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

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi best_deals_of_this_world

Thanks for joining in and great to hear that you've been a member of eBay/Baazee for years!

I have shared my thoughts on PaisaPay fee earlier.

We continue to promote global trade and your suggestions on the same are useful.

eBay works for all members, buyers and sellers. However it is important to understand that a large number of buyers is key to the success of our seller community therefore happy buyers makes good business sense.

EMI on other banks is an an interesting suggestion, but I think that the interest cost and exposure risk for the banks will be high which will translate to a higher EMI fee; that said we'll evaluate the same.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Anwar (anwarazad )

I am glad that you are excited about your eBay business and wish you all the success.

Awareness Campaign in Kerala:
We work with multiple partners to increase eBay awareness, such as popular websites, regional newspapers, national auction events etc. We have exciting new promotional campaigns lined up over the next few months which should also help you grow your business from Kerala.

More Workshops to help sellers learn selling:

We've had several workshops over the last few weeks and will continue to have a packed workshop calendar going forward. This will help equip our sellers better for selling on eBay. Here is 1 such workshop you might want to attend :
http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=500006424

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Deepak (sjewelsdk)

It is my pleasure to be here to interact with you.

We have mapped all the relevant sub categories with eBay.com & we will continue to map the category structure on regular basis. One of the possible reasons for lower sales for you could be that the International sites use best match as a default search which has multiple criteria for listing visibility.

You may want to try listing directly on eBay US, UK, Germany site to get more exposure with their buyers.
I know that many sellers who target international buyers also list directly on these sites and are getting very good results.

Feedback from top sellers is important to us.
In addition to your account manager, you can also give us feedback via Customer Support, Community Boards and direct interactions with your Category Manager.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Prince (prince-chennai)

We have not seen this issue, nor have received any complaints from other members.
You may want to check if it is specific to your internet connection or machine.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Ashok (sitare_jewels)

Thanks for stopping by!

Firstly as our customer my apologies that our Customer Support Team was not able to meet your expectations.
While I cannot discuss your specific case on Community Boards, your account manager will reach out to you with more details.

On eBay fees for Gold category: Our understanding is that the margin structure in gold jewellery category is significantly more than 6%. If you are not doing already, you may want to try selling those items also on international sites, where our sellers are seeing good success. Also, price realization is better in auctions, which you may want to try.

International sales for most Indian sellers are on an upswing. As I had mentioned before, since most international sites have moved to best match default search, it could have impacted your sales.
Best match takes into account multiple things like free shipping, past bid activity and the buyer experience provided by a seller. You can check your search standing on my eBay and can also invest in promotional activities like 1 cent/pence auction to drive traffic to your listings/shop.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi sah.mohit

We advice users to check the online reputation of a seller before purchasing; this could be done through a combination of looking at feedback scores as well as the terms and conditions offered in a listing.

Rest assured that we are available for any feedback on buyer experience irrespective of the period of time since the transaction.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi anand_online

We had noticed that with FREE listings above 1,500, some sellers were acquiring disproportionate visibility and item views but were not translating into sales.

The recent fee changes ensure that more sellers get visibility for their products and our larger sellers can utilize the 30 day fixed price listings to list slower moving inventory.

As we have got excellent community feedback on our revised pricing, I do not foresee major changes in our pricing approach for some time.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Shopwithdelight

As our customer, my apoligies for your unfortunate experience.

On eBay you are completely protected therefore I request you to contact customer support inrswebhelp@ebay.com with the details of the situation for resolution.

I'll also have someone reach out to you to understand the issue further and help out.

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hi Ashok (docomoyo)

The issue detailed by you can be escalated by the rights owner through our VERO program. The details of the VERO program can be found on this link:
http://pages.ebay.in/help/confidence/programs-vero.html

Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Folks

It was great interacting with all of you over the last couple of hours. I promise to be back for more such interactions over the next few months.

Wishing you a Happy Diwali!

Regards...Ambareesh