Open House with Sharat on Marketplace Health & TnS on Sept 13, 4 to 5 pm

[yash@ebay.com]

Hi, this is Sharat Digumarti, Senior Manager - Marketplace Health for eBay India. I am glad to be back with you for an Open house discussion on making eBay your most trusted trading partner. Let me start with a quick update on the events since my last open house discussion.

Updating the Seller Non Performance policy – We recently updated our seller non performance policy to ensure that the sellers who are causing bad buyer experience are warned at an early stage such that they can make relevant changes in their business processes. We also made the SNP calculation for last 90 days so that it will be easier for sellers to resolve such disputes.

Safeguarding Member ids – In January this year, we made some changes to the way member ids were displayed on the bid history page. This helped us protect bidders from fraud second chance offers and other unsolicited mails. We have made some more changes in the process to make it more transparent and fun for other bidders. To see more details , click here

SMS alert for disputes – We will be shortly introducing a cool new feature, Our buyers told us that they were not aware of the dispute process on eBay, and often missed out on buyer protection due to ignorance. Based on this feedback, we started calling out to buyers to explain the complete process. We will be shortly adding another feature in the dispute console. Now you will be able to subscribe for SMS based alerts whenever your trading partner in case of any update in your dispute console.

Shipping Filters – Abnormally high shipping charges are one of the top reasons for bad buyer experience on eBay. To control such instances, we proactively started taking action against listings, which seem to be obviously charging high shipping rates. As a result the number of listings with high shipping charge has reduced significantly, however, in the process; we have unintentionally pulled down some genuine listings as well. We are revaluating the process to ensure that genuine listings do not suffer.

Policy changes for MP3 players and Food – We also made some changes in a couple of policies to make them more user friendly. The MP3 policy was changed to ensure that listings contain only physical memory so that it results in a good experience for buyers. We also updated the food policy to enable sellers to list food related items on eBay.

Most of these changes have been brought along keeping I mind your feedback and better experience. I will be happy to discuss them further with you and listen to more of your suggestions. As I mentioned earlier, I will be present on the Community Boards for an Open House Session on 13th September 2007, 4 – 5 PM. I will encourage you to post your thoughts, comments and suggestion on this thread. I am looking forward towards this meeting and I hope to gather lot of useful feedback from you.

See you on 13th in the discussion!

Regards,

Sharat Digumarti
Senior Manager - Marketplace Health

[veedeedirect]

Hello Sharatji,

I hope I would not be wrong in saying that you were "proded" in introducing the Warranty and MP3 / MP4 policy on ebaY India.

I do commend you on bring out these policies.

But policies are good only if they are strictly implemented. I would like you to spell out what action you have taken in implementing these policies and seeing to it that sellers adhere to the same.

Or do you intend to leave it to the community to do your work?

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Devesh

[juspreet]

Hi,

It is good to see willingness on the part of ebay staff to interact with ebayers, however all these open house discussions are held on working days and working hours.
My guess is that most of the sellers and buyers are doing ebay business only part time. They may have their regular jobs or businesses to look after. If these sessions are held on weekends or after office hours it will be better. It's an online company and the person holding open house discussions (from ebay staff) can do it from anywhere and does not have to remain in office.
I guess this will be useful for most of ebay community.

Jaspreet
YashGifts

[coolbrasco]

Dear Mr.Sharat,

We have been wonderful time selling in eBay. Definitely so many things have become perfect and sales is doing good. Thanks to you and eBay team for the hard work and efforts you have put.

I have been replied about seller's non performing policy before. Definitely this must and required at the moment. Let us put this as team effort and do our best to make eBay a wonderful place for buyers. I almost treat every sale as an step in my ladder and giving importance. I expect the same from other sellers as well.

I would like to point two things for your notice.

1. Bad feedback against a good seller !!!

For example right away a buyer left a -ve feedback before i contacted and given my best efforts to resolve the issue. After 18 months of doing eBay, i feel very insulated than the loss i am facing. But one great thing is our customers understands and easily identify good sellers and regardless of -ve feedback, my sales did not drop much. That much i am relieved now. I hope when this customer receive the item again he said going to remove -ve feedback. I have to wait for a week. He is a new buyer and i wrote him 10 emails, what is feedback and how it affects sellers, he does not seems to be care about my shop. Even i told if he report to eBay that i am fraud eBay will suspend and a fraud seller cannot survive in eBay for week also. I have been here from 18 months and it is definitely an insult to my sincerity. But i am still here to take care rest of the customers. They are giving great support to me.

Can you please make some changes, if any one want to leave -ve feedback to a PowerSeller, please ask him to communicate with us atleast 3 conversation and if we don't give convened answer they can leave -ve, instead of jumping from somewhere and take a bad decision against us. Though i have shipping proof i could not do anything and that guy is not showing any mercy on me.

2. Many sellers does not care about order !!! - as a buyer

I have been ordering some items regularly from eBay. Many of them sending items entirely different than in listing, and wrong size. For example they list something for 6-9 months baby and they are sending either too short and too big. We are very confused and unsatisfied. If we complain, they say please send item back we refund you. That is not a responsible answer for a order. That gives us less confidence on that seller and we are afraid of buying from any one. Our inner mind become suspicious about every seller. Most of the sellers don't show actual picture taken from item. Though i am not very professional in making pictures, i only take picture of an item, i never Google for pictures to list. Some time i receive stock, but because of lack of time i take 3 weeks to list also, i don't want to give false information to customer. Also i use tape to measure every item to make sure to list in the right size category. I value their order and time to make sure to send right item. Most of the sellers say colors available, but finally they try to send unwanted lousy colors which they cannot sell to anyone(Listing says Blue Green, Red available), after paid money if we ask them send Blue, they ask us to read the last line in small letters saying "If color of your choice not available you have choose what we send". I list down every color separately and i don's want the customer get confused by reading my listing. Most of the listing i say "Color as int he picture", it is as simple as that. As a normal buyer i am not very satisfied. Still it does not gives me a full pleasure. And and bad habit of mine is, i don't leave -ve feedback to others, though i am unhappy.

SMS on Unpaid Disputes

Definitely it is a great feature, and people gets information though they are off line. Probably you can organize a meet for unpaid customers and ask them bring their own coffee and snacks to discuss, we can educate them why they have to pay ?. 🙂 Please send them post cards to those who does not register their mobiles. Most of the post cards will come back to eBay, because they don't give right address. 🙂 Frankly one buyer just entered commas only in name, address, including phone numbers. Probably he can go for pattern registration for his address. 🙂

About Food, i have already registered my separate ID for selling Coffee beans. But unfortunately you required product information and detailed nutrition values. I cannot proceed now, because i thought of sourcing from my relatives coffee plantation. At the moment i am working on getting a certification for his coffee beans. Hopefully one day i will start. One question is, if i get certificate for a bag of coffee beans from coffee board, do i need a brand to sell and still need nutrition value info ?. We are still not clear about rules.

Thanks again for joining us, have a great time !!!

I got an information from PowerSeller team that you all went for a training program/Workshop for 4 days, can you please brief, it is about what ? Just curious and sorry for the out of topic.

Kind regards,
CoolBrasCo.

[cameras_n_such]

Hello Sharat,

Your formula of "one size fits all" will simply not work in the Indian context.

US or European norms cannot be blindly imported to India.

There are a few basic differences between India and other markets such as US or Europe.

The feedback adoption ratio is very low in India as compared to US or Europe. In India, only about 15%-30% buyers rate their sellers. I believe the ratio in much higher in the US and Europe.

So infact the 5% dissatisfied norm actually works out to about 1%-2% in the Indian context and for high value / low volume sellesr even one negative and one open dispute will make them SNPers.

Just for your information, I had a 100% positive feedback in baazee days (at least for this id) but ebaY brands me an SNPer (on this id) even though I have continously maintained a feedback ratio well above 99% and ebaY has routinely placed selling limits / restriction on my account.

The second major difference is the mentality of Indian buyers. Anyone selling internationally will tell you how different are Indian Buyers as compared to Buyer from other Countries. These nations have an history of sales through alternate channels such as catalogues and TV shopping. India, the web is the first alternate channel and buyers and have not come to grips with this sort of buying.

If you need to have seller growth, you will need to give your top sellers security. Sellers are not asking for special favors, they just need you to understand the Indian market and tailor your policies accordingly.

You simply have to look around at how other e-commerce portals are tuning themselves to the Indian market and attracting ebay sellers in hordes. ebaY is becoming the training ground for online sellers. After they learn the ropes on ebay, they move on to other portals which offer them higher sales and perhaps a little dignity.

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Devesh

[krisshnan]

Seller : pyramyd.store
Item #130142393526
I am a eBuyer and prefer to remain that way. However,
I don't know whether I am in the right column for taking up the following problem matter.

When the seller is fixing the price for his product and clearly mentions the Packing and courier charges, the buyer who confirms the deal has naturally got to pay for that. When Insurance charges are claimed by the seller, the buyer has the right to opt for it or against it. And if the seller insists "Insurance is a Must", then the buyer has the right to demand the seller to produce the Insurance Cover for which payment has been (agreed to be) made by the buyer. This therefore automatically makes the Seller to send the copy of the Insurance cover without fail to the buyer. Failing this commitment, such seller should be debarred from partaking in eBay. Let ebay make it a policy and clear to the sellers.
In my case (refer the above product and seller), the seller demanded Insurance charges for the product, but when I insisted, he did not reply me and made me a scapegoat with an "Unpaid Item Strike Received for Item #130142393526".
I still insist to take / buy the product I ordered and I think I have the reason to request Ebay who clearly knows the right and wrong of the whole matter, to instruct the Seller to come forward and "SELL" the ordered product to me with proper papers and approach.

Please give me a response : krisshna@vsnl.com

[vinod0123_456]

hello sir
i will glad if you solve my problem .i have an ebay as well as an paypal account i want to how do i make my payment on ebay. i don't have any credit card and debit card but i do have an online bank a/c.

[cosydoon]

Ebay India has recently shown great standards to bring spotlight on member in the community who list or sell items for Rs. 1 auction and charge handsomely on shipping . I am sure other members will also like to learn how to cheat ebay by offering shipping charges upto Rs.400/- just for sending a CD sold for Rs.1 .
Great work by ebay India spotlight members selector team. May We know who selects members for spotlight in your team ........

[cameras_n_such]

Hello Sharat,

Just an addendum to my last post.

Today I have received email / telephonic complaints from two of my buyers.

Reason : Courier Delay.

The products have been shipped within 1 business day of clear payment.

Buyer have been email within 3 hours of dispatch the courier details.

All communication going to the buyers states that couriers may takes between 1 to 7 days to deliver the proudcts. It is nowhere near 7 days from dispatch.

Still buyers write aggreived mails.

Courier delays are known to happen in this country with even the best of couriers. We routinely receive PaisaPay cheques much later than the 11.30 a.m. delivery commitment made by Blue Dart, India's number 1 Courier company.

So why are these buyers complainging? Simply due to lack of culture of buying through alternate channels.

I remember when I was a child / teenager and read American magazines, I was surpised to see that items sold through these magazines stated a delivery period of 4-6 weeks. This was much before the internet or e-shopping. Buyers in other markets have gone through such purchases. Buyers in India have not.

They expect insant coffee. You drop in a coin, press a button on the machine and expect coffee to come out of the other end. However internet transaction do not happen thay way. PaisaPay takes day (s) to approve transactions, sellers need time to dispatch, and courier need time to deliver. Than there are those hazaar holidays in India like one / two other every week which could delay process further.

So when you start judging sellers in India with the same yardstick as sellers in other markets, you will one day be branding all your genuine and honest sellers SNPers.

Another example.

I buy from a company in China which sells / dropships on ebay, UK and other ebay sites. They claim to ship over 600 products every day. I have checked their feedback and find it is excellent. The products are very well appreciated by thousands of customers (some 20,000 of them every month). Since these products are shipped from China to the world, approx delivery time is 1-3 weeks.

I sell exactly those same products at almost the same prices (barring adjustments for taxation in these markets). I offer an efficient dispatch and delivery system where my customers usually get products in 3-7 days or payment. Still if I get SNP for poor product quality, who is responsible? The seller, the product or the buyers too high expectations?

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Devesh

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi All,

A warm welcome to today's Open House discussion. Please welcome Sharat once again on the Discussion boards. Sharat will be with us for next one hour to answer your questions related to trust and safety and marketplace health.

So, lets get started....

Regards,
Sapana

[yash@ebay.com]

Dear All

I am happy to be on the Community Boards for the next one hour and interact with you all.

Also thanks for taking the time and posting your thoughts, suggestions and concerns Regards

Yash