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
Thanks to our members as well as Sharat for taking time out to be on the boards today. I hope you will find this discussiono fruitful. We shall be archiving this discussion for future reference.
Lot of sellers offer insurance and some don’t and for the specific seller it will not be possible to know what kind of insurance he has. It could be for his entire business and not for the particular transition
Not sure why you would like to see the insurance copy, as the insurance protection is more for the seller to give you a item incase it is lost in transit.
Will keep the suggestion in mind that we may have to work on this policy and at this stage this would not be our priority Regards
Let me first brief the process of selecting a Member for Member Spotlight.
We normally look at member's past record in terms of sales (in case of sellers) and feedback score before inviting them for participation in Member Spotlight. It is sad that a member who has been spotlighted is following unsatisfactory business practice. However, I am not clear about the member you have mentioned here. May I request you to send an email to me at sapana@ebay.com about the member you are reffering to?
I agree that India is not the same as US or Europe, however the Buyer expectations are higher and cant take the path of saying buyer needs have a lower expectations.
We have to work together in ensure the sellers meet the buyer’s expectations Regards
We always believed in community feedback basis which our Policies, Categories & other innovative features are built.
eBay enforces all its policies in letter and spirit. As you are aware we have introduced new attributes for our warranty policy for better enforcement and transparency. Yes there are certain areas where the information / knowledge on the listings is not adequate we rely on the community support to enforce our polices. As a policy we take community reports very seriously and take prompt action
When we launch policies it normally takes time to see the impact on the site as we follow the violation guidelines i.e., educate, warn and then suspend Regards
The suggestion of conducting an Open House Discussion on a weekend is interesting. I am yet to check if the Pinks find it a good idea .
The reason why we prefer conducting these discussions on weekdays is that most members access eBay from their offices. Weekends might not work out well for them. Also, the idea of leaving the thread open for at least 7-10 days before the workshop is to ensure that all members can post their question on the thread in advance. They need not be present for the open house discussion. However, thanks for your suggestion! I shall keep it on my radar and whenever we get an indication that more members are accessing eBay on weekends, we will start conducting the discussions on weekends.
We have been associated with ebay for more thatn 3 years , we seen the site change from baazee to ebay . I have personally met you at many powerseller meetings at Delhi .
This is regarding my experience with TnS team and SNP policy , on 7th july we receivied a selling restriction notice due to pending complains and was handed over about 100 issues of Neutral , open disputes and negatives to be resolved with the customers . And were given a period of atleast 30 days to improve the feedback rating significantly . Most of the cases that were handed over to me were already resolved cases but were shown as unresolved in your list , we worked on that list , contacted buyers , asked them to give us an email and confirm that the issue is resolved , now approx after 30 days around 8 the August , we had resolved most of the issues and updated the TnS team Accordingly , and the list of pending cases was brought down to 18 from 100 . I was in regular contact with account manager Seema and Ritu Sharma during this period .
But suddenly after 8 th August TnS stopped responding to all the emails sent to them about the resolution of the cases , i contacted Ritu sharma and she said i will receive a reply from them very soon with in next 2 days , i waited , waited and waited for the reply on 15th when no reply ws recieved i contacted account manager again and she told to send the email again to TnS . Now even after sending 3-5 emails after 15 the August till today 13 the Sep i have not received a direct reply of the current status of the issue . In the mean time we have worked with the buyers and are left with only 3-5 cases out of those 100 cases given .
After being assocaited with ebay for a long time i never expected this unprofessional behaviour from the TnS Team . You can check the records of the email sent by us to ebay support in the mail server to confirm the case .
We also received an email from Ebay that our account does not fall in updated SNP policy and the complains are less than 5 percent , so if my account is ok according to the updated policy then why RESTRICTIONS ?
So Sharat pls look into this issue , and update us soon , i have almost lost faith in the ebay system , you have policies that's good , but you yourself dont stick to them .
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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?
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 ........
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
One good change for sellers i have noticed is now the customer has to PAY first to confirm there BUY, this has cleared all problems i used to have with UPI...So Congrats...
But please do something about your new SNP policy, if sellers dont have there id left, wats the use of these cool new features???
Dear Sharatji, I have another problem.I give discount for combined shipping.Your shopping cart probably does not recognise this feature.This has happened twice. This is a very embarassing situation.After all I face the buyer.I must be able to justify the actions.I try to make up by giving free gifts.But I cant do anything after the payment has been made by the buyer by PaisaPay button.Please look up this urgently. Thanx, Truly, Amitava
I welcome the new changes done on SNP Policy but i have some question in this regards which i am facing as my user id shoppingstoreonline is suspended due to SNP i do understand that according to new changes my buyers satisfaction rate is below 1% and for this TNS has sent a warning mail also and i try to improve also all my Item not received dispute closed with buyers satisfaction now as per the neutral and negative feedback i have only 2 negative feedback and total 3 for that also buyer agree to withdrawal 2 out of 3 and same for the neutral feedback also now my question is :
1. Due to suspension i can send feedback withdrawal form to my buyer who willing to withdraw the feedback.
2. According to TNS team mail i have prove my performance with relevant proof then i can request to review my account but as all listing is closed no pending order left then how i can prove my self.
3. If i have mail from buyer as a supporting proof of there satisfaction will you accept that proof if yes then how i can proceed for the same.
4. Please let me how you calculate this 1% buyers satisfaction level.
5. Do TNS Team accept the ODR India's resolution like in my user id they agree to help me on cases of past 60 days.
6. Please check my case the let me know is there any possibility left that my account will be reinstated or i have to forgot to do business further on ebay.
Hope that above question will help and educate other seller's also.
I again say the changes are good and its all in favour of buyer as well as seller's like if we follow this then we get more buyer and i must say that we seller must do all this them self not by the force of any policy or terms as a professional.
Dear Mr Sharat , I would like to draw your attention to something different of what you mentioned in the thread. There is an evil in eBay India. Sometime ago you had taken steps to crush that evil, and you were very successful in doing that but today again it is back with its full strength . Well the evil is piracy of Video games in PC and PS2 Section.Few sellers in eBay India are selling Copied/Pirated/ games/software's. You had suspended a few Ids some time ago for selling pirated software's but now again sellers have come up with new ids and are selling illegal copies of games and software's for as low as Rs 20.Because of these illegal activities genuine sellers have to face drop in sales and tough and unjustified competition.Pirated software is mainly sold in PC games category and PlayStation 2 category. please check out this http://stores.ebay.in/Mohammeds-Pc-Games-Shop http://search.ebay.in/_W0QQsassZtensionfree http://search.ebay.in/_W0QQsassZkhemu2001
Dear Sharatji, I am happy to note that you realise shortcomings in your proactive policy on shipping. I cant do a lot of listings because I cant work much due to my age.So,if you pull down my listings,my buyers suffer more than me.The visitor may not be a buyer.Sometimes my philatelist friends will visit.Sometimes a collector will visit.My Pakistani friends like just to see my listings. Instead of pulling them down,please just tell me to reduce shipping.That is less painful. Thanx, Truly, Amitava
It's always a good feeling when Senior Staff Members are here to interact and update the Community.
It's nice to see the changes taking place for the development of the site.
Although most of the changes are Buyer friendly but would eventually result in the better growth of the Seller.
My Concern
You are creating Shipping Filters and encouraging Sellers to charge actual shipping. But without realizing that your system is working against it.
For a Rs.18,000 worth of an Item where I charge Rs.200 as shipping and Rs.360 as Insurance ..... your system shows the Shipping Charge as Rs.560 by clubbing the Insurance with Shipping.
Isn't it misrepresentation of facts ? .... and a Bad Experience for the Buyer ? .
All is well, but only problem is some sellers cross subsidize there products by charging exaborent shipping charges. It should be mandetory to make "reciever pays for the courier".
This is very sad, i recently got a mail from eBay that my id falls into SNP, i am unable to list further or revise my listings due to this, eBay customer service professionals are thou very kind to give me a call and explain me a little more ON SNP policy, they asked me to contact ODR to resolve my negative feedbacks / disputes and contact them back so they can re-evaluate my account...BUT I DONT THINK THIS IS THE SOLUTION FOR SELLERS, COZ FOR 1 CASE MEDIATOR CHARGES ARE RS 500, NOTE - MOST OF THE -VE FEEDBACK HAPPENS FOR CHEAP PRICED PRODUCTS, in my case most of -ve are for products not more than Rs 125/- so how can i pay rs 500 to a mediator who is again not assuring that the feedback will be removed...With this policy in effect any small time buyer can cause BIG TIME TROUBLE to honest sellers...I hope all this makes sense to you and you do something about it...
recent change make head ache to seller most of to me recent my about 30 listing was remove which shipping cost was rs 50 and case was fee avoidance what i can save fee in 50 rs shipping charge? some item was more then 500 to 900 gram weight and real shipping cost was double i don't understand why don't you start charging flat fee with shipping cost your staff inform me that you can post it with free shipping in that most head ache is that we have to raise cost of buy now and item can not sold because so many is new buyer and compare and search with total and my item not can sold and i have to pay listing charge i know that in reply you give in sweet words why eBay do this and don't make any change so i make change and divert my listing of small item to other site thank you
Feedback to eBay India Team
Learn more about RSS
Must use Buy It Now and PayPal.
Previous
. 
)
)
)
)
eBay Community News
