Has Trade Me had its day?

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#1433054 23-Nov-2015 09:02

having been trading on TM for awhile having a feedback of over 14000 ive sold a bit as well .I could write pages about the fulfilmant component of the process.

But I wont rehash a lot of what has been covereded

Firstly their is now a address checker that enable one to get a better idea if the address is perceived by the courier as rural.
Some kind soul wrote this and allows free use of same
http://www.addresscheck.co.nz/

A lot of the "rural problem" as its known as is caused by the crazy postal code system that should be like the english system allowing identification pretty much exactly of the address. TM could then make it unable to set up an account or operate one without the PO code Then That problem is solved. Moving on

Something that is quite quaint is that Kiwis still think of TM as Their trading post and a club rather than a business.

The people that sell on it need to treat it like a business and the golden rule of every business is to make a profit.

so when joe smith from outer whoopgolia leaves of the RD from his address on a $4 item with $3 delivery he doesn't care that the seller got hit with a $5.60 Rural delivery charge.

I fyou do figure out its rural you send a pr forma email "please Pay extra" you then get int o a 2-5 email exchange as to why he should pay as mts jones next door doesnt! With each emailprocess having a cost of between $3-$10 again youve blown you profit

Now all this is cost of doing business and as sellers we have to accept that

Finally
I think you will find the old trademe is gone this one owned by a corporation is there to make money and it will change and adapt to fulfil that objective.

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mudguard

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#1433064 23-Nov-2015 09:10

I don't really buy small things, but coming back again to things like bike parts. There are a number of times I see sellers being quite blunt about working out shipping.
People will ask how much shipping will be for a set of wheels, and the usual answer is, go to a post shop and work it out. Completely puts me off buying something, after all, the seller is trying to sell the item.

keewee01

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#1433088 23-Nov-2015 09:41

I used to sell quite a few craft items on TradeMe a number of years ago, and originally I offered envelope post for smaller items and ParcelPost and/or courier only for larger items/security. But the idiot and dishonest buyers ruined that. They'd buy a number of items and then rather than waiting for me to work out postage they make payment at the cheapest postage - knowing full well that there was no way I could use that - and then I would have to waste time chasing and chasing. And the number of times people would claim to not be rural, when clearly they were.

Packaging items to send in an envelope or as a wrapped parcel would often take considerably more preparation - to protect against envelope tearing/waterproofing item/package against the weather. So a lot more of my time, for something I was only going to make a few dollars on. It just became too hard/timeconsuming when it would take 2 or 3 minutes to package into a plastic pouch, or 10 minutes for an envelope. (I didn't want to cut corners and do a shoddy job packaging items)

richms

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#1433124 23-Nov-2015 10:14

We used child labour to pre-package heaps of cables into courier bags, and then listed singles, 3 packs and 5 packs which were what the friends cousins kid had packed them into.

People would still go and buy 2 cables and then get all agro because we wouldnt ship them together. Even tho the listings clearly said no combining.

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keewee01

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#1433125 23-Nov-2015 10:16

richms: We used child labour to pre-package heaps of cables into courier bags, and then listed singles, 3 packs and 5 packs which were what the friends cousins kid had packed them into.

People would still go and buy 2 cables and then get all agro because we wouldnt ship them together. Even tho the listings clearly said no combining.

Yeah, got to love it how you stipulate the rules in the auction and then people still expect to have it their way. Haha

BTR

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#1433175 23-Nov-2015 11:30

If your not happy with TM then don't use it. Maybe ask more questions before you bid.

Next you will be complaining about being charged more for Rural broadband, you chose where to live and if that means services cost you more then get over it or move somewhere urban.

Geektastic

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#1433213 23-Nov-2015 12:16

gnfb: having been trading on TM for awhile having a feedback of over 14000 ive sold a bit as well .I could write pages about the fulfilmant component of the process.

But I wont rehash a lot of what has been covereded

Firstly their is now a address checker that enable one to get a better idea if the address is perceived by the courier as rural.
Some kind soul wrote this and allows free use of same
http://www.addresscheck.co.nz/

A lot of the "rural problem" as its known as is caused by the crazy postal code system that should be like the english system allowing identification pretty much exactly of the address. TM could then make it unable to set up an account or operate one without the PO code Then That problem is solved. Moving on

Something that is quite quaint is that Kiwis still think of TM as Their trading post and a club rather than a business.

The people that sell on it need to treat it like a business and the golden rule of every business is to make a profit.

so when joe smith from outer whoopgolia leaves of the RD from his address on a $4 item with $3 delivery he doesn't care that the seller got hit with a $5.60 Rural delivery charge.

I fyou do figure out its rural you send a pr forma email "please Pay extra" you then get int o a 2-5 email exchange as to why he should pay as mts jones next door doesnt! With each emailprocess having a cost of between $3-$10 again youve blown you profit

Now all this is cost of doing business and as sellers we have to accept that

Finally
I think you will find the old trademe is gone this one owned by a corporation is there to make money and it will change and adapt to fulfil that objective.

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Geektastic

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#1433220 23-Nov-2015 12:21

jonathan18: To echo Jaxon's points above, I have a real impression that Trade Me is being left behind in comparison to eBay and Aliexpress; it appears to be more worried about a redesign of its front page than actually providing a more maliable interface and search function. Totally agree re the need for multiple region searches, but there are also so many other areas it could learn from its overseas competition that make it easy for a buyer to find what they're looking for, for example filtering options are crap; similarly, their categories are often missing, inaccurate or not specific enough. I just often give up looking on TM and go elsewhere.

And I agree regarding the price of postage charged by sellers, but this isn't the fault of TM - and IME it's not limited to rural NZ only. It it almost always financially advantageous to buy small items from eBay or Aliexpress, as often the postage cost on TM is more than the item itself. I'd have no problem paying a bit more on the cost I could get something from o/s, given it'll often have CGA cover and will be delivered quickly, but not when the total cost can easily be 3-4 times more than getting it from o/s.

I'd imagine TM will remain the main place to sell s/h and larger items (the reality is not everyone is a FB user!), but for a number of reasons they'll continue to lose other types of listings.

You can often get free shipping from retailers in the USA as well. I buy clothes from Scottevest often and they have free or half price international shipping several times a year.

Last time I purchased camera stuff from Adorama, US Post priority international was another $26 - I have paid more than that to send things to the South Island!

Rikkitic

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#1433265 23-Nov-2015 13:21

BTR: If your not happy with TM then don't use it. Maybe ask more questions before you bid.

Next you will be complaining about being charged more for Rural broadband, you chose where to live and if that means services cost you more then get over it or move somewhere urban.

1. I make the choice not to use it more and more. That is precisely one of my points.

2. I always ask questions before I bid if there is any uncertainty about anything.

3. I am not a complainer. I was making a serious point.

4. I live where I do as a matter of circumstance, not choice, not that it makes any difference to this discussion.

5. I have no complaints at all about rural broadband. We have excellent service and it will be a very long time before I forget the extreme gratitude I feel for having been liberated from dial-up hell.

You seem to have somehow got the impression that there is something frivolous about this topic and my purpose in starting it. If I didn't make myself sufficiently clear, the reason I brought this up is that many commercial sellers on Trade Me seem to have forgotten (or never learned) what the concept of service is. I was using the issue of rural post as an example of that. Somehow, Aliexpress manages to do what Trade Me cannot. Why should this be?

Some posters here have made valid arguments from the seller's point of view. I don't dispute that. It is tough to make a living this way and customers can be a bitch. I know this because my sister is a small trader on Amazon. The real issue, though, is not who is ultimately right or wrong, or reasonable or unreasonable. If customers continue to leave Trade Me and go to Aliexpress as I have, Trade Me and the traders who depend on it will go broke and the Chinese will take another step towards world domination. The hard lesson is if you don't provide what customers want, and someone else does, you will lose.

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Handle9

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#1433280 23-Nov-2015 13:36

Rikkitic: I was using the issue of rural post as an example of that. Somehow, Aliexpress manages to do what Trade Me cannot. Why should this be?

Aliexpress can do it because of the vagarities of international postal agreements. It's not actually Aliexpress, it's the way China Post or Hong Kong Post charges for the vast volume of packages and doesn't pay any money to NZ Post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

There is a real extra cost for delivery when you live in a rural area. Under NZ Post's direct service it's subsidized, which is unfair on city folk but it's also the same for telecos. You win some, you loose some.

andrew027

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#1433333 23-Nov-2015 14:40

Rikkitic: Somehow, Aliexpress manages to do what Trade Me cannot. Why should this be?

First, it's not about what Trade Me cannot do - other than offering a place to host the listing in return for a cut of the sale price, Trade Me has very little to do with it. Second, while others have raised the benefits provided to exporters by Chinese and/or Hong Kong governments, also consider that it's unfair to compare [a] an international company who deal in bulk product and have low overheads due to labour laws allowing them to pay their staff a pittance to work in poor conditions (by NZ standards) with [b] a housewife in suburban Hawkes Bay getting rid of a few unwanted items online.

OK, I've probably gone too far in the other direction to make my point as I have no idea what you wanted to buy and who from, but there's a lot more involved here than the differences between the postal systems of New Zealand and China and Trade Me has no control over it.

Geektastic

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#1433487 23-Nov-2015 19:49

Handle9:
Rikkitic: I was using the issue of rural post as an example of that. Somehow, Aliexpress manages to do what Trade Me cannot. Why should this be?

Aliexpress can do it because of the vagarities of international postal agreements. It's not actually Aliexpress, it's the way China Post or Hong Kong Post charges for the vast volume of packages and doesn't pay any money to NZ Post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

There is a real extra cost for delivery when you live in a rural area. Under NZ Post's direct service it's subsidized, which is unfair on city folk but it's also the same for telecos. You win some, you loose some.

If it was truly subsidised, it would cost the same to send to Auckland as it does to the bundu.

Handle9

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#1433511 23-Nov-2015 20:03

Geektastic:
Handle9:
Rikkitic: I was using the issue of rural post as an example of that. Somehow, Aliexpress manages to do what Trade Me cannot. Why should this be?

Aliexpress can do it because of the vagarities of international postal agreements. It's not actually Aliexpress, it's the way China Post or Hong Kong Post charges for the vast volume of packages and doesn't pay any money to NZ Post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

There is a real extra cost for delivery when you live in a rural area. Under NZ Post's direct service it's subsidized, which is unfair on city folk but it's also the same for telecos. You win some, you loose some.

If it was truly subsidised, it would cost the same to send to Auckland as it does to the bundu.

It does cost the same but only for untracked post. As soon as you go tracked it's a courier type product and it has a surcharge.

sleemanj

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#1433601 23-Nov-2015 22:11

reven: I want trademe to show buy now + postage in searches like ebay and then sort by that.

You and basically all we honest sellers.

It is so frustrating as a seller to be "undercut" by people listing their goods for a dollar (or I've even seen 50c listings - the minimum FEE is 50c!) and then charging $10 for postage.

Unfortunately TM seems uninterested in this, they are far more interested in encouraging sellers to offer free shipping, not "free basic shipping, or choose alternative method for $x" mind you, just free shipping everywhere, the only way you get recognised as "free shipping" is to have ONLY free shipping.

PS: It could perhaps go without saying that "free shipping" is never "free shipping" it is built into the sale price, the sale price that TM calculates fees on... you see where I'm going with this.

---
James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

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#1433794 24-Nov-2015 11:02

Rikkitic: The relevance of Trade Me in today's e-commerce world is a subject that has been dealt with before but I feel impelled to revisit it once more.

I live at a rural address and I often need to buy small items. I used to use Trade Me for this but increasingly the traders there insist on using only courier post, with ridiculous charges for delivery to rural addresses. Often the postage is more than the cost of the item.

Yes, we all have friends in town to get around that but my question is why should we have to? I have posted about this on the Trade Me forum in the past and most of the responses were along the lines of it's only a few dollars so what is your problem? I guess my problem is that where I grew up the customer was always king. If this kind of service is what the customer wants, then it should be provided without question. Otherwise you go out of business.

Today I ran into the same thing again. I needed a couple of small items and looked first on Trade Me. I sent a query to the seller and the response was not only could they not send it by ordinary post at my risk, but I could only pay for it through the bank, despite Pay Now being on the listing.

My response? Why bother? I went to Aliexpress and immediately found better alternatives for less money, not to mention free shipping to any address in New Zealand, rural or otherwise. Is it any wonder that Trade Me is losing customers?

Couriers make it harder to claim you never received the parcel....and there are people who do this all the time. Sad, but true.

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