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

[coolbrasco]

Dear Pinks,

Welcome abroad !!! Nice to see u all again !!!

Kind regards,
CoolBrasCo.

[yash@ebay.com]

Dear mysalesoffer

Thanks for your post

In the last couple of weeks we have received various concerns and suggestions on the enforcement of excessive shipping

We have modified the systems to address some of the suggestions last week and we are they seem to indicate positive results. By the end of this month we shall again review the performance

Also we have a message in the SYI flow which alerts sellers during the listing process Regards

Yash

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi coolbrasco,

Thanks for showing up! Nice to see you 🙂

Regards,
Sapana

[yash@ebay.com]

Dear abcdefghijklm_in1

I think it is a good suggestion, however not sure whether sellers will be able to get any courier company which offers this service

As you might have noticed on this discussion, we have been taking action on excessive shipping charges and we are improving the way we are doing it Regards

Yash

[yash@ebay.com]

Dear coolbrasco

Thanks for you post

I am currently working on the Feedback Abuse Policy and this should help in removing unjust feedback for more reasons than we currently have. Unfortunately at this stage I don’t have the changes and timelines, however I shall keep you posted

Thanks for your continued support to the new guidelines and I do agree that there are certain sellers don’t care and frankly the intent under the new SNP guidelines is to correct the business process of sellers who are responsible for bad buyer experience

One of the challenges we are noticing is the concern of retaliatory feedback and hopefully we some solutions to address these

Very soon will announce the SMS feature on the dispute console which can be user for both INR/SNAD and UPI

Please check the Food Policy however the key guidelines are as follows

• Name and address of the manufacturer / packer / seller (if the manufacturer or packer are not the seller).
• Net quantity, in terms of standard unit i.e. in metric system (e.g. 500 grams, 10 litres etc)
• Commodity description, including data about the commodity (e.g what is it, chemical composition if any, such as vitamins, minerals, dietary properties, etc.)
• Warnings if the product does not contain any artificial flavouring, colouring, chemical preservative and/or products not suitable for children below 5 years, etc
This clearly indicates that even a seller or a packer can sell and the item may not be a brand Regards

Yash

[yash@ebay.com]

Dear indconcepts

As mentioned in my earlier post we have already done the changes and we shall monitor and review the results by end of this month Regards

Yash

[yash@ebay.com]

Dear amitava123gems

As mentioned we have already done some changes and we have in place an education message on excessive shipping in the listing flow Regards

Yash

[yash@ebay.com]

Hello Shopperpoint,

As you are aware we have made recent developments in our SNP policy. The biggest advantage for a seller is that he gets enough time to resolve the issues with the buyers, before suspension is enforced against him. Once when the issues are resolved after the said period, the seller can appeal to review his restriction. However, please note that a seller will not be able to appeal restriction before the said period. Following are my answers to your questions-

1) I understand that it will be difficult for a seller to send Mutual feedback withdrawal request after suspension. As mentioned earlier, the idea of placing restrictions instead of seller suspension was to make it easier for a seller to resolve any pending case. However, I will keep this point in mind, for future enhancements to the system.

2) The SNP percentage is based on your past sales and SNP is calculated on the last 90days of bad buyer experiences. Thus to improve your SNP percentage, you need to resolve the past cases that buyers have opened against you. Also, only sellers with 10% or worse SNP rates are not allowed to list (we will like the seller to resolve past issues before starting new sales on eBay).

3) For cases within 90 days, we encourage sellers and buyers to resolve the issues themselves and by using Mutual Feedback Withdrawal and Closing the cases in Disputs Console the SNP % reduces. However, if your cases are older than 90 days, you will need to mail the proof of resolution to the TnS team. In case of Disputes, you can also file case with ODR and provide the same to TnS team.

4) The logic of calculating 5% dissatisfaction is based on a model. However from a seller perspective he should be concerned if his buyers are genuinely unhappy which is being reflected in either neutral or negative and in INR or SNAD.

5) Yes, ODR India resolutions are an acceptable proof of resolution.

6) I understand that your Account Manager is already in touch with you and is helping you resolve the SNP issue on your account. I hope you will soon resolve the cases and will get back on the site Regards

Yash

[niyantsingh]

I am living in New Panvel but i am not able to register my self for payment gate way. it give msg that the city is not covered. New Panvel is in New Mumbai,Kindly advice

[yash@ebay.com]

Hello love_joy25,

Thanks for taking the effort to resolve your disputes. There are 2 ways to resolve the feedback you have received which I am sure would have already been communicated to you-

1) Mutual Feedback Withdrawal- The best way to resolve your cases is by opting for mutual feedback withdrawal. This gives you complete freedom to interact with your buyer and also, it is a free feature available at your disposal.

2) ODR India is a good tool when you are not able to interact with your buyer for resolution. Currently, they have an offer till 15th Sept 2007 for all eBay members where they are offering 50% off on Mediation cases (Feedback). You may want to make use of the same. Regards

Yash