Open House with Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager - eBay India, 8 Oct 4–5 PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

On Ambareesh's behalf:

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 Thursday, 8th Oct 2009 from 4-5 PM IST.

At the outset let me say a big thank you to our buyers and sellers for your enthusiasm and commitment towards making eBay a great place to buy and sell; it is through the efforts of our members like you that eBay India has consistently been chosen India’s most preferred online shopping destination.

You’d be happy to know that our motto of providing Lots of Safe, Easy, Deals has resulted in strong business growth, some of the key steps in 2009 towards improving our user experience and growing our community further have been:

1. The marketing team has been busy driving new buyers to eBay India through partnerships with exciting high profile celebrity events like auctions linked to ‘Tere Mere Beach Main’

2. The effective use of eBay India coupons has helped generate trial thus helping us convert many more of our visitors into buyers

3. High impact marketing promotions have helped us deliver great value to our buyers, thus ensuring that an ever increasing part of a buyers overall spending is now on eBay

4. The recent launch of Global Easy Buy has further helped us increase variety for our buyers; Global Easy Buy gives our buyers access to a large pool of international items delivered conveniently at their doorstep

5. We’ve always believed that the key to having happy buyers is having happy and successful sellers; this year we’ve invested in our sellers’ success by enhancing our Category Management activities; the Category Management team has successfully ensured that they reach out to more and more sellers to help build a great business on eBay

6. To broad base seller success we initiated pricing changes like the removal of max cap; this change helped us increase visibility for the more sellable items. Further, to improve the return on investment for our shop sellers, we’ve made product changes to ensure that their shop listings get greater visibility in core search results.

7. Feedback disputes were a concern area for most of our members; to provide a fair dispute resolution process, we launched Community Court last year and as many of you might have already experienced, Community Court has successfully achieved its objective with more than 85% of cases getting resolved successfully

That said, we continue to seek areas of improvement so as to provide and deliver to a seamless marketplace experience for our buyers and sellers. I look forward to discussing your suggestions towards further improving our user experience and also answer your eBay related questions during the Open House discussion. You can post your questions in advance on this thread, or join me on 8th Oct at 4 PM for a live discussion.
See you on the 8th!

Regards
Ambareesh Murty
Country Manager – eBay India

[punditji2009]

Dear Ambreesh,
Please accept greetings for facing the Ebayers.
I feel sorry for taxing you with these anonymous complaints against your system.
(1) Sir,suppose you are discussing your issue with cus.sup.exe Mr.A and you get disconnected(?).With BP high you call again but this time Mr.B attends the phone extending apology that he can't connect to you Mr,A.
When even a small business house can afford doing so,why Ebay is lagging behind? Please provide these facilities to your CSE's so that they are able to serve us to our satisfaction(Ebay Motto).
(2) Mr. A and B can't call me back(in case of disconnection)and they feel sorry that there is no CLIP at Ebay.Is this facility such costly as Ebay can't afford? I can't even suppose that they people are telling lies to satisfy the customers.
(3)Reply to mails are customary "that matter is being looked into and we cant tell you what action was taken."
Don't tell ,brothers,what action was taken but atleast it should be mandatory to inform whether action was taken or not.(customer satisfaction.)
Hope you listen Ambareesh,Ebay listens and He listens.
Thanks in advance for satisfactory answer to all the three

[ppchatufale]

Hi Mr. Ambareesh Murty,

One specific question.I think you are compelling the buyer to pay through paisapay(whatever may be the lofty idea of customer protection the buyer must have the options for payment).If not so why the "Other" option is taken off.By directly depositing the amt to the seller's account there is no scope of giving feedback as the transaction is not completed through "other" option.

There are only three banks for online transfer hdfc,icici and citibank this is ridiculous when now a days even coop banks are in core banking.Pls expand the list to atleast 30 if not 300.

regds,

Prasanna P Chatufale,
Solapur

[drbz28]

The points raised by Mr. Midha surely consider attention. Now, I would have been more active user in your site if I hadn't been disappointed with the prices. You check any item here and cross check with your local brick and mortar shop, you get a blow. How come the sellers get to list ridiculous prices for their products? Or for that matter, just have a look at the parent site eBay.com and you realize the difference. When they say a deal, they mean it. You guys were the pioneers of online shopping in India and have been more than a decade old business I guess, but for a general buyer like me results have turned out really thin.

[adhyaa_sarees]

Hi, - is it possible for your technical team to integrate a new feature "Product Attributes" where in we give the option to buyer to - lets say: 1. Need custom stitching .... yes/no, if he selects yes than automatically say $ 10 USD is added to the amount - I hope you got the point. I am finding it that most of the times after i send in the money request the buyer says that they want custom stitching - and then i have to resend the money request again - this whole process is unnecessary waste of time for both myself and the buyer also.

regards

Kopal

[adhyaa_sarees]

And another one thing - specially on my store - i have found out that most of the buyers from India - they place the bid and then they do not pay - and i get it 95% of the time - people not paying up from india - what action does ebay intends to take on such buyers? Lets hear something concrete - i am really tired of opening up Unpaid item Disputes

[adhyaa_sarees]

i was also hoping that ebay india will come up with option to "pay using Paypal" - many foreign buyers do not know about paisepay - so don't you think it is high time now to release paypal in india - and we have been talking on this issue for more that a year , please do update on this also. with implementation and integration of Paypal i think we as sellers might be able to save some money towards currency convertion charges - am i right?

[punditji2009]

Dear Ambareesh,
I'm a small child at ebay(joined 12.09.2009) and want to know from Ebay experts including you:
I tried myself to register for paisapay a/c.
My HDFC branch is not listed in your dropdown menu.So i couldn't register.I called C support.I was told that Ebay will consider this issue.Has Ebay considered and reconsidered the issue? Now I THE CUSTOMER OF BANK SPECIFIED BY EBAY CAN'T PAY THROUGH PAISA PAY. What other option is there?
Then I tried to register myself as a seller with OBC bank a/c. And lo !I won.Now I am a member of paisapay.Am I not fortunate that I can receive money but not pay?
Will my Obc a/c work if I pay thru paisapay?
Siple question demands very simple answer.
Wishing you good luck,Ambareesh

[dawncher]

Dear Ambareesh Murthy,
I wish you would consider more banks for online bank transfer as many people have accounts in other banks which previously did not have online bank transfer. I think that would be helpful for buyers, sellers and for faster conduction of business.

Regards,
Dawn

[docomoyo]

Hello Mr Ambareesh Murty,

I trust you will take some interest in knowing that "games.planet" is knowingly selling, illegally might I add, EA Games manufactured for the Indian market. As a former EA associate I am keen to hear what you intend to do, to put a stop to this illegal activity?

Kind Regards
Ashok Patel
ashokp@ea.com
+44 7847 064 019

[dukan2010]

Murty Sir,
On Behalf on Ebay India's seller Community, I congratulate you and your team for Various achievements as briefed in Sapna's post on your Behalf. I am truly delighted to be here today among so many friends. I am thankful to you for providing a platform to new/old sellers to share there Grievances with You. I have been there in Person with You at Click IT conclave in FMS, New Delhi. I have Personally seen you speak and have complete idea of your zeal for success of Ebay INDIA.