Open House Discussion with Gautam Thakar, Director – Categories & Marketing

[rohit@ebay.com]

Dear Users,

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new initiative for users to interact with eBay India Management – the eBay India Open House.

Staff from the eBay India Management Team will be available on the Discussion Boards at pre – defined times, to answer any questions you might have regarding buying and selling on eBay India.

The first session is with Gautam Thakar, Director – Categories & Marketing. We invite you to join Gautam for an online chat on Thursday, the 2nd of June, 2005, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM IST.

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 5:00 PM!

Regards,
Rohit,
Community Development Team

[invogue-inc]

****************VERY IMPORTANT*****************

There really is one link to prove the mentality of the normal public in the US, just view the community thread posted one ebay.com below. It proves why ebay has such rules which they think are right. but still Indian sellers are unhappy as the Indian ublic does not think in that way, just click or copy-paste the link below:

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=200102527&tstart=0&mod=1117706524942

[sitare_india]

Mr Rohit:

HELP SECTION HELPLESS, YOU PLEASE HELP:

Firstly --- Change of Currency : Our invoices and bills are raised in US dollar currency. I am requesting since months to guide us for changing in Indian Currency but no helper is able to help to resolve this small problem except evasive and stereotype replies.

Secondly --- Bid Mails : We are not receiving mails when a bid is placed on any items. Inspite of inumerable mails, nobody is there to resolve till now.

Thirdly --- Feedback Score Calculation : There is definite problem with Feedback calculation software after Baazee feedback score have been added. Our scores are not updated when a Positive Feedback is posted and scores showing error. Seeking help many many times but with no result.

I THINK ALL HELP STAFF REQUIRE EXTENSIVE TRAINING FOR TAKING UP USER ISSUES. ONE OF THE MAJOR REASONS, EBAY WILL LOOSE IMAGE IS INADEQUATE STAFF KNOWLEDGE AND CARELESS ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOLUTION OF ANY PROBLEM.

Ashok Agarwal
Proprietor
User ID : Sitare_Jewels

[invogue-inc]

I agree with all other members who have said that rating review must be immediately allowed. This is not the US or the UK wherein the people are understanding and contact the seller before giving feedback. We can comment on this because we have been selling on eBay.com for the past 4 years through our agent in New York. The buyers there are much more mature and do understand that delays/mistakes can happen on the seller's part as he too is human. And mainly, they too are worried of their IDs reputation if they get a -ve feedback.

But in India, they barely understand and the tendency of the normal public is to just give -ve feedback for any small mistake as they know they can always create another ID within the next 10 minutes. In the US, the user is asked his Social Security number just for registering which keeps him vigilant that he does nothing wrong, or does not allow anything wrong to happen on his ID.

Whereas in India, he is free to bid as much as he likes without buying anything and can easily say "somebody stole my password" or "somebody is falsely using my name to bid", and the seller can do nothing about it!!! He know eBay or anyone else cannot do anything abou it and can also go about giving as many negative feedbacks as he wishes as he is not scared of anything or anybody!!!

Does eBay really think that it is mere "coincidence" that many sellers in the US can get over 10000 positive feedback without getting a single negative!!! (there really are such sellers and ebay knows it). There are many sellers with over a rating of over 30000 with more than 99.5% positive feedback.

Why can't sellers from India selling the same branded items items get that kind of a ratio??? Is it because they are bad sellers??? Or is it because the companies with those big brands export bad quality items to India??? NO, the answer is the mentality of the buyers, thats the only difference. Just view the community thread posted one ebay.com below. It proves why ebay has such rules which they think are right. But still Indian sellers are unhappy with those rules as the Indian public does not think in that way, just click or copy-paste the link below:

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=200102527&tstart=0&mod=1117706524942

[ankuchi]

Dear Gautam,
First I would like to suggest you to check your contact us email link.never worked I tried many times. It gives an error message"A problem was encountered while attempting to send your messag" and simply you should give an email address like it was for Baazee"service@baazee.com". I was totaly fade up with the attitude of ebay service and fear with ebay brand equity.I won item no.6759330855 for Acer laptop and made paymentto ebay seller "vamsi_shar".After expiring more than 1 month the item has not been sent by seller. The final date given by seller was 22-05-05 but didn't. Now ebay debarred his registeration. How can I get item or refund of money help me.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hello All,

Welcome to the very first Open House Session of eBay India. First of all we will like to thank all users for sharing their feedback on the boards.

This is our first attempt at a open house session to reach out to the Community. In future we will like to conduct more such sessions with Management Team members as well as other staff members.

Gautam will be soon joining us in today's session. Gautam will try to answer as many questions as possible during the one hour session. Users are welcome to post on this thread beyond the time schedule. eBay India team will continuously read your posts to keep track of your feedback.

Gautam is here with us now, I will request him to take over.

Tip: Keep refreshing your browser window at regular interval to see the latest post.

Warm Regards,
Sapana
Community Development Team

[gautam@ebay.com]

Hello All. I am Gautam Thakar. I welcome you all to this Open House Discussion.

Thank you to everyone that listed questions for me. I appreciate the many constructive ideas and comments. As I promised I am going to respond to them.

As mentioned yesterday, I shall try to keep this discussion to broad issues raised by the community and those that are likely to affect a larger number of users. That said , i know that there are a few significant specific individual cases where users have some problems - for those my colleagues from the Community team will help the specific users.

The issues raised by you seem to fall into 5 broad groups:

• Merchandising Promotions - 1 Paisa Auctions
  
• Trust & Safety - High Delivery Charges, Item Not Received, Malicious / retaliatory feedback, listing policies
  
• Product Issues - Outstation buyers selecting local shipping charges, site becoming seller centric, feedback system including item wise feedback
  
• Customer Support - standardized responses
  
• Invoice (Billing)

As I said I will answer these in a staggered fashion and will start a new thread for each of the above topics. I will post all of my responses first, and then start responding to all the new posts.

Regards
Gautam

[gautam@ebay.com]

b>Promotion of 1 Paisa Auctions

ristcomputers, thank you for your suggestions. I shall forward them to out Marketing and Product teams to evaluate. We realize that 1 Paisa Auctions are a great way to build bidding interest and activity on the site, and we shall be promoting these strongly over the next few months. I shall be commenting on the High Delivery Charges issues in my next post.

Regards
Gautam

[gautam@ebay.com]

Trust & Safety

There are many topics under this issue, and I shall address them as separate posts.

High Delivery Charges – This is an issue that has been pointed out to us by buyers. Let me assure you that we are looking at various ways in which we can ensure that sellers are quoting a 'reasonable' price for their delivery charges.
Two ways we plan to tackle this are:
1. Include the delivery charges in the search results and browse listings page, so it will be visible upfront for all users.
2. Having a listing with a low price and unreasonably high shipping or handling costs may fall under the Circumventing Fees Listing Policy Violation. Sellers found doing so can be suspended. I request all of you to please report such violations to us using the Contact Us link within the Help Section. You can view more details of this policy here (http://pages.ebay.in/help/policies/listing-circumventing.html).
Regards
Gautam

[hotdealsfrompearl]

Hi ! Gautam.
I am one of the oldest seller on baazee/ebay. I have started my business with baazee with small electronic gizmos and till the ebay is baazee i m growing day by day as now we r selling some high value products like projectors and home theatres.
In case of any problems I always get a good response from baazee staff. But as now Baazee becomes ebay, No one cares if i have any problems. All the sale has gone down, not a single product is selling per day. If it sells it is only on auction & after auction ends we got the information that the buyer is fraud or not going to fulfill the transaction. What is this? we have spend a value for promotion of auction and in the end we got nothing.
We are spending money from our pocket. We r selling on other sites also & getting very good response. Now E-Bay is making their own money, nothing for the sellers. Ebay is looking for Addon sellers & making money.
Now comes to the Ebay Invoice, which is not able to understand by seller & also not even by ebay employees. After filing the final value fee credit we r not getting credited, the invoice show that amount also. Why should i pay that amount? I got a reply from ebay billing when i called, that u just pay what u think u'r amount will be & will see in the next month invoice. What is this ? If U r not able to send a proper invoice to the sellers how can u go ahead with such big ebay site. Whatever will be the problem just a single reply everone have, just do a mail to cutomer care. No one in ebay is looking to their sellers.
Now come to Ebay Customer Care - I got the mail that u'r some of the products are making violation & when we asked about that they give us a link, that just check on these Criteria’s . We mailed them again that we r not able to understand properly from that link so pls. give us the title of the products comes under violation, but every time i got the same link & answer that look into it. After few days i got my a/c suspended due to this & then on request they give us the title of those products.
Now my question is that they can't give us these titles earlier before suspension. Is this u'r customer care. No care for sellers, this is ebay. If it continues like this no one sells on ebay, ebay will not remain the selling & buying platform only for viewing the products & just fraud biddings.
This all encourage us to stop selling on ebay.

Sumit

[gautam@ebay.com]

Trust & Safety Post 2

Item Not Received – I am sorry that there have been buyers who have not recived their items after paying for it, or faced issues with sellers during the buying process.
We have a Buyer Protection Program by which buyers can be reimbursed for up to Rs. 10,000. You can click on the following link to check if you are eligible to claim Buyer Protection. (http://pages.ebay.in/help/tp/esppp-coverage-eligibility.html)
I would request all affected buyers to follow the Item Not Received process to report these issues to us. (http://pages.ebay.in/help/tp/inr-snad-process.html).

There are a few specific cases(users vb1901 and f2966) listed for me in this session. Rest assured that eBay is with you and will be fully supportive in being with our buyers in helping them recover any amount paid if indeed the seller has not sent the goods. We will do this both under our buyer protection program if applicable and by joining hands with you to work closely to take action against the seller if appropriate. I have already forwarded these cases to my colleagues for urgent action. Regards
Gautam