Trademe fees blimmin heck

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BDFL
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Reply # 706131 25-Oct-2012 10:07
GBristow: It's a monopoly. Tried Wheedle yet? Yes, I thought so... It's not a monopoly. Anyone can get in and do an auction site. Now, doing an auction site that works, and is a good service for both sellers and buyers is another story. Mauricio Freitas (Geekzone Admin, Devil's Advocate, my blog, technology disclosure, my tweets, Web Performance Optimization) Geekzone Price comparison \| Amazon Kindle order page \| How to get the best out of Geekzone \| New Zealand IT Jobs \| Geekzone News \| Jinglebugs

ajobbins

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Reply # 706135 25-Oct-2012 10:19
DonGould: The sooner TM fees rise to 15% the better. Price will push consumers. The current problem is that TM fees are so low that consumers are not being pushed. $75m on $1.5b is hardly an ROI. It needs to be delivering NP of $150m at least. The share price is probably a little over valued. The PE ratio is sitting around 20. By contrast AAPL is around 15 and GOOG around 21. In my view GOOG has greater growth and profitability potential. Facebook PE is around 80! Hugely over values IMHO. Should probably short some of that stock. Twitter: ajobbins

DonGould

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Reply # 706139 25-Oct-2012 10:31
ajobbins: DonGould: The sooner TM fees rise to 15% the better. Price will push consumers. The current problem is that TM fees are so low that consumers are not being pushed. $75m on $1.5b is hardly an ROI. It needs to be delivering NP of $150m at least. The share price is probably a little over valued. The PE ratio is sitting around 20. By contrast AAPL is around 15 and GOOG around 21. In my view GOOG has greater growth and profitability potential. Facebook PE is around 80! Hugely over values IMHO. Should probably short some of that stock. I totally agree FB is over priced. I also agree that TM is over priced simply because the amount you have to invest to get your return, but I do understand that you also have to consider rising share values as well, but you also have to consider risk and all the other obvious issues. End of the day my point stands that the price of using simply has to go up if the market is to develop. D Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!! Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

ajobbins

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Reply # 706146 25-Oct-2012 10:38
DonGould: I also agree that TM is over priced simply because the amount you have to invest to get your return, but I do understand that you also have to consider rising share values as well, but you also have to consider risk and all the other obvious issues. Yep, I think risk is the biggest reason why the PE ratio is too high. In order for TM to continue to achieve high growth, they either need to keep increasing prices (and I suspect they are getting close to the top end of what the market will tolerate, at least for some verticals) or enter some new markets. Given that entering any new market is risky, I see no guarantees in future earning growth to justify the current share price/ratio. Twitter: ajobbins

surfisup1000

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Reply # 706170 25-Oct-2012 11:00
freitasm: GBristow: It's a monopoly. Tried Wheedle yet? Yes, I thought so... It's not a monopoly. Anyone can get in and do an auction site. Now, doing an auction site that works, and is a good service for both sellers and buyers is another story. "Although the language of the Sherman Act forbids all monopolies, the courts have held that the act only applies to those monopolies attained through abused or unfair power. Monopolies that have been created through efficient, competitive behavior are not illegal under the Sherman Act, as long as honest methods have been employed. In determining whether a particular situation that involves more than one company is a monopoly, the courts must determine whether the presence of monopoly power exists in the market. Monopoly power is defined as the ability to control price or to exclude competitors from the marketplace. The courts look to several criteria in determining market power but primarily focus on market share (the company's fractional share of the total relevant product and geographic market). A market share greater than 75 percent indicates monopoly power, a share less than 50 percent does not, and shares between 50 and 75 percent are inconclusive in and of themselves." Under this definition trademe would be a legal monopoly. Trademe can certainly control prices (to a degree) -- they just increased fees and likely lost virtually no business. Even if you built the best online auction website with the lowest fees and spent millions on marketing, you'd still not beat trademe as they have the most important asset : market audience. It is a positive feedback loop. People will join the site with the largest number of members, thus increasing member numbers and making the site even more attractive to future members. Not that it's totally impossible. It is notoriously difficult to predict future technologies. The business is generally trademe's to lose.

Kyanar

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Reply # 706196 25-Oct-2012 11:48
surfisup1000: "Although the language of the Sherman Act forbids all monopolies, the courts have held that the act only applies to those monopolies attained through abused or unfair power. Monopolies that have been created through efficient, competitive behavior are not illegal under the Sherman Act, as long as honest methods have been employed. In determining whether a particular situation that involves more than one company is a monopoly, the courts must determine whether the presence of monopoly power exists in the market. Monopoly power is defined as the ability to control price or to exclude competitors from the marketplace. The courts look to several criteria in determining market power but primarily focus on market share (the company's fractional share of the total relevant product and geographic market). A market share greater than 75 percent indicates monopoly power, a share less than 50 percent does not, and shares between 50 and 75 percent are inconclusive in and of themselves." Under this definition trademe would be a legal monopoly. Trademe can certainly control prices (to a degree) -- they just increased fees and likely lost virtually no business. That's kind of irrelevant, since the Sherman Act is part of the US code. New Zealand law would apply. It should be noted that it's almost certainly perfectly legitimate under NZ law as well, but I wouldn't personally try to hold US law up as an indicator of how things are done here. That's the recording industry's job.

floydbloke

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Reply # 706214 25-Oct-2012 12:10
freitasm: GBristow: It's a monopoly. Tried Wheedle yet? Yes, I thought so... It's not a monopoly. Anyone can get in and do an auction site. Now, doing an auction site that works, and is a good service for both sellers and buyers is another story. Chambers dictionary defines a monopoly as:1 the right to be, or the fact of being, the only supplier of a specified commodity or service. 2 a business that has such a monopoly. 3 a commodity or service controlled in this way. 4 exclusive possession or control of anything I think TradeMe qualifies.

Lurch

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Reply # 706218 25-Oct-2012 12:13
The other side of Trademe is how long it's been around and the histroy built. For example all the feedback, I for one don'y want to loose that. If there was away that this information can be linked to another auction site then switching sites would be a no brainer. The other thing is I don't purchase through Trademe that often (or at all) lately. Most of my money goes overseas. I enjoy Ebay a lot, combine that with Paypal and it's just so easy. Item's are cheaper, and most stuff has free shipping. $199 for an Android mediaplayer here some one from Ebay is $89 including shipping. Range too is far better than local market, only annoying thing is having to browse multiple ebay sites ebay.co.nz/ebay.com.au/ebay.de etc to find items, even if they're marked as worldwide shipping.

surfisup1000

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Reply # 706224 25-Oct-2012 12:21
Kyanar: That's kind of irrelevant, since the Sherman Act is part of the US code. New Zealand law would apply. It should be noted that it's almost certainly perfectly legitimate under NZ law as well, but I wouldn't personally try to hold US law up as an indicator of how things are done here. That's the recording industry's job. At the very least, trade me is in a grey area where under some definitions they'll qualify as a monopoly and others not. Thats all I'm saying.

gjm

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Reply # 706229 25-Oct-2012 12:29
I sold my laptop and iPad on there recently. Ended up paying $88 bucks in fees from about $1600 sales. Sorry but thats too much so I wont be bothering with trademe to sell stuff anymore. Sure they gave me a fast and easy way to sell but I dont value that service at probably more than $40.

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Reply # 706244 25-Oct-2012 12:53
gjm: I sold my laptop and iPad on there recently. Ended up paying $88 bucks in fees from about $1600 sales. Sorry but thats too much so I wont be bothering with trademe to sell stuff anymore. Sure they gave me a fast and easy way to sell but I dont value that service at probably more than $40. How would you have sold it otherwise and would you have gotten more than $1500 for it?

mattwnz

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Reply # 706517 25-Oct-2012 21:11
bazzer: gjm: I sold my laptop and iPad on there recently. Ended up paying $88 bucks in fees from about $1600 sales. Sorry but thats too much so I wont be bothering with trademe to sell stuff anymore. Sure they gave me a fast and easy way to sell but I dont value that service at probably more than $40. How would you have sold it otherwise and would you have gotten more than $1500 for it? Exactly, that is a good price. Take it to a second hand shop, and you would be lucky to get half that, as they have big overheads to cover. $88 isn't bad.

Skolink

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Reply # 706526 25-Oct-2012 21:30
Trademe fees are too high, but Ebay is far worse. Total fees are 14.1% on the couple of hundred items I have sold on there. (Ebay 9.7% plus 4.4% compulsory Paypal) Rip off!! Admittedly part of the Paypal fee will go to VISA (also a ripoff in my opinion).

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Reply # 706547 25-Oct-2012 21:56
floydbloke: Chambers dictionary defines a monopoly as:1 the right to be, or the fact of being, the only supplier of a specified commodity or service. 2 a business that has such a monopoly. 3 a commodity or service controlled in this way. 4 exclusive possession or control of anything I think TradeMe qualifies. I just don't understand the idea of TradeMe as a monopoly. The only way it qualifies is saying TradeMe has a monopoly on TradeMe! It is like saying Cadbury has a monopoly on Cadbury Chocolate. Sella is perfectly viable competitor. I do not understand...

lucky015

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Reply # 706599 26-Oct-2012 00:17
Skolink: Trademe fees are too high, but Ebay is far worse. Total fees are 14.1% on the couple of hundred items I have sold on there. (Ebay 9.7% plus 4.4% compulsory Paypal) Rip off!! Admittedly part of the Paypal fee will go to VISA (also a ripoff in my opinion). Don't forget that in the U.S those sales are not taxable even on an extremely large sale, and that a lot of items are shipped internationally. Personally I have gotten sick of using Trademe for anything other than second hand purchases. New items are often more expensive than I can get elsewhere and the shipping charge drives it right over the top and for cheaper items I flat out refuse to pay the often extremely high charges that often greatly outweigh the cost of the item its self. There are a number of items that I would very much like to buy but I'm not going to pay just as much for shipping as for the item in the first place.

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