We are pleased to announce the next session of our Open House Program, where users get an opportunity to chat with the eBay India Team.
Join Rathin Lahiri, Head of Marketing for an online discussion on buying and selling on eBay India.
Rathin will be available on this thread on Thursday, the 2nd of Februaury, 2006, from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM IST, for an interactive discussion with our community members.
Thank you all for participating in this Open House. It was a good learning experience for me, and I really enjoyed it. I look forward to more such opportunities to interact with you, our Community, going forward.
Firstly, let me thank you for your efforts to educate our users on these forums. Thanks also for your appreciation of the marketing we do.
To your point, yes, we are focused on attracting more and more new sellers to the site. We have a dedicated Seller Marketing team who organize various events across the country where we talk to potential users about selling on eBay.
On Buyer Verification, as I have mentioned earlier as well, we will soon be launching a new feature within the 'Buyer Requirements' section. Keep watching our Announcements for more information on this!
As a seller, Though the marketing of eBay is good, I suggest eBay to encourage new sellers and verify Buyers so that there will be more genuine buyers at eBay and transaction will be even more smooth. --------------- With Regards, Navaneeth (snrama)
This is a important topic of debate even within ebay , we are considering the pros and cons of charging listing fees. points like impact on sellers , new sellers , prices charged to customers , competition impact are some of the factors we will take into account before we take any decision on this
Lot is being talked about levying a Listing fee on ebay.in
On the 19th Post you have said that "we are a nascent e-commerce market"
So, do you think putting up a listing fee would improve the site overall. Don't you think that most of the new Sellers would shy away. Don't you feel that the prices of the Items would rise and Buyer won't be able to get a better deal.
I myself feel that on most of the other Indian sites the prices are much more than that on ebay.
So, wouldn't it effect the marketing....as far as your department is concerned.
I regret the unpleasant experience you are having with your very first transaction on eBay. From what you have mentioned, it seems that the particular seller has been suspended from the site, possibly due to his having violated our policies. If this is indeed the case, I would urge you to exercise caution, and not pay the seller directly. You can also ask for a reversal from your Credit Card company for this payment.
I would request you to please contact our Customer Support using the following link - http://pages.ebay.in/help/contact_us/_base/index.html. Our Customer Support team will be the best people to help you resolve this issue.
Here's a tip for new buyers - always check the 'Feedback' of the seller before making a purchase decision. Feedback reflects what past buyers of the seller have to say about their experiences with that particular seller. You can find out more about Feedback here - http://pages.ebay.in/help/feedback/questions/feedback.html
Thank you for your post. I have already asked the concerned team (PaisaPay) to look into this issue. But if you have already paid for the item using PaisaPay, or even otherwise, please do not transfer the money directly to the sellers account.
Let me assure you that we shall be considering all the feedback we receive from users, whether buyers or sellers. However, it might not always be possible to act on every feedback we receive, for the simple reason that we have to consider the impact on the entire community. And the community for us includes new buyers, new sellers, experiences users, as well as International users. It is for this reason that sometimes our users feel that we are slow in making changes. Having said that, we appreciate the feedback, and I hope you will see some positive changes about the speed of development going forward.
1. Buyer Verification - I have already answered this query in my reply to user cameras_n_such. Keep watching our Announcements for more information about this!
2. Nigerian Fraudsters - We just recently had an internal meeting to discuss this very issue, and how best we can tackle it. I wish to inform you, and our entire community, that we are closely monitoring this issue, and suspended many new users before they have a chance to do any activity on the site. The new option within Buyer Requirements for SMS verification will be another big help in this. We are also planning user education, especially to our new sellers, so that they are aware of this issue, and do not have a bad experience. We shall continue to work on tackling this issue better. It is clearly a big concern for our community, and us.
3. Response from eBay - Firstly, I apologize for the delay in this. As I have mentioned earlier, we have already taken steps to improve the Customer Support experience of our users. But we clearly have a long way to go. I am sure you will see a definite improvement in this area going forward. I request you to please continue giving us your regular feedback about this, so that we know how we are progressing.
4. Finally, yes, we are committed to making ebay.in the best destination for online shopping. This is what all of us are working towards, and we will need all your support and co-operation as we take steps which will help us get there.
I regret the unpleasant experience you had on the site. We have already asked the concerned team to investigate into this. We have a Purchase Protection Program to help users who have had similar experiences. You can find more information about this here - http://pages.ebay.in/help/tp/inr-snad-process.html
Firstly, thank you for the your words of appreciation. It is really motivating for us to hear from our members when they like some of the things we do. If this promotion is successful for our sellers, we shall definitely look at doing more along similar lines and work towards a promotional calendar which are informed to sellers in advance so that they can plan supply in advance and we can promote it well. You are right, gifting is an important element of online shopping, and we have not been terribly good at it in the past.
To address the issues you have raised...
1. Buyer Verification - I am happy to announce that very soon, our sellers will have an additional option, within the Buyer Requirements section, to block bidders who are not SMS verified.
2. Listing Fees - I know that this has been discussed and debated at length by some of our sellers. Our primary concern with this has been that we are still a very nascent community, and our focus is on increasing the number of users who trade on the site, buy and sell. Not many people know that they can sell on the site, and as such, we have reservations about asking users to pay upfront for even just listing an item.
Yes, Unpaid Item is an area of concern for us. We have a team which is looking into this issue to understand it, and come up with solutions. We feel that we need to differentiate between 2 types of buyers - users who clearly have no intention to pay, and users who might have some genuine issues or concerns which is stopping them from paying. Our approach is to block the first type of users, while educating the second type to get them to pay up for the items they have won.
Secondly, as a seller, you can decide to block certain types of buyers from bidding on your items. This is called 'Buyer Requirements', and this can be accessed from the 'Preferences' link on the left hand side of your 'My eBay'. You can find more information about this, and other ways you can block bidders, here - http://pages.ebay.in/help/sell/manage_bidders_ov.html
I apologize for the unpleasant experience you have had with us in the past. I believe you are in touch with our team on the issue of Buyer Protection Payment. The delay was unfortunate as it was due to factors beyond our control, but I understand that as a buyer, we were unable to meet your expectations. Let me assure you that you will receive the amount soon.
I have already forwarded your inputs on Customer Service to the team. Over the past few months, we have been focused on improving the Customer Service experience of our users. We have made some progress on this, but we still have a long way to go. Let me assure you that we are committed to making this happen. Feedback from users such as you have given will only help us improve our services, and we really appreciate it.
Thank you for your feedback. Mahen from our Category team has started a thread where members can provide their suggestions for category changes. You can post your comments directly to him at http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=600000252&start=0
1. Addition of new categories - I shall forward your suggestion to the category team. While adding new categories, the team evaluates based on the following: How many listings of these items are presently being made across other categories, to get an understanding of the need for a separate category for these items. The members writing in to us with their suggestions. Trends across other shopping channels, online or offline. We try to balance opening of many new categories with the likelihood that there will be a healthy number of listings, and subsequently transactions, within these categories. I am sure you will agree that it will not be a good experience for the buyers to see many categories with very few listings.
2. Simplified process for International buyers to pay using PaisaPay - This is a suggestion we have heard in the past. I am happy to say that our international users now also have the option of scanning and sending across the required documents to a secure mail Id.
3. Prohibited Items - This list is based on the legal and regulatory environment, and hence some items that it might be possible to list on other eBay sites are not allowed to be listed on the India site. I understand that this might cause some confusion to our sellers, but unfortunately it is something that we do not have control on. Hence we request your co-operation and not list these items on the site.
It is encouraging to see users like yourself trying to sell unique items on the site. I am truly sorry that you are not seeing any bidding on your items so far. I shall forward your feedback to the category team, for them to consider while making future category changes. At the same time, I am curious. I could not see any live listings offered by you, so wanted to know under which category you had listed them earlier. I would think that Toys, Games & Baby would be the right category for you to try. I would suggest you try listing it under the 'Everything Else' category. Many interesting items are listed under this category.
Thank you for joining this Open House, and for your constant efforts to interact with, and help educate our community. We need more community champions such as yourself.
You have an interesting suggestion. We are evaluating the possibility of having some kind of 'Top Buyer' program, where we can recognize our top buyers. We are right now begining a top buyer research to find out how we can serve the needs of the buyer better and based on the learnings we will evolve a top buyer program . Feedback will be one of the important parameters we will consider for this program. We will keep you updated on developments in this program.
I hope I have answered your query in my earlier reply to emailswarup (Point 4). Thank you for joining this Open House. to summarise we are reviewing the situation and the pros and cons of buyer verification on a permanent basis are being considered
Firstly, let me thank you for your regular contributions on the discussion boards. We need more dedicated members like you to help build up a vibrant Indian community of eBay users.
Let me try and address your points: 1. Improving Search - What you are referring to is what we call 'Item Specifics'. At the moment, we have Item Specifics in some categories such as Handsets within Mobiles & Accessories. If you go this sub category, you will see a 'Mobile Phone Finder' using which you can refine your seach for Mobile Phone Handsets. We presently do not have this for all the categories, but I shall forward your feedback to the team for their consideration when they roll out more Product Finders. 2. That's an interesting point! going forward in 2006 we plan to change the look and feel of the site or atleast a few pages to coincide with festivals etc : you will see some difference with the valentine day promotion which is begining soon. 3. We have started a similar promotion, wherein we are promoting one seller per category on the category home pages. 4. Lately, we have heard a lot of feedback on fraud bidders creating additional work for our sellers, especially new sellers. We are concerned about this. Let me assure you that we closely monitor activity of our users, and regularly suspend many users before they can bid on items. At the same time, as we are a nascent e-commerce market, many genuine users will have reservations about verifying themselves using credit cards, etc. This is a fine balance that we need to improve on, and we are committed to doing so. Till such time, we plan to focus on educating our sellers, especially new sellers about some of these risks. As always, we look forward to the support of our community members in this endeavour.
Hello Everybody, My name is Rathin Lahiri, and I head the Marketing function at eBay India. My responsibilities include attracting new buyers to eBay to buy from our sellers, to retaining our users. One of the key elements in retaining our users is to ensure that they have a pleasant trading experience on eBay. This is another element that we are focused on. Finally, we offer the unique opportunity for our users to interact with each other, and with us, forming what we call our 'Community'.
This is the first time I am interacting you, our Community, and I look forward to an interesting and engaging one hour.
I shall begin with answering all the queries posted to me before the start of this session, and then answer the live questions.
This is my frist purchase at ebay and here come the problem, i purchasd a (Original Nokia 6600 with Battery and Charger,)item number 6479749241,from (simiagency) and made payment via credit card on the 31/1/06, i recievd a message saying Your credit card payment of Rs. 7,242.00 to simiagency is pending approval by PaisaPay Customer Support. The seller will not ship the item till this payment is approved)
And then on 2/2/06 i get one more message saying that
Your credit card payment of Rs. 7,242.00 to simiagency has been rejected by PaisaPay Customer Support for the following reason: Item has been deleted / account problem. Please contact seller. Your purchase is currently not paid and the seller will not ship you the item(s).
I sent a mail to simiagency and they replied saying that (ur ppayment is rejected so please try again by credit card payment)
When i confirmed with my creditcard department they said the charge of 7,242.00 has already been charged to account on the 31/1/06.
now when i informed this to simiagency they say that (we inform u our new ebay id by mail u can make payment through that easily.. we have little problem with paisa pay account so that ur payment is rejected,this is our new ebay id jennimobilecare
i cannot charge my card for the second time as the frist charge is already reflecting in my account.
Dear Mr. Rathin Lahiri, I am doubtful if I can be with you during the scheduled discussion forrum time.
Following in my querry or problem,
I had won bid for BRAND NEW BENQ S 670C TRIBAND CAMERA CLAMSHELL PHONE (#6475632480) sold by itwizard47 on 24-Jan-2006. I has send payment via Credit Card through your website link via Paisa Pay on 25th January 2006. Whenever I contacted you personnels at seller and customer service via online sms they responsed promptly with the messages that the payment is under clearance with Paisa Pay and once they intimate I will be delivered the above product in 24 hrs. I am also send messages again saying pay soon. Further I received a sms today from Mr. Satish Balu Yelawande to call on his cell no. 9892931090 and pay to his ICICI Bank Account No. 000401141704. I had purchased earlier too products from your site but never faced such difficult times as now. This instance fears me to login to your auction site again. I am available on 9821162338. Whats the situation like and how do I act to this. Hope you will be able to solve this soon. Dr.Kurien
Dear Mr. Rathin Hope that eBay India , will be using all the feedback from members. Bcoz why im insisting on this is, eBay's development policies are in phase slower than snails.I admit that , eBay India has improved a lot.But it has a long way to reach the perfection. The list of thing which i would suggest is, 1. Buyer verification, u people take a great care to verify sellers. why not the buyers, we waste our money and time to list an item. Fraudsters simply buy our products for fun.
2. You must DO SOMETHING about the nigerian fraudsters. they creat a hell a lot of problems.
3. Response,response from ebay is the slowest thing on earth, i suppose(not the automatic mail we recive,for every querry we sent). your people work very fast in getting the payments,but regarding our problems they work leisurely. the response facility should be tuned to a class standard.
4.You people should need to work out a lot to make eBay india, the best place for online shopping.
Sir on 18 th Jan 06 I have seen through www.ebay.in that Mr.G Vadehera has given an advertisement that he wants to sheel his old blackberry phone in a price of Rs.8999/-(Shipping cost excluded Rs.550/-) Total cost of Rs.9549/-. After observing the attractive advertsement I have taken intrest to buy the phone and contacted with him through www.ebay.in to give his phone number.I got a sms on 19th jan then I contact ed with him & asked him how to pay? Then he gave me his account no of HDFC Bank And said to deposit,Though I knew that ebay.in is reputed service provide so I thought to deposit the amount ,In the evening Icould not deposited money due to delay.Again Mr.Vadehra gave me his ICICI Account no.I was very much excited to buy that phone so I deposited Rs.9600/- due to non availity of change currency in his ICICI account No.000401012116.After getting that payment Mr.Vadehra commited me that he will send the phone on 20th.But sir after regular folloup ,phone calls & mail I got assurance that I will get the phone soon.Till 22nd I could not get that phone.On that day I sent amail to Mr.Vadehra ,He confirmed me through email that I will get the phone on 23rd at 3 pm.But I did not get that.Then I followed up to send the phone several times but he did not responded intensionaly .Because hi had a malafide intention he wanted to cheat me.At last on 27th I got a packet from Mr.Vadehra ,In side that packet I got fake items (2 Mp3 pyrite Cds),As per his email that I should get the phone on 23rd but practically he has booked that packet on 23rd.With in that gap period he planned to cheat me.Sir I am a poor fellow I request you Kindly take this matter and unveil the trouth,Awaiting the justice.
Congratulations to you and your team on the very sucessfull hoardings campaign and the current Valentine Promo on the site. The Valentine promo is really well thought out and designed. I had been asking for such a promo for last 3 years. As an offline gift retailer, I know what huge business opportunity Valentine is. We have to extend our store closing time for 9 p.m. to 12 p.m. and even 1 a.m. for Valentiine Shoppers.
There are a few issues I would like you to address:
1) Buyer Verification brought up by emailswarup. Atleast start optional verification and allow sellers the option to list producs only for verified buyers. If I list one product 3 times with homepage featuring on 1 Paisa No Reserve auction, only 1 gets fullfilled. I do not think I can keep spending RS.450/- to sell just one product. I would prefer to have only genuine and verified buyers for my 1 PNR auctions.
2) Lisitng Fees: A long standing demand by most experienced sellers and surprisingly a lot of newbies to introduce listing fees to curb the rampant abuse of the site via duplicate listings and slow moving inventory put infront of buyers.
3) Genuine verification of sellers selling high value branded products. I believe there is a procedure of asking sellers of high value products to provide proof of purchase. This should be make more stringent and a buyer of high value products should have to submit proof of purchase on a regullar basis to eBay. This will one prevent fraudsters from running away with hard earned money of buyers and two it will curb the rampant grey market sellers to some extent. Today not a single legally imported Sony or Nikon Camera is being sold on the site. Same is the case with Sony Handycams and I Pods. All these are heavily promoted products on the site as well on various other sites on the net by eBay. Wake up before its too late and some goverment depts. forces you to. (something akin to the MMS clip scandal)
Cameras_N_Such A Gold PowerSeller (rarity on eBay.in) and Top Seller in my category.
Hello, Sir some fo my item R sold but i have receved my payment from long time. i called the buyer, but on phon they r telling me or sir we r sending the payemtn but i have not receivd yet any thing.. pls take some strong for this tyip of buyer. wating for your reply ITME NO > (7212102451) ITEM NO > (7212856471)
hello sir, im facing many problems with ebay.... ill give one by one here...
1) i din receive the buyer protection claim amt for the item 6422341366. claim found favour on me on sep 28th.. it already 4 months passed away.. till now i din receive it...
2) ebay had send a invoice for unsold items n make me to pay the FVF for the items 6445959771 and 6443110119... both the items are listed on oct/05 aftre 3 months i got a reply on jan/26/05 from ur side as FVF amt will be credited into my a/c in 24 - 48 hrs. now around 5 days passed away... nothing happend... i don kno wat u ppls r doing there...
3) im getting very late reply for the mails sending to the customer support...
pl give me a proper reply & pl resolve the above problems... we r comming forward to earn money by doing business in ebay... But i lost so much of money in this...
hi I would like the category 'Astrology' under services to grow into a large business. It is currently clubbed with Real Estate, which does not allow direct sales.
I have written to your product team, but yet to get any feedback.
I apologize. I have received prize for Suggest a name for monthly Ebay magazine on 30th Jan.2006. I also had a telephonic conversation with Sapana regarding this. I m really sorry for what I have written before.
Dear Mr. Rathin , I had requested Mr. Gautam in your october discussion board also but there is no action taken. following was my request :
I request you to add some more categories e.g. Display signs , electronic display boards , shop accessories , decor , signage etc. as available on your other international sites.
We sell LED signs and display boards and it is very difficult to find a proper category for the same.
Also it is very inconveinient for our international buyers to send a fax copy of credit card to your paisa pay team . Kindly remove this requirement or ask for some simple method like requesting confirmation from buyer through eMail.
Another problem is that your team denies listing for similar items sold being without any restriction at your Ebay USA site . We manufacture and sell fetal dopplers and pulse rate monitors which are non intrusive medical instruments and listed by many sellers in USA site. The same items are denied at eBay india site and we recieve policy violation mails for listing the same.
I have still not received my prize for Suggest a name for monthly Ebay magazine ( declared winner on 19th of December 2005). This has happened to me for the second time -- Prize not received. Before also I was a winner in Keep the Catch contest( Last year contest ) - in watches section my name was there but still not received prize for that too. I have made topics many times regarding this matter, got replies that I will receive my prize, this that but I know what the truth is. I m not asking for the prize now but I m throwing light on Ebay India system. They just declare the winners - Never care that the winners have received their prize or not .
Hello Rathin Lahiri, I am trying to sell Magic Item Kits but find it difficult to list it in a suitable category and hence not getting any bidding. Kindly advice a way out to get some bidding on these items. Regards, Dinesh Prabhu. (eBay Id:ctdinna)
Hello Rathin Lahiri, I am trying to sell Magic Item Kits but find it difficult to list it in a suitable category and hence not getting any bidding. Kindly advice a way out to get some bidding on these otems. Regards, Dinesh Prabhu. (eBay Id:ctdinna
Thanks for taking out time for an interaction with the Community.
Its a well known fact that ebay banks upon its feedback system.
I would like to ask as to what charm does a buyer has, as far as feedback score is concerned ?
Why should a Buyer increase his feeback score ?
Is the buyer given any incentive for his higher feedback score?
What difference does it makes to a Buyer, if his percentage rating is 100% or 80% or maybe 70% ?
He is here on ebay to Buy Items and can easily BID or BUY at any percentage rating. ( Only that most Sellers block Buyers with a score of -1 )
Where as it would be difficult for a Seller to sell at lower feedback percentage.
My suggestion is that every Buyer should be given some incentives for reaching high scores, I mean at each level of say 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 ..etc.
He must be given some incentives or some privileges. These priviliges may be ....a licence to particitation is special Auctions. For example Genuine Auctions @ Rs.1 with ZERO Shipping. I can bet that many Sellers would love to offer their products @ Rs.1 to a particular class of Buyers.
These incentives would create continuous & long term attraction for Buyers.
Also, it would result in better sales and better relations between Buyers & sellers.
I have just given an idea which can be refined at your end.
yeah i actually very much lie the idea of verification. Thats a great advantage that could be given to sellers. And since ebay is already using this concept in its other sites, implementing it here should not be a great problem. I hope this gets considered seriously. Regards
I have a suggestion on improving the search option. If you include some optional sub-category in search options then it can be beneficial for many. For example, if I am interested in an Emerald of more than 6 carats, now I have to scan thru all the Emerald listings to locate the best one for me. If there can be one option to put the weight range then one can find the preferred ones more easily. This can be very helpful for searching Diamonds as there are always hundreds of listings for 1 cent & inferior quality Diamonds and the preferred ones stay hidden among those. Similarly for Digicam one can search only for cameras of his / her preferred pixel resolution range or higher. I think this will definitely increase bidding as many bidders will be able to view more specifically. Now, many can't find the most suitable ones among the hundreds of other items of similar category and loose interest.
Secondly, I think it will be better if you change the appearance of the site (say) Bi-yearly. Atleast some change in the color scheme and fonts to ward off boredom of frequent visitors and would definitely increase business.
Next, if you randomly highlight one seller from each category everyday then many surfers will have a look at the items by the seller and this may increase the bidding- good for eBay and good for the lucky sellers.
Lastly, even after all the opposition from your side, I (like many others) still think that there can be optional verification for all members (like PayPal). One should be able to put a preference of whether to deal with an unverified member or not. This will definitely help in reducing frauds and also for filing criminal cases against the errant verified members. Now we can block all bidders having –1 rating or below. That does not mean all with –1 ratings are fraud or guilty or low in ethics. So why not give us the preference to choose between verified & unverified members for our deals. I strongly feel that this will reduce fraud which have considerably increased now-a-days, as evident from the community boards. After all a fraud means not only loss to the buyer but also loss of revenue for eBay by means of refund & less participation by a defrauded member!!
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