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

[silconvalley]

DEAR SIR
DO EBAY.IN STAFF GETS SUSPENDED FOR WRONG ANSWER OR COPY PASTE UNRELATED ANSWER TO CONCERNS PUT UP BY USERS
COZ OUR IDS DO GET SUSPENDED FOR WRONG THINGS with best regards
SILIKONINDIA

[gautam@ebay.com]

Invoice (Billing) Issue

This is another issue that has clearly upset a lot of you (this is the kind of feedback that we should have on the boards as it is relevant to all) Since this is a involved topic and may require time, my colleagues from the Billing department are conducting an Online Workshop next week to address concerns regarding the eBay invoice. I will request all of you to please attend this workshop to discuss all your invoice related issues.
http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=300000827

The larger issue regarding the eBay billing is the high SNC rates (now called UPI or unpaid item) in India. We are looking at various ways in which we can try and limit people who are not serious from bidding. We need all the feedback and suggestions you can provide us on how best we can reduce the UPI rates for India.

To answer the issue of promotional credits, there are 2 types of fee promotions on eBay. System promotions automatically charge sellers the promotional fees, while in Manual promotions, as the name suggests, the credits have to be given manually. This typically takes between 30 – 40 days after the promotion has ended. You might ask – so why run Manual promotions? The reason is that there are certain types of promotions (Buy 1, Get 1 Free, etc.) that cannot be applied using System promotions as it is technically not possible at the moment. But we would like to offer sellers the benefits of such promotions even if it has to be manual as we think it will benefit them. Hence we need to run manual promotions.

Since buying_reloaded asked, for all fees refunded after the invoice has been sent, we shall refund Service Tax as well. Regards
Gautam

[ppjewellers]

Bravo silconvalley, I am eagerly waiting for the reply to your question.

[invogue-inc]

Quoting "celebratinglove"

YOU DONOT HEAR FROM BUYERS, BECAUSE THERE ARE HARDLY ANY...:^O

I absolutely agree with you, there are just no buyers... :- (:_|

[invogue-inc]

Another posting that I found on the site... which just goes to show the plight of the sellers, and the major reason for buyers to run away

"I would like to throw light on the fact that we have mentioned “Dispatches may take 8-15 days in some cases, plus 5-7 days taken by the courier for delivery in some areas”. This has been mentioned in the item listing itself. So if a buyer is placing a complaint or is giving negative feedback, how am I as a seller going to escape it, even though there is no fault of mine? Can I not sell on my terms? How is it that only the buyer has all the rights and can ruin a seller’s ID by giving negative feedback with total disregard to eBay’s or the seller’s Terms of Sale? I mean all sellers in the offline market have some rules/terms for sale.

Let us take an example: If you buy groceries at a mall where the grocer agrees gives you free home delivery, and on placing your order he clearly tells you that it will take 3-4 days to deliver in your area, would you go and complaint on the second day itself? And even if you do, would the grocer or the mall owner even listen to your complaint? And do you seriously think he is at fault? So why is a buyer on eBay allowed to file a complaint and give negative feedbacks even though the seller is not at fault and is following his terms of sale? Why should the seller suffer?"

[f2966]

Thanks Rohit,Gautam and sapana for addressing our questions here.
My apologies for using outrageous language while posting my concern.
But you must take the issue seriously and communicate with us asap with regards to how you can help us recover our money.
That same guy hasnt run away as i through a different email & identity tried to contact him for another laptop deal and he agreed and again started the same process by asking my contact number.
He can be traced and caught red-handed.
I have a concrete plan to do this,but without yours,police and bank's help , it won't be possible.
So tell me if you are willing to listen.
Further, this is a golden opportunity for baazee to make a mark now which in future will be a testimonial of your accountability and customer security and will help u build robust payment methods for which i have concrete feasible ideas too.

Thanks,
Munish

[ppjewellers]

Gautam, like you said

“ We need all the feedback and suggestions you can provide us on how best we can reduce the UPI rates for India. “

I again request you to call me, Would like to discuss on some points which can solve most of the major issues.

[halwawala_in1]

Dear participants , How much time did we spent on his event and what has been the outcome ?

The e-bay team has ben sot of Non-comital ,

None of the points raised by me have been touched .

Great Simply Great !! Keep it up at e-bay - just slaughter the sellers as all of hem have a very sweat blood .

God Bless ]:)

[gautam@ebay.com]

dear celebratinglove,
It is disheartening to note that we have managed to upset passionate users such as you through some of our actions - especially if we have made you feel anything less than very important customers.

We all do care about the user community and you will see a lot more engagement across all levels of the organisation. Especially on customer service and as i already said in marketing to attract more buyers. That is our responsibility.

That said, my words will not help so i do not want to talk more about this and i hope our actions in teh coming montsh will help in convincing all of you that we do care and we want to work together to help build your business and ours. Regards
Gautam

[invogue-inc]

Also, the sellers can really get frustrated because of such buyers, and in that post it is also mentioned :

Now, if the buyer just gives negative feedback without even contacting us, how do we sort the problem? And in fact why should we sort the problem till the false negative feedback is not removed? We have mentioned clearly in our terms that the buyer needs to contact us and we will sort the problem out, but if he gives us a feedback directly, we cannot help unless his feedback is withdrawn. We have even sent a feedback withdrawal request to most such buyers and many have even agreed and their problems have been sorted out by us. You can see there are 14 feedbacks withdrawn from our account. So it proves our commitment to make it a happy transaction for him, but then he too should co-operate. You will see in our resolution replies that we are rarely at fault and in most cases it is not our fault at all, but still we are facing suspension!!! In fact we are still ready to replace the item provided the buyer withdraws the false feedback he has given us and returns the item in unused condition.

Such issues rarely happen with sellers outside India as the buyers there are much more educated and thoughtful about buying online. They do read the sellers terms and understand the way things work in an online transaction. But this is really missing in India buyers as it is just the way the Indian Buyer’s mentality is. In fact maybe even I as a buyer would be very similar. You will understand a bit about how the Indian buyer’s mentality works in the resolutions I have provided to the outstanding issues. Internationally the buyer’s would first email the seller the issue being faced and then give their feedback, but in India they will just give –ve feedback. So, there has to be something done in the whole eBay system to sort such issues otherwise new buyer’s will find all the sellers with inflated –ve feedbacks and shy away from buying, which will even be a loss to eBay.

This fact was very well understood by the erstwhile Baazee.com and they had this system wherein th