Open House Discussion with Rajan Mehra, member - eBay India Management Team

[rohit@ebay.com]

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

Join Rajan Mehra, member of eBay India Management Team, and Head of the Motors business, for a discussion on buying and selling on eBay India. Rajan will be available on this thread on Thursday, the 7th of July, 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.

See you on the 7th at 5:00 PM!
Regards,
Rohit
Community Development Team

[npmittal]

i buied a mobil phone from seller rohini chadha,but she cheated me .first she didn't sended anything till two to three week n when i m trying to contact her she is not responding me.afterward she send me some useless stuff like calculator n one old mobil phone without battary .this was quit insulting.the seller tried to bluff me n ebay too.i m a regular buyer from ebay.but this is very disappointing .i want that ebay should take an action against that seller,n try t slove my problem.i file the dispute too but no reponse.waiting 4 reply

[rikkins]

Hi Rajan,

I had recently put up an item for sale. It was bought on 2nd June'05 by the eBay member dambhrin. As per the procedure, I contacted the buyer and answered his querries. Now, this buyer started giving excuses for making the payment. He always said that he would make the payment the next day. The worst part was, he never contacted me. It was I who always had to call him up, as he never replied to E-Mails.

Then once, he sent me a mail asking me to send him the voucher and then he would make the payment. The excuse that he gave was that he didn't know my identity and couldn't make the payment first. At this point he knew that I work for Wipro Technologies, as he has my official E-Mail address. But for me, I didn't know anything apart from his Mobile no. Now how am I supposed to send him the voucher when I don't know who he is. Also he wasn't remaining in contact before the voucher was sent. Then how can I trust him that he would remain in contact after I send him the voucher. Also I had clearly mentioned that I will send the voucher once the payment is realised.

I highlighted all the points to him. After that when I contacted him, he said that he is still thinking about whether he should buy the package or not. When I told him that he has already bought the package and cannot step back now, he said that he didn't know about any such thing, and that he would enquire and reply. As usual no reply came and so I filed an Unpiad Item Dispute. This dispute did him no harm. All he got was an Unpaid Item Strike which I am still not sure what that is. All the loss in this was for me. I have lost all my time, my money and my trust in eBay.in. That person will still buy on eBay.in. As for me, I don't know if I will ever sell on eBay.in as I am convinced now that even if my Item sells, I may not get the money.

My question here is, "What measures are taken by the eBay.in Management Team to see to it that the buyer, once he buys the item, doesn't step back. As far as I remember, I had read a clause in Baazee.com that once you buy an item, you are legally bound to buy the item and cannot step back. But I couldn't find any such thing on eBay.in. Does eBay.in not believe in Sellers interest Protection?

[hi_techpower]

Dear Sir,
It seem that your Team just pretend to be helpful instead of being helpful. I have wrte more than 15 mails for my accopunt correction but there is no response.
I listed the 151 Item,s under promotional offer of 1 day freer listing on 5 april around the 5 pm which is very wel reflecting in invoice also. but when i ask for fee credit they told me that item was started on 00.30 am on 6 th april . It was very clear in promotion offer that we should list using turbo lister and the listing should not be sheduled later than 5 april 11.59 so we did and listed with ASAP. But it seems that ebay team is not ready to listen ad review there own announcement on promotional offer. Can any body just show me that where it has been written that Item should be sheduled between 5 april 00.01 to 5 april 11.59 pm. So kindly do some thing immi so thati can clear my fees immi.
secondly one more thing is Key word spamming. You are advised to conduct the survey on keyword spamming on ebay.in and ask how many seller are awre of it for which you are susending the sellers like a frauds and theifs. and frreeze his all account and reputation. you are conducting seminars in different cities for attracting new sellers but i dont feel that you will able to keep older one with you happily.
Regards
Hi_techpower

[rss_1256]

Dear Sir,

I won a NEW NOKIA 3100 with Charger (#6404757466) ON 17th June and paid Rs.399/- thru Paisapay (ID: 74388097). The seller is kgexims. But I did not get the Mobile. When I opened a Dispute on 6th July, the seller is telling that it is only lucky draw and he did not get any details. Upon repeated attempt how he is telling that I will get only 3 t-shirts. He is trying to cheat the ebay customers it seems.

I sent a detailed mail and asking him to send the Mobile and waiting for the reply. I received a mail from ebay stating that I am the winner of the Mobile.

Requesting you to look into the matter and instruct the seller to send the New Mobile Phone immediately.

Thanking you in anticipation.

Shanmuga Sundaram R

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi everybody,

A warm welcome to this Open House session. I will be available on this board for the next hour or so, to hear from you regarding your buying and selling experiences, and share with you some of the things we are doing to address some of your issues.

Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you might have, or provide your feedback. if nothing, do drop in a simple 'Hi'!

I will start with answering some of the questions you have already asked me. I will then move on to answering new questions.

I am not the fastest typist around, so I would also request all of you to please bear with me in case you feel I am taking too long to respond to your queries! Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi nkmulani,

From what you describe, it is possible that the person's who are interacting with you may not be genuine buyers. We would advise caution in any transactions where the buying behaviour is outside that which could ordinarily be expected.

At eBay, we allow Sellers to block certain buyers from bidding on their items. You can view these settings in your My eBay, by clicking on eBay Preferences under My Account on the Left Hand Column. For example, you can block buyers having a negative feedback from bidding / buying your items.

We do not presently verify all users on the site. Sellers have to get verified before they can start selling. We are considering introduction of some form of buyer verification, which will also help all sellers in reducing the instances of UPI (Unpaid Item) Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi shoemall_in1,

I hope my answer to mkmulani clarifies your doubts. As regards the fulfillment rate on your transactions, the data is actually quite surprising. The initial data at our end shows no apparent decrease in the fulfillment rate. That said, fulfillment rates continue to be an area of focus and you should expect to see more initiatives that will help increase your fullfillment rate. Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Some folk have postings suggesting that they have not received the item from the seller after paying for it. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to you due to this. eBay India has a large and growing community of dedicated sellers who use this platform fairly and efficiently. Unfortunately, certain sellers do misuse the platform. Our Trust & Safety team does all that is possible to create a safe trading environment and keep such sellers off the eBay platform.

At this time, I might highlight that eBay has a Buyer Protection Program under which we cover cases where persons have been defrauded . You can read more details of this in our Help Section (http://pages.ebay.in/help/confidence/problems-fraud.html). We request you to please follow the process and notify us of such cases. This helps us to track fradulent activity and take necessary action. Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello skyshopindia,

Thank you for bringing up an important topic. Over the past few weeks, this has been one of the biggest issues that our team has been working on. To begin with, listing policies are a combination of global and Indian policies. Some of you have pointed out that we are bringing down listings while similar listings can be found on other eBay sites. This is precisely an example where we have localized some of the polices to ensure that we are on the right side of the Indian legal and regulatory system.

I agree that it is sometimes difficult for our sellers to understand the policies and likely violations. In this regard we are planning a set of initiatives to educate our sellers on the policies. To begin with, we shall be focusing on educating our top sellers about eBay policies. eBay globally is working on a project to simplify the listing policies, and make it easier for our sellers to understand these. Once this project rolls out, every user of the site can read through the policies and have a better understanding of them.

To all our sellers: we understand the heartburn that you sometimes face when listings are taken down without you understanding the context. It is an urgent priority for us that we balance the need for a safe trading environment with the ease of use of the website. We hope the benefits of the initiatives that we have undertaken will start becoming apparent to you soon.

Customer Support - This issue was raised during Gautam's Open House session last month. As he has mentioned in his follow up post 2 days back, we have initiated a series of measures aimed at ensuring that our users get the right response to their queries as quickly as possible. We are also increasing the investment we are making in training of our CSRs. This is one area in which I would request for the patience of our users, as the results of these initiatives might not be visible immediately. But do keep giving us your feedback on the quality of the responses you receive from Customer Support.

Gautam has also mentioned that we are working out the operational details for providing phone support for our top sellers. We hope to be able to make an announcement on this over the next 3 weeks. Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hello indconcepts,

Thanks for your comments - they are insightful and your suggestions are something that we'd be well advised to consider.

Specifically on your suggestion of allowing withdrawal of negative rating - we've had some discussions on the topic and believe that there could be potential misuse of this feature. For eg. buyers could misuse this facility to blackmail other users (eg. "I will change your rating from negative to positive only if you send me a free gift").

On the other hand, if eBay were to edit the rating, then it implies that eBay is passing judgment on who is right or wrong. Many a times, we might not have all the information, then we end up favouring one party over the other, which is really not fair for the other party.

eBay has done analysis of data which shows that a large number of negative ratings are given by users with less than 10 ratings. So we feel that making these users go through a tutorial will sensitize them to the importance of feedback and not give negative ratings indiscriminately.

My colleagues from the Trust & Safety team, including our counterparts from the US, will be conducting an Online Workshop to interact with all of you on these proposed changes. I request you to please post your views on this workshop by clicking here, and our team will respond to you with more details. (http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=300001079) Best Regards
Rajan