International Shopping Made Easy

Who doesn’t love some good old retail therapy once in a while? But when it comes to online shopping, our choice is largely limited to stuff available within the geographical boundaries of the country. You will surely relate to the stressful times of trying to get your friends or relatives to carry stuff along for you. Although, one can oder items from abroad, the process is very complicated and has still not reached the mainstream consumer. There’s duties, foreign exchange, shipping and a whole lot of other things to figure out. Whatever happened to Globalisation and ‘the world is flat’, we wonder.

Well, it looks like eBay India is out to change things with the launch of its latest initiative - Global EasyBuy (ebay.in/geb). The promising venture might soon become the international online shopping destination for Indians, by offering shoppers convenient access to around 18 million international products. The products available are those that comply with the country’s importing regulations and categories include luxury brands, electronics, books, hardware, musical instruments etc. Well international here is a misnomer. The website currently has products mostly from the US, but who’s complaining. The way it works is that the consumer gets to pay a single amount (inclusive of product cost, shipping and any applicable duties) in rupees. In turn the original shipper from the US ships the product to a central hub in his country from then on eBay takes over to bring the item to your doorstep. The process takes place through eBay’s secure payment gateway called PaisaPay. Head over to www.ebay.in/geb to experience it first hand and quench the shopaholic in you. The site looks fine, though be very careful with cached memory. At times with ‘products last looked at’ it may just take you to ebay.com which is not where you want to be.