacks the seller a/c has been suspended.From my experience I am telling you that in most cases I have seen that buyer creat extra or unjustified pressue on seller with the power of ebay’s feedbacks policy & with buyer protection program.I am explaining the fact.

As I got –ve feedbacks.Some of buyer gave me just a reason for 1) did not get the listed colour (product is same). 2) Item return for no one present in delivery address,but buyer left –ve feedback. 3) Don’t know what is importance of feedback in ebay just leave –ve.

Some of buyer gave me intentionally & this reason is very dangerous.These type of people use ebay as grey market.They buy item from seller,used for some days then open a claim as item mismatch with product.If seller don’t agree to give refund then the buyer thread to seller for –ve feedback & open claim.If anything manufacture wrong in the item after use some days then they want complete refund or replacement on the products which are belongs to Manufacture warranty.If seller don’t agree to accept buyer falls claim or demand then got –ve feedback & face suspension.

Sir, I just want to inform you some practical fact of abusing of ebay feedback policy & buyer protection program.I request you if possible then change immediately these policy otherwise many honest & decent seller as me have been suffering the suspension unnecessary.


Regards,
ecell_kolkata

[reliableenterprise]

@jewel96810/ecell_kolkata
I to agree with u.
@Ambareesh Murty Sir

See the pressure of blackmailing and leaving negative feedback by buyer is always there on ebay site.new buyer come on ebay just for discount coupon and then spoil our reputation which we had earn over year.
New buyer are seriously Headache for every seller.they just give negative or neutral feedback without contacting us.
As there is always buyer protecting,ebay guarantee and stuff for buyer where is seller standing.

On ebay new seller come and do wrong business due to it all policy are against seller for which old and genuine seller suffer a lot.

New community court -Community Review Forum (CRF) is also a headache for seller. Old community court was where jury member were plenty and many seller were jury member so there was voting done...Now with new Community Review Forum (CRF) I feel our case wud be close as Insufficient Votes as jury member may have time or not.as its not compulsory to any jury member to vote so in short again seller will suffer and negative feedback wud be there in our profile and account may get suspended due to it.

Murty Sir this feedback system is good but there are lots of cons in it.Tradus had also started with feedback system but they also close feedback system as it was just giving buyer a technique to make fulfill there demand.

In near future u will be shock to see no big seller with good number of rating to have 100% positive feedback.(seller with 100% positive feedback will have to fulfill all buyers demand as Community Review Forum (CRF) wont work so well as before).In India its very difficult to fulfill buyer 100% there is always 10% he feel tht he was not satisfy in what ever the case it.

Account Mangers - My account manger Never calls me or never try to help me.He does not even know anything if my account is alive or dead.He does not know anything abt my account.He is not at all concern abt it.i dont recd a single call in 3 months also.if i have some problem i have to call him many time but he just say he wud check the same but nothing is done and again have to call him.I had johnson as my account manger before he was really helpful.i used to get call trice a week.Still today johnson always help me but my so called account manger never.

CS is good.Claim stuff is also good.

I think sir all this sud be taken care of in the coming future.

[umesh2385]

Why should the buyers and sellers use Paisapay and not paypal like the other global ebay sites. Paypal is so much more comfortable and the ease with which one can transact using Paypal is unparalleled. Why is Paypal not even a mode of payment and why should it not be the preferred form of payment?

[get114]

Hi,

I have been a steady seller on here for about the past 5 months. I have a couple of issues with my selling experience here.

I have tried my best to keep communication lines open with my buyers as I feel that is the best way to handle issues before things get out of hand. Proof is I have about 87 positive feedback to 1 negative feedback in the past 4 months. The buyer who gave me negative feedback was not even clear on what he was doing, he was a complete newbie and did not understand properly what he was doing. Regardless, before he contacted me, he left negative feedback. I can live with that, you are bound to get a few difficult customers.

What I cannot live with and what I think is absurd is that my account has been put on restricted access for unspecified reasons. No one on Ebay can tell me why, just that I have a 30 day limited access slapped on my account. I suspect it is because I had 3 claims of Item not as described on my account. Once again, the buyers first filed a claim IMMEDIATELY after receiving the product and only AFTER that did they contact me to sort out the issue. Needless to say, I sorted out the issue of 2 out 3 buyers already and the third one is in the process of being worked out (It has only been 3 days since my account has been put on limited access). I would also like to point out that the issue two of the buyers had was directly related to the courier company I use and hence no real fault of mine. Nonetheless, I sorted out their issues.

Why limit my account? Why not be specific on reasons for limiting my account so as to make sure I do not repeat them? Why have you slapped a 30 day limit on my account without even having a discussion with me? Basically, neither the 3 buyers or Ebay India communicated anything with me before filing claims and restricting my account. Do you not think you are leaving sellers out to dry a bit.

I fully understand your revenue system. I also fully understand that your management knows the seller has a much higher threshold for incompetence and neglect since we are earning money off the system and unlike the buyer who has many options for their shopping, we sellers are restricted since there are very few established online portals and are forced to work by your rules.

However, I ask you to please look into my account and figure out how I can regain full access to my account. My business has stalled and I would not like to wait a full 30 days before I can continue on Ebay.

One last complaint. I read a similar complaint in this thread. My so called account manager. What exactly is he there for? All I know about him is his name is Prashant. Is all!! He calls up every so often hawking some listing fee or the other Ebay is offering. He is always "encouraging" me to put up more listing and also more expensive listings but that is all. He always give me the regular please contact me and I am here for you and all that hoopla. So I contacted him 3 days about my account being suspended. As usual, I got the regular dose of sweet talk and a promise that he is on top of it and will get back to me. I have not heard back from him and I have tried contacting him on a daily basis numerous times but he does not answer my calls. Which can only lead me to wonder, does my account manager ever sit at his desk or is he avoiding me? I am not too worried though, I am sure I will hear from him when/if my account is reinstated so that he can sell me more listing tools.

Ebay User: get114