Open House on Customer Support with Vasundhara on August 30th, 4 to 5 pm

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Hi, I am Vasundhara Bhonsle, Head - Customer support, and I invite you to join me for Open House Discussion on eBay Customer Support. Last time we met, you told me about many areas that required improvements in eBay’s Customer Support team. Since then, based on your feedback via CS satisfaction surveys, Discussion boards and Top User meets, we have introduced various changes to the Customer Support team to deliver improved service to you. Some of those key changes are:

1. PaisaPay Phone Support – few weeks back we launched ‘PaisaPay Phone Support’ to support any PaisaPay related query of our users. In the past 25 days, we have already serviced close to 500 users and are encouraged by the feedback received by members on the same. If you had had an opportunity to use the service, do let us know what you feel about the service.
2. New Chat tool – In the month of June we launched a new chat tool that allows us to deliver faster service to even users on dial up connection. The tool also helps in increasing the efficiency by which a CSR can respond to a user.
3. Faster access to Customer Support – We introduced the contact us link in the new eBay header. Now, you can access us from almost any page on the site.
4. Pro-active outreach to members with Disputes – As Sharat Digumarti had announced some time back, we started calling out buyers who had filed a dispute. In this call we explained to the users the process of managing disputes and buyer protection. This has helped us improve the buyer experience on the site, thereby ensuring that those buyers continue to enjoy their stay on eBay.
5. Investment in training of a Customer Support representative (CSR) – Another important investment for long term development is the higher than ever focus on training and improvement of our teams. While this is not directly visible to you, whenever you are satisfied by the interaction with Customer Service, it is curtsey the training that the CSR has received.

Having said the above, I also believe that we still have a long way to go to deliver on the high expectations of our members. On Thursday, Aug 30 from 4 -5 PM, I shall be available on this thread to hear and understand your requirements such that we can bring further improvements in the Customer Support team.

All compliments and complaints are welcome. However, I will request you to share your views on strengths and weaknesses of eBay Customer Support. In case you have a specific complaint that was not addressed by Customer Support team, then do write in to vasundhara@ebay.com. I will get my team to look into the specific issue.


Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear All sellers,

I have seen many of you express concerns over listings being pulled down due to high shipping charges. I understand this concern, and I will like to take some time to explain the reasoning behind this step and what we plan to do in future about this topic.

Why is action taken on items with high shipping charges?
As you all will agree, products with high shipping charge lead to significant bad buyer experience. Earlier, sellers used to list products with low starting price and high shipping charge. This reduced the level of trust buyers had on eBay. Many a times, even though buyers bought those products, but most of them did not pay and UPI rates were highest on this segment of products. These UPIs further led to bad seller experience as well.

In case buyers paid for the item, and there was something wrong in the item, buyers were not able to claim it back, because buyer protection is only available on products worth Rs. 50 and more. Therefore we felt the strong need to curb the practice of listing items at low starting price and high shipping charge.

The initiative has given us some good results and the incidence of such listings has come down drastically. As a buyer you might have yourself seen the difference. However, I gather from your posts that some genuine listings were also taken down in the process. Based on the feedback received on this and other posts, we will be re-evaluating the rules for excessive shipping, to ensure that genuine sellers do not suffer. Having said that, I will like to reiterate that I think this is an important initiative to increase trust on eBay and its sellers.

Please be reassured that we do empathise with your concerns here and the intentions are only creating better user (Buyer and Seller) experience.

Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear caremras-n-ipods,

Thanks for your congratulations.

I am sorry but I will not be able to help you with your particular issue here as I do not have the case details. Do respond back on vasundhara@ebay.com and I will gladly get my team to look into the same.

However, thank you for bringing this topic up as I would urge all sellers to spend some time going through the details of the Mutual Feedback withdrawal process. http://feedback.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MFWRequest

Let me also take a moment of your time and explain the new SNP process. Going forward the SNP process will take into account only three months (90 days) of your activity on site. This gives all our sellers better control over managing communication with their buyers and I am sure is a welcome change in the policy.

Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear edealsdirect,

I am sorry to hear about the charge back that you received. However, our current charge back policy very clearly states that a seller will not be covered for any merchandize related charge backs. Therefore if the buyer claims a charge back due to non functioning of the product, the charge back policy does not cover you.

I can completely understand your angst against the buyer specially considering that you want ot sincerely address his concerns, however, I am sure being on the site since such a long time you completely understand that buyers do react like this sometimes and one has no control over the same.

Regards,
Vasundhara

[rajasthan_treasure]

i want to register as a seller but i am not getting sms process done neither i am able to purchase anything

[brand.deal]

Dear Vasundhara,

can you please go through my post below and put some light if EMI options can be there on the site in the near future.

Regards
Shuaib

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear cochinmall,

I am sorry to hear about your experience. Let me assure you that we work on all our bugs and try and get them resolved as soon as we can.
In this particular transaction the bidder from a different city got an option to select local shipping instead of national shipping. This should be fixed by the end of the week. However after the item has ended he only has the option of refunding the buyer or getting the additional amount through any other offline mode. Another way to deal with this (as I have observed some sellers do) is create a listing of the balance payment and ask the buyer to pay through Paisapay.


I also completely understand your feedback to customer care and will surely take this as in input to improve further. You may want to contact the buyer here and ask for a feedback withdrawal. We have seen that most buyers are reasonable about it and understand. Also additionally pls respond to the feedback received so that your future buyers can get your side of the story.

Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear brand.deal,

Many thanks for your appreciation of the Paisapay Phone Support launch. I agree that EMI can be an attractive option for buyers. We are already evaluating this option. We shall keep you posted on any developments.

Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear rajasthan_treasure,

I am sorry to hear that your are not able to register.

As we will need more details to be able to help you, Can i please suggest that you come to live chat and the CS team will look into the concern for you right away?

Please click on: https://cschatlb-na.corp.ebay.com/chat.asp?profile=30&imp_id=203_OtherHPs

Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear indconcepts,

Thank you for your feedback about Paisapay Phone support.

Making Paisapay Phone support 24X7 is a feedback that we received on the first day of launch. However, it is not on the immediate priority list.

Also thanks for the positive feedback on our improvements. I have passed on your compliments to the team and it gives them great encouragement.

Regards,
Vasundhara

[vasundhara@ebay.com]

Dear snrama,

It feels great to be back on the boards! It gives me immense pleasure to talk to all our members and get direct feedback on the mistakes we make and the good work we do. Thank you for all your good wishes. I have passed on your compliments to the team and it has made their day!

Making Paisapay Phone support 24X7 is a feedback that we received on the first day of launch. However, it is not on the immediate priority list.

As mentioned earlier, I would like to again explain the perspective on the Current High Shipping Policy.
As you all will agree, products with high shipping charge lead to significant bad buyer experience. Earlier, sellers used to list products with low starting price and high shipping charge. This reduced the level of trust buyers had on eBay. Many a times, even though buyers bought those products, but most of them did not pay and UPI rates were highest on this segment of products. These UPIs further led to bad seller experience as well.

In case buyers paid for the item, and there was something wrong in the item, buyers were not able to claim it back, because buyer protection is only available on products worth Rs. 50 and more. Therefore we felt the strong need to curb the practice of listing items at low starting price and high shipping charge.

The initiative has given us some good results and the incidence of such listings has come down drastically. As a buyer you might have yourself seen the difference. However, I gather from your posts that some genuine listings were also taken down in the process. Based on the feedback received on this and other posts, we will be re-evaluating the rules for excessive shipping, to ensure that genuine sellers do not suffer. Having said that, I will like to reiterate that I think this is an important initiative to increase trust on eBay and its sellers.

Please be reassured that we do empathise with your concerns here and the intentions are only creating better user (Buyer and Seller) experience.

Regards,
Vasundhara