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

[anand_online]

Dear Ambareesh,
Recent changes in listing fees has forced us to remove many slow selling items, this will definitely affect the credibility of ebay as largest market place.
Is there a second thought of keeping the Fixed monthly fees for large sellers like us.
What I came to know that revision of fee structure was due to cluttering of same items ( Duplicate listings).
Few Simple suggestions ( I am sure you must have alraedy thought of this)
1. Policy to make the duplicate listing to max 3 instead of 10.

[anand_online]

Dear Ambareesh,
Recent changes in listing fees has forced us to remove many slow selling items, this will definitely affect the credibility of ebay as largest market place.
Is there a second thought of keeping the Fixed monthly fees for large sellers like us.
What I came to know that revision of fee structure was due to cluttering of same items ( Duplicate listings).
Few Simple suggestions ( I am sure you must have alraedy thought of this)
1. Policy to make the duplicate listing to max 3 instead of 10.

[anwarazad]

Hi Mr Murthy,

I am so excited to see you on the community forum, and am looking forward for the discussion today evening.

I am a fledgling on ebay, and am quite excited to be here. I believe ebay wish to be a platform where people can find deal like no where else and buy without a second thought about security or authenticity, and that is the kind of atmosphere I too, hope to bring to my future customer here on ebay. In order to facilitate that end, I have 2 requests:

1. I would love to know if Ebay India plans to do an awareness Campaign/Advertisement down south in kerala, where I currently reside (also happen to be my home territory).

2. I would also like to request for a tutorial on selling on Ebay by one of your Ebay staffs (preferable someone with good language skill). Its pretty difficult learning by (and at times, terrifying) going through the community post, as any search query would bring out an unsorted list of posts all the way from 2005 till date (most of which are no longer relevant).
The help section is of some help, though sometimes seem contradictory to the community board posts.

Eagerly waiting to join you this evening,

With Warm Regards
Anwar Azad

[shopwithdelight]

Dear Ebayers

I have been doing ebaying since the time of baazee.com ..but this days customer service ( online thruu message query) ..is zero ..since i have sent some five to seven complaints through contact us link ..but no reply from he ebay customer service ..only what i get is an aknowledgement that ebay has received your request/query/complaint ..you will be contacted/replied within 28or 48 hours..but 10 days ..i guess 20 days for my first complaint cum query ..but till today no one has replied ...

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi dukan2010

Thanks for your kind words! For me it is an honor to have the opportunity to lead one of the most exciting business in India and work with people who are so passionate about buying and selling on eBay and working for eBay.

I am glad that you joined in, and here are some thoughts on your extensive suggestions:

1.Modification/ Abolition of Section 9 of Ebay’s Terms of trade:
As you would know, it is very important to have right set of policies for a marketplace business like eBay.The eBay Terms and Conditions are carefully put together and are our tools to ensure a great user experience.

2. Further Introduction of PayPal
India is on the PayPal radar and the plans should be crystallized over time.

3. Strengthening Strict action on unpaid items Dispute
UPI is very low now and will continue to reduce through all the changes/processes we have in place.

4.Launch an Educational Campaign For My loyal Sellers. Thereby educating them about the laws and custom duties

Law is an extremely complex subject and requires customized solve for various business. To get the best answer, the best thing for a seller is to get personalized advice from his lawyers and consultants.

5.Abolish/ Amend Global Easy Buy Program where buyers can not leave a honest feedback(no option for negative feedback)

Buyers CAN leave negative feedback based on their experience on Global Easy Buy. Filing INR/SNAD disputes are also covered as part of the mechanism.

6. Start of Local Level Advertisement campaign of Hot selling items Rather then flaunting it on my HomePage.

I wish you could elaborate more on this point; I need further context to respond.

7.Immidiate expansion of Core Banking Partners/ Payment Gateways:
I am glad that this is already done and buyers can now pay on eBay using their Debit Card

8.Payout of Sellers Money By RTGS/ IFS Code system

It's already in place since December 2007. PaisaPay remits seller money using NEFT [IFS Code System] twice a week.

9. Roll out a mascot / celebrity / Buyers~Seller feedback for attracting new ebayers & brand promotions
To generate media coverage and create buzz around eBay.

Stay tuned, there are some really good communication plans in the pipeline.

10. Induce PSIES (Push SMS Information Extraction System)

We'll have to explore this further, please to provide us more information on the same.

Regards...Ambareesh

[anand_online]

Yes I will agree , the customer service response time has increased drastically, it used to be 12-24Hrs earlier but now some times there is no response till 72 hrs nad then the reply does not make any sense as the issue either dies its own death or we need to take our own view regarding same.
Few instances of Refund given to customer service did not happen and buyer gave negative ratings, now also I have 3 refund requests pending and there is no response from customer service for last 48hrs.

[shopwithdelight]

And also i would like to add one more thing to ebayer concerns ..specially the buyers .. so that ebay management can understand this and solve this problem ..

See thr should not be direct contact between seller and buyer on mobiles or through calls ..what i mean is thr should be an ebay person in middle ..Since recently i faced an problem with the seller dfcmall123 for which i had opened two disputes ..

He says one thing during our telecon ..and when i ask him to put it in writing thruu ebay message ..he says whether i trust him or not ..i told this is not about trust and all ..what u have told during our telecon just put it writing thruu message ..so he got angry and what he has send an email is complete false compare to what he told during our telecon .

Mr.Murthy You have to improve thiss .. if we have to be here ..since we had trusted ..even i had recommended many of friends .. and myself facing the problem ..i think every good thing has an end ..it this an end for ebay services ..

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi ajaykumar2021

eBay is safe and our members have a great shopping experience on eBay.
In the remote chance of something not per a buyers expectations, we provide buyers extensive protection.

Trust this helps you get more comfortable shopping on eBay.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Shivamemory

Have covered my thoughts on PaisaPay fee, varied payment methods and EMI in my earlier posts.
IITF is an interesting suggestion we'll evaluate and let me assure you that we continue to look at various options of reaching out to potential eBay users.

Regards...Ambareesh

[shopwithdelight]

this is my third reply or post .. i would also like to tell my recent experience with the seller ..the seller ships the item .. i found it in not working conddition ..i ask seller i need different item ..he accepts ..he receives the item back from me .. and now the problem starts .. (reason being i guess i had purchased the item at very low price when comare to other prices for the same item at ebay ).

He says he will not be able to ship the item bcoz he is not getting the good item fom his supplier ..but he keeps his listing as it is ..till today he has listed the item ( 4gn pen camera) ..which he had accepted that this days those r coming fake ..(he has replied in one of my mail,u people can check ..the seller is dfcmall123)..it clearly shows either he is telling lie or he is selling item at ebay which are faulty .

Then later what happens ..he request me to go for other product ,,since i had to buy one such spy item .. i accepted to buy other item ( at this juncture i was not knowinf he will do the same thing for this item has he did for ealrier item and he also told that the earlier item price will be adjusted in this ,one can see my mail box for proof).

But agaiin he send me an non working conddition item ( reason might be .. bcoz i won that item 4gb watch camera at rs.2999 ..but the same item cost listed at ebay by other seller is above 4000)..again i returned .. but again he double crossed his own words .. this time he didnt even the send the item back untill i opted to go for item not received .. on the l;ast day he was able t deliver ( last day of the grace period after filing for item not received) ..and that too he has sent the same item back to me .

Which is not working ,,