Join Rajan Mehra, Country Manager, eBay India for an Open House discussion on buying and selling on eBay India. Open House gives senior eBay staff members the opportunity to interact with members of the community and we presume that community would also be equally eager to do the same.
Rajan will be available on this thread on Thursday, the February, 07 2008, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM IST for an interactive discussion with our community members. Click on 'Post a Reply' link at top of the page to submit your questions before or during the discussion.
Firstly thanks a lot for the various comments, feedback and suggestions through your multiple posts in response to the thread. Would have loved to discuss with you during my session last Thursday but unfortunately that couldn’t happen.
Let me first start by addressing your feeling of lack of importance from eBay to discussion boards threads / suggestions. We always feel great about our community and if there is the one thing that distinguishes eBay from the rest of the organizations is the active engagement of our members in our policies and strategies on our very own discussion boards. Please be rest assured that no suggestion on the boards goes unnoticed and if there have been any slip ups in past we will make sure going forward the same does not happen again.
Secondly let me address your overall concern about eBay being inflexible and not considering the community’s view point and suggestions before making major decisions by calling out a few BIG things we did in 2007. viz.
Fast integrated checkout and shopping cart eBay Coupons EMI payment option Telephone based customer support Television advertising Introducing listing fees Trust & Safety initiatives like out calling to non paying buyers
The genesis behind each of the above decisions was based on Community Suggestions and Inputs. Rest assured we listen to our community, understand their pulse, take suggestions, firm up a balanced point of view and implement decisions which are beneficial to the overall community
I request you to read through my earlier posts in this thread which should answer your questions on PaisaPay bugs, shipment timelines, NEFT charges and low sales. On The point of Feedback, you would have noticed that along with the recent Feedback changes, we also have a number of measures that would protect the sellers against unjustified negative feedback, including, but not limited to removing negative feedback from buyers who do not participate in the UPI process and removing the feedback of suspended members
Regarding your comment on Power Seller program criteria, we understand the intricacies and challenges in a nascent ecommerce market like India and have factored that into building the program. Also in the last few years many Power Sellers have seen growth in their business and our data shows an increase in the # of Power Sellers in 2007. Even post the revision I am sure you will appreciate that we have kept the current criteria 50% lower than global program criteria. We are reviewing our benefits package for India Power Sellers and look out for some exciting news on that front in the next 4-6 weeks
Now coming to your suggestion on allowing to optionally choose category for international listings, inherently as the product is listed on the eBay.in site it will have the category structure prevailing in the India site. However I have taken note of your suggestion and will pass it on to the teams working on category mapping and we will evaluate on what best can be done to deliver the most suitable category output for International listings. Regarding listing fees, we have seen an improvement in success rate for sellers post that and it has certainly improved findability of items for buyers. Having said that I take your suggestion on listing fee for a longer duration and am sure the team working on the pricing will keep this in mind while planning for future.
The suggestion of making eBay.in search global is interesting, while it has its benefits lets also understand that such a move can have its challenges in a few caregories. I would evaluate this very carefully before deciding conclusively.
As you would have seen in the recent global announcements there are some changes being made in the default sort order in the bigger eBay sites like US, Germany and UK. There is also a test pilot on some of the International sites for a Total cost sort (Item price + shipping). We will monitor the effectiveness, take global learnings and of course consult our community before firming up our decision.
Regarding your suggestion on offline advertising, I am sure you would have seen our first Television advertising campaign which was aired in Nov and Dec’07, we will continue to evaluate our marketing investments basis the returns we get and I am sure you will see a lot more offline marketing initiatives in 2008.
Its been my pleasure going through your posts and various suggestions and I hope my response has been all encompassing and answers your queries.
Classifieds as a format are more suited for domestic transactions than international. If you look at most of the listings in the classified format which sellers are putting up is in the area of real estate, financial & other services which I am sure you will agree with me are more for the domestic buyer than international.
We do not have a restriction on item price as you have mentioned. I request you to get in touch with our customer support team in case you still face this issue.
In regards to the New PaisaPay bugs I request you to go through my earlier posts for the status.
To your question on PaisaPay charges I’d like to reiterate that we have made lot of modifications to Paisa Pay like providing Phone Support, Charge Back coverage, dispute resolution, etc. and am sure you understand that all of these have a cost implication.
Regarding Axis Bank, due to technical changes in their backend, we have to discontinue our integration with them. We have prioritized some of the other changes in PaisaPay based on community feedback.
EMI option as a facility was introduced to provide easy payment facility through instalments. While other portals also offer EMI facility and at 0% interest, it may not be a wise step to pass on the charges to our buyers. We believe that this will only make us competitive with other portals.
We, at eBay, always welcome our members’ suggestions and try to address concerns rasied. Please be assured that we would not leave any opportunity of providing our sellers with the best services and a beneficial platform.
The announcements on our US site with respect to Paypal have been done to increase Trust in the marketplace there. The new PaisaPay system also shares the same objectives.
Assuming that the Buyer has confirmed item receipt when he / she leaves positive feedback is a very large change to make. However, as mentioned earlier, we are relooking at the criteria for Express remittance so as to ensure that more of the sellers are covered under the same.
I have already stated the situation on the bugs in the PaisaPay system and the situation is largely resolved. Read my earlier posts for more details. I would strongly urge you to take a balanced view of the situation. In a launch of this scale and complexity, issues are bound to crop up on all sides and I must state here that the teams here have strived to resolve all issues be it with the system or initial challenges being faced by buyers and sellers in adapting to the new system.
On the rationale behind making Paisa Pay compulsory, I would like to reiterate my comment in one of the earlier post i.e. it is important for us to build greater trust in the marketplace and thus all buyers should have a choice to pay by the safest and a secure payment method. All sellers with greater than 20 lifetime listings have the option of offering other payment methods (besides PaisaPay). Ultimately, as long as Buyers have a choice, they will choose an option that best suits their interests.
We are seeing an increasing adoption of PaisaPay amongst buyers, which indicates that more buyers are opting for new PaisaPay due to the safety and security it provides them.
Thank you for welcoming me and it’s always nice for me too to interact with the community members and I feel privileged to have such an engaging community.
We understand that sellers have had to increase their workload in line with the new Paisa Pay but I would like to reiterate what I stated in one of my earlier post. We have upgraded the PaisaPay payment system with enhanced features with the primary aim of building buyer trust and also included features that our seller community had asked for a long while like EMI, Online Remittances, Coupons etc. We are very confident that the new PaisaPay is a significant improvement over the old system and a best in class payment system.
The primary focus in building the new payment system was to build buyer trust which I am sure we all agree is a basic hygiene requirement in an online transaction. Our initial Paisa Pay data shows an increase in business which is clearly a reflection of greater buyer acceptance of the new system and we are confident that it will only grow as time progresses.
Having said the above, I agree that the new PaisaPay has modified some work processes for our sellers & we are looking at ways as to how best this can be smoothened out. We are working on a few initiatives which I am sure will help sellers viz.
1. Making PaisaPay easier: the team has identified areas in My PaisaPay that can be improved to make it simpler. 2. Explore Shipping tie ups with 3rd party logistics provider. 3. Relook at Express Remittance criteria to make it inclusive for more good sellers. 4. Monitor and evaluate the request for relooking at dispatch and delivery timelines for International Shipments. 5. Launch Seller Protection Program to protect sellers as much as we protect buyers.
We would never want any member leave us and especially a seller like you who have shown such dignity in providing buyers on our platform with the best experience and am sure you will continue to sell even more successfully on our site.
I see that all 3 of you have more or less the same concerns which is around paisa pay timelines for shipments and I request you to read through my earlier posts on initiatives that we are working on to make the operations smoother especially in the areas of Shipping Integration with 3rd party vendors and addressing the concerns around International shipping & delivery timelines .
Now I will address the specific question raised by each one of you
1. Scheduled listings - on ebay.in incur a cost of Re. 1/listing. There is no Scheduled Listings fee for Turbo Lister, Selling Manager, Selling Manager Pro, and Shop users. The point on the challenges around scheduling listings on our International sites is noted and unfortunately, there is no immediate resolve to this. My team will keep the community updated on the progress we make on this front.
2. NEFT Charges - let me state that we have seen this is happening only to a few sellers and it could be an issue specifically related to a bank, branch or even account type and is not due to eBay or Paisa Pay changes. I suggest sellers facing this issue to please discuss the matter with your bank branch. Having said that we are also investigating the matter and discussing with our bank partners to understand the issue better and will update you if we get any information
3. Closing disputes post resolution - To address this concern we have started an activity as part of our Trust & Safety initiatives wherein we contact the buyers who have opened disputes against the sellers and guide them through the process. We stress them on contacting the sellers for their issues. We also contact them on a periodical basis as a follow up and ensure that they close the disputes if their issues have been resolved. We are confident that we’d be able to provide security to our sellers and buyers and help them resolve issues in a better way.
I’ll be more than happy to be able to address your concerns.
Express Remittance is a privilege we are offering as a reward to those sellers who have consistently outperformed in providing good buyer experience over a period of time. We understand your concern for small sellers, however if we were to make this available to all then this facility will not be a privilege but a system feature. Parallely, let me reiterate that we would surely look into revising the Express Remittance criteria with an objective to expanding our base of qualified sellers for this facility. Look forward to hearing more in the coming 4 - 6 weeks.
We appreciate your dedication to get the VAT issue resolve. We are totally against the misuse of VAT by sellers and are looking into this matter seriously and have been working with our legal team to find the best solution thereby creating an honest platform.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, our data shows an increase in business. I would like to take this opportunity to parallely address some concerns on site traffic basis Alexa data mentioned by a few of our community members like gizmozindia, techniwas, subhash.unique. Alexa data is a better reflection of site traffic from Non India visitors and not local India traffic. I am sure you appreciate that during Christmas and New year holidays most people are either out on holidays or taking an annual break and this does have an effect on Non India site traffic in December and early part of January. I just had a look at the domestic traffic data for the same period and it shows no change traffic patterns for the month of January’08
Now coming to back to the philosophical question on comparison between offline discount store & eBay, Firstly I don’t think this is a right comparison. In an offline sale lets admit it that the buyer gets the product instantly on making the payment, irrespective of the experience he/she has had either while shopping or standing in queue to make the payment. The fundamental difference in online is the buyer makes the first move by paying upfront and then waits for the product to get delivered. It then becomes highly imperative that buyers expect the best experience in terms of regular communication from seller, timely delivery, good packaging and after sale service to feel happy and come back and repeat and also spread good word of mouth. In my view Trust, Seller Service and Customer Satisfaction are hygiene factors in online business or for that matter in any business. Regarding product prices a marketplace by nature itself provides competitive pricing from seller perspective and “great deals” are ONE of the big reasons buyers buy online.
Clearly the number of posts are way over that which I expected. I'm glad that we've been able to get such well thought out posts and it seems like it'll take me some time to get through the remainder posts. We're now way over the time we'd allotted for the Open House and I have another engagement that I need to get to. I'll make sure that I attend to each of your posts in the coming days. Please check this thread for further responses. Thanks once again for taking the time to provide us this feedback, it is invaluable and we will incorporate the same into our planning process.
I saw the articles in print media on your air guitar and I think it was quite cool! Congratulations! I hope you continue to come up with more such creative and fun listings
As I've discussed earlier, the New PaisaPay did have some bugs related to SM Pro. However, you will be glad to know that other than one bug highlighted above, most of the bugs have been resolved.
Regarding your question on fees, we have made lot of modifications to Paisa Pay like providing Phone Support, Charge Back coverage, dispute resolution, etc. and am sure you understand that all of these have a cost implication. For most past of last 3 years from 2005 to 2007 the Paisa Pay fees were constant and were recently hiked in November’07 to cover for the additional costs that are incurred in providing the service to the community.
Thanks for your very thoughtful and detailed posts. I think you raise some interesting issues in your multiple posts and I want to ensure that our response is complete and addresses the issues you raise. We have run over on time and I expect my response to your post to take some time. I'll ensure that I get my response to your post posted by Monday.
Thank you for your wishes and we are excited about the targets we have set for ourselves for 2008.
1. We would surely take into consideration your input for an added category under the main category of Consumer Electronics’. If we get enough listings to dedicate a category to them we would surely check for the feasibility of the same. 2. As regards your suggestion for EMI facility from other banks, we made our decision on ICICI based on their being the largest. We are currently evaluating options with other banks as well to get the EMI facility for their credit cards and will add them from time-to-time. We shall keep the community update on further developments. 3. Thank you for your suggestion on holding more promotions on International listings which we’ll surely look into while planning further promotions.
Sir, You tried to answer all queries except VAT ! What about heavy VAT charged by some sellers without giving any invoice to buyers? This is a standard practice which is followed by some sellers who cheat buyers and our Govt. This is affecting our sales. The buy it now prices look lower to buyers and they buy the product of such sellers.
Request you to do KYC of powersellers who charge VAT.
How are you doing? It's been some time. Hope all is well and thanks for your kind words as always .
I totally agree with you that our seller community is extremely supportive and has always stood by us. We are equally committed to growing our sellers business and doing the right things for our seller community.
While I understand that some sellers might have seen a slowdown in sales in the month of January which could be due to a combination of various factors like Product Pricing, Quality of Listing, Seller Service etc.etc. let me state that the overall business momentum in January’08 is positive.
We have an array of promotions and marketing initiatives lined up (some of you would have already noticed our initiatives around Valentine’s day) and I feel confident that we will see a further acceleration in growth in the weeks ahead.
As regards your queries related to PaisaPay, I trust my introduction above should address some of your concerns.
As regards tying up with a shipping company, I agree with your suggestion and I think that it is a great idea. One of the things we are actively evaluating is the possibility of integrating a logistics partner in new PaisaPay. Given the third party dependencies, we expect to get it live no earlier than the 2nd half of 2008.
I hope the above answers your questions and I wish you great sales over the next months!
It is so good to see you again! Thanks for your kind words on the changes and I am glad that the initial difficulties are being ironed out. Regarding the few remaining bugs, as mentioned earlier the team is already working on them and they should be resolved soon.
Regarding the new PaisaPay, you rightly said that the system will help in building buyer trust on sellers and increase overall business for sellers in the long run. I hope my responses in the introduction regarding PaisaPay provide you your response.
But Mr Mehra why have you made paisepay compulsory for sellers, when ebay.com has no such rules for paypal. What is the logic behind this autocratic monopolistic rule??. In ebay.com i have no hesistance in mentioning that i ONLY ACCEPT PAYPAL, but here because paisepay is not so user friendly we sellers should have an option till such time paisepay becomes more flexible & easy to use
On eBay we expect all our sellers to comply with the laws of the land and to be committed to delivering the best Buyer experience. In this regard we have introduced several policies which safeguard the buyers interest. We also buyers to use the safe buying tips while making purchase decisions.
The new systems with PaisaPay and the eBay gift certs have been great. However I have a question about the Certificates.
Since eBay has the option to give their customer a certificate so as to offer discounts, offers. Is there any way that the sellers would get the same tool, so as to offer their returning customers and others the Gift Certificates.
I feel this tool enhance customer experience from our Seller Point as well.
The Shipping labels show the Buyer's address instead of Receipient address.
This bug has started with the launch of New PaisaPay and the same was pointed out in December. ebay Team assured us that it would be rectified at the earliest but nothing has been done so far.
It's a headache as each and every Order is to be confirmed for correct address from the Paisapay Page. Even the Phone number is never there on the Shipping Label and one cannot COPY-PASTE from the PaisaPay Page.
Hope you will look into this and get the same resolved at the earliest. .
Some of you (kumar.m, jaipur_fashions, coolbrasco & emailswarup) have questions related to the global changes related to the feedback system.
Here's some context on the same. As you are aware, the original intent of eBay’s public feedback system was to provide an honest, accurate record of member experiences. However as the global eBay business has evolved, the original system was not working as per the designed intent in the current business context.
We realize that feedback has been a two-way street, but our data shows a disturbing trend, which is that, globally sellers leave retaliatory feedback eight times more frequently than buyers do and this figure is up dramatically in the last few years. This prevented buyers from leaving a genuine feedback in more cases than one. Even more disturbing data trend we have is Buyers who were subject to an unfair / retaliatory feedback stopped transacting on the site and not come back for more. I am sure you all agree that losing a good customer is one of the biggest loss in any business and the same applies to our sellers and us.
We all realise this is a huge change and that it’s important we put appropriate seller protections into place so that buyers don’t abuse the system.
Let me call out a few Seller Protections that will be put in place to help sellers avoid negative feedback. viz.
• We will remove, not just de-score, negative and neutral feedback when a buyer doesn’t respond to the Unpaid Item process. The implication for the seller community is that now non paying buyers who do not participate in the UPI process will no longer be able to leave sellers feedback and which has been a long standing community need.
• We will remove all negative and neutral Feedback comments left by a buyer or seller, when the buyer (or seller) is suspended. We’re going to do this retroactively too. So all negative and neutral Feedback left by suspended members historically will also be removed.
• To promote communication, buyers will be prevented from leaving a public negative or neutral Feedback within 3 days after a listing ends for sellers with an established track record;
• We are reducing the number of days a member can leave Feedback from 90 to 60 days;
• We are increasing a seller’s Block Bidder List capacity from 1,000 to 5,000 user IDs;
• We will increase our monitoring, and take action based on seller reports of buyers behaving very badly.
While I have commented on the safeguards that we have put in place to ensure sellers don’t get unjust negative feedback, let me take this opportunity to highlight some extremely positive and welcoming feedback changes for sellers viz.
• Repeat Feedback Credit - Starting in February 2008, we’re going to give members credit for multiple Feedbacks from the same buyer or seller for listings that end in different calendar weeks (Monday to Sunday). We think this is a great change for our sellers (and buyers). If you are delivering great customer service – and it shows through repeat buyers – your Feedback score will reflect this.
• Another change being introduced in February 2008 is the Feedback percentage which calculates a member’s percentage of positive Feedback will be based on just the last 12 months (and not the member’s lifetime transactions, as it is today), although the total count remains lifetime. We’re doing this because a member’s recent Feedback is the most relevant to their transaction partners. Going forward, any negative Feedback left for you more than 12 months ago will no longer affect your positive percentage.
I’d like to reiterate that we realise these are major changes, and we will be watching carefully for any unintended consequences.
Further to this we know that our members will have interesting questions around this change and hence we have scheduled an online workshop with our colleague from Trust & Safety to address them. Please join Vidmay's workshop on 11th Feb at 5pm for more details.
Another comment that people have highlighted is that they have faced some bugs post the launch of the new PaisaPay. While we make all efforts to roll our product launches with minimal defects, in a project of this magnitude we sometimes detect issues only after going live to site. As you would have noticed, over the course of the last fortnight the product team has been working hard to ensure that most of these issues have been resolved.
There is 1 open issue related to SM Pro wherein after entering PaisaPay shipping details, if the sales record is updated in any manner then the shipping status icon gets unset. The product team is working hard to resolve this issue expeditiously.
4. We are also currently evaluating the option of further increasing delivery timelines for international shipments. We will balance the interest of our sellers while keeping in mind internationally acceptable best pratcises in this regard. Our initial feedback from the community seems to indicate that this is a problem only for shipments to a few countries in Europe - however we will take an overall view when we finalize the revised guidelines.
thank you for atleast considering, i think i was not on this express paisepay because of low sales If lower sales is the critera then ebay.in should expand the categories, look at my ebay.com seller id stampsworldindia, it has done $500 only last month because i slotted the stamps in the right category. i am selling very well on ebay.com but at the same time i would like to sell also on ebay.in, but only if you reverse the changes Do you know that if i put 2 similar lots, ebay.com will have the maximum visitors ONLY because of more categories!
2. We will be reviewing the Express Remittance criteria to ensure more good sellers are eligible for Express Remittance - stay tuned for more announcements on the same.
Mr Mehra I am also selling on ebay.com where i get money first thru paypal, but here this it is not so with the new paisepay. WHY? should there be any criteria for the slow process of giving us our money.WHY should we have to push our buyers to give you an ok & then wait for you to pay us. WHY this policy is for indians only ? WHY when ebay has no such policy. There they trust us sellers, here ebay india is not showing any trust in us WHY?
Here are a few of the areas in which we have received feedback and where we will be making changes, as appropriate keeping in mind the interest of our buyer and seller community:
1. We will be increasing the Shipping timelines for categories which require customization (a request from many of the sellers who make-to-order).
Wow! That’s a lot of posts. Thanks so much for your enthusiastic participation – I am truly overwhelmed. That said, I do notice that a number of the posts have one major point and I’d like to address this first-up. I’m going to start by addressing some of the key issues related to the New PaisaPay system, an area of concern to many of you.
As you know, we have upgraded the PaisaPay payment system with enhanced features with the primary aim of building buyer trust and have also included features that our seller community had asked for a long while. The new EMI functionality, Online Remittances to sellers and gift vouches are all an outcome of this new system.
In addition to building out the above mentioned seller requested features, an important goal of the new PaisaPay was to address the area of buyer trust, which our research shows us is the most important barrier to e-commerce activity in India. Our initial Paisa Pay data shows an increase in Buyer adoption of PaisaPay which is a reflection of greater buyer acceptance of the new system.
That said, it seems to be clear that the new PaisaPay has modified some work processes for our sellers & we are looking at ways as to how best this can be smoothened out. What you should feel absolutely sure about is that the team here is constantly soliciting feedback from sellers, reading the community boards and taking feedback from the customer support team to understand the key pain points of our sellers. It will always be our endeavour to incorporate all relevant seller feedback into the new PaisaPay system.
Wow! That’s a lot of posts. Thanks so much for your enthusiastic participation – I am truly overwhelmed . That said, I notice that a number of the posts have one major point and I’d like to address this first-up. I’m going to start by addressing the issues related to the New PaisaPay that many of you have raised
Sir : How soon ebay.in is going to reintroduce old paisa pay system and oblige the community ???????? .
I am sure by this time your staff also might have been fed up with new paisapay system . They are still not able to fix the bugs in the system . Otherwise also more than 15 hours everyday Paisapay system is not found functional at all .
And now they have started asking KYC documents again .
It is never too late to rectify the mistakes done in ignorance. Just switch back to old trusted system and make everyone happy.
1. VAT: Due to unreasonable VAT being charged by sellers on eBay, genuine sellers like ourselves will soon have to start charging higher VAT, just to remain in competition. This issue has affected our sales adversely. And since the last 2 months we are hardly recovering even our costs.
2. Paisa Pay bugs is an important issue. But overall we are satisfied with the swift remittance. - The only issue is that courier companies take some time to give POD. We need some more time incase of a refund request. The New PaisaPay rules is a little ahead of its time. Even the most reputed courier companies aren't able to meet those deadlines for providing POD.
3. -Ve feedback without a dispute shouldn't be given much weightage. Also the value of product should also be a factor in deciding how serious the dispute/-ve feedback is!!
Support by account manager is appreciable.
Selling cost should reduce, as competition from offline markets and other portals is heavy.
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