Trademe-Important changes to success fees

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Ultimate Geek
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#2786230 29-Sep-2021 12:54

I really wish that TradeMe would allow me, as a buyer, to blacklist sellers so that I never see their listings. That would make my TradeMe experience about 10 billion times better.

The only categories I really view have been rendered totally useless by dropshippers that are "based in New Zealand".

alavaliant

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#2786248 29-Sep-2021 13:22

TENKAN:
I got a email from them explaining the new details with this link.

https://help.trademe.co.nz/hc/en-us/articles/360032347131-Marketplace-fees

I find the logic on what listing category uses what % success feed somewhat confusing. Does anybody else here understand what makes some categories more expensive success fee wise or is it just something trademe has made random arbitrary choices around?

premiumtouring

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#2786383 29-Sep-2021 14:56

mkissin:

I really wish that TradeMe would allow me, as a buyer, to blacklist sellers so that I never see their listings. That would make my TradeMe experience about 10 billion times better.

The only categories I really view have been rendered totally useless by dropshippers that are "based in New Zealand".

BidBud allows you to do this. Blacklisted users can be filtered from search results. Their search and product monitoring is also significantly better than TradeMe (includes category filtering). It is also free.

We know TM can't compete with Facebook Marketplace's "free" which is why there is so much rubbish and "energy" required to manage anything on Facebook Marketplace, however, TM need to seriously consider moving to a basic subscription model that waives success fees. I'll happily pay $120 per year to have 25 free listings per month. Marketing and Ping extra, of course.

Facebook could wipe TM out overnight if they did two things:

1) Provide a secure payment processing facility just like Ping but also add address, account and ID verification (similar to Geekzone). This is where they make their money at 2% per transaction.

2) Provide a courier management / shipping interface with all the major delivery services like TM. But unlike TM, you could secure this further by providing user-pays insurance and enforce pick ups and delivery from authenticated/verified addresses.

FB can still be a free marketplace, but for genuine buyers trying to work with genuine sellers, you could filter out the unverified - both as a seller and buyer.

That way if you're not a verified FBMP buyer, I can choose to filter out your messages as a verified FBMP seller and vice versa.

K8Toledo

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#2787551 1-Oct-2021 11:23

mkissin:

I really wish that TradeMe would allow me, as a buyer, to blacklist sellers so that I never see their listings. That would make my TradeMe experience about 10 billion times better.

The only categories I really view have been rendered totally useless by dropshippers that are "based in New Zealand".

You can do that with BidBud - setup better than TradeMe imho.

One of my biggest gripes about TM are the rampant sales of fake laptop batteries. Followed by the crapola UI & search engine. Oh & also winning bids that don't appear now when auction ends.

jonb

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#2787627 1-Oct-2021 12:31

TradeMe is essentially dead where I live - do a location filter for 'Timaru - Oamaru' for a fairly common item and lucky if get any results at all. Still use it occasionally filtering to Dunedin or Christchurch but it seems everybody here uses FB for pick up items. I never used FB living in Auckland up to the beginning of last year. Don't know if I will even bother with TM when selling my 2008 vehicle shortly when previously it would have been a no-brainer.

eracode

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#2787647 1-Oct-2021 13:15

PeterReader:

Hmmmm. Here we go.

-1 for repetition. OP already said that. Can't see the point of your comments here on GZ.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

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richms

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#2787716 1-Oct-2021 15:16

mkissin:

I really wish that TradeMe would allow me, as a buyer, to blacklist sellers so that I never see their listings. That would make my TradeMe experience about 10 billion times better.

The only categories I really view have been rendered totally useless by dropshippers that are "based in New Zealand".

They refuse to even acknowledge that as a problem because "we allow some sellers to ship from overseas" which is totally ok if they had their location as china, not Auckland.

Richard rich.ms

quickymart

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#2787723 1-Oct-2021 15:28

Problem is a lot of the competitors have either closed down or been swallowed up, as Trademe is just too big to compete with. The road is littered with failures - Sella, Zillion, Wheedle, to name but a few.

harlansmart

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#2787735 1-Oct-2021 16:20

APAX UK private equity firm buys TM -> UI decline (UId) follows... UId accelerated, w/the 'design' team 'succeeding' 2020/21 in rendering site 'loathsome & near un-useable' according to 99%+ of users. Sunday & Monday 8-9pm used to see 120,000+ users logged in, check that now, the number is more than halved. Pages are difficult to view & make much sense of while dozens of useful features & functions have been removed.. constructive input from sellers who've paid 100k+ fees is 100% ignored... they just increased 'casual seller' costs recently so for 'in trade sellers' the writing was on the wall.

-----------

Trade Me Site Survey

(99%+ vote 'NO, we don't like the site')

-----------

Play-lunch musings:

Q: 'Hey look, success, sites near un-useable, but sales are down, what shall we do ?'

A: 'Easy, let's keep raising success fee 'caps & percentages' to cover losses.'

RunningMan

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#2787752 1-Oct-2021 17:17

That survey is of course totally unscientific, and people are far more likely to raise negative issues than positive, however I would be very interested to know how they rate/survey themselves internally. It's very rare to see anything other than negative comment externally.

The impression you get is they are somewhat dismissive of customer feedback, in the way some of the large telcos were some time ago (some of which have improved tremendously since then).

CYaBro

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#2787754 1-Oct-2021 17:19

Not sure if related but I tried to book a courier yesterday, for a same sized box I've sent a lot of, and the prices have gone through the roof!

This sized box used to cost me about $25-$28 to ship and now it shows as being almost $70!
The exact same sized box, going directly to CourierPost website, is about $58 so now it's actually cheaper too just go directly to them.

Aramex was $31.50 but they don't appear to do pickups from my location.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

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Mehrts

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#2787887 1-Oct-2021 19:30

Not too sure how many people know this, but Trademe often has discounts on success fees charged for casual sellers.
Sometimes 50% off, sometimes 100%.

These are pretty much always on a Saturday, and only advertised on their site on that day, so they're tricky to take advantage of. Usually applies to general items and vehicle listings, sometimes only $1 reserves.

The best way to take advantage of these offers, is to take pics & have a description of all the stuff you want to sell on hand as soon as you know you want to sell it, then just wait until the discount is advertised. Sure, it's a bit of an extra admin hurdle, and timing isn't always on your side, but it can potentially save you hundreds of dollars!

I tend to use Trademe, as a nationwide audience is gained instead of a local one with FB marketplace.

neb

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#2787910 1-Oct-2021 21:57

RunningMan:
There are some very fundamental user interface/experience issues though which make the new morphed site so difficult to use
* Inconsistent look/feel across pages

You forgot:

Pages that randomly rearrange themselves when you look at them. This happens for example with search results, you have two tabs open with results from different categories and when you flip from one to the other there's a flurry of movement as they rearrange themselves into a different order.

I'm sure someone got paid a nice bonus to set up all of the Javascript required to do that.

Geektastic

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#2787921 1-Oct-2021 22:28

I wonder if Trade Me would like to swap their success fees for the broken Nokia mobile I have for sale and a toy car?

K8Toledo

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#2787923 1-Oct-2021 22:36

RunningMan:

That survey is of course totally unscientific, and people are far more likely to raise negative issues than positive, however I would be very interested to know how they rate/survey themselves internally. It's very rare to see anything other than negative comment externally.

The impression you get is they are somewhat dismissive of customer feedback, in the way some of the large telcos were some time ago (some of which have improved tremendously since then).

About 3yrs ago I purchased a Z440 off TM - the seller turned out to be Trade Me head office (the HP workstations were being replaced with laptops, go figure).

And the employee who met onsite at Fanshaw St was a TM Web Developer! :)

Seizing this golden opportunity I unloaded everything about the site I thought needed improvement.... he agreed saying the staff were already aware.

When I asked why nothing had been done he laughed and replied "management". :)

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