Trademe fees blimmin heck

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mattwnz

20106 posts

Uber Geek

#706611 26-Oct-2012 00:43

lucky015:
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.

I only use trademe for selling, as you can get very good prices. Buying from it tends to be expensive, and it is full of cheap chinese stuff that you can buy cheaper and free shipping from places like deal extreme.

gjm

808 posts

Ultimate Geek

#706674 26-Oct-2012 09:03

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?

yup I take your point...doesnt mean I have to like it though. Maybe next time Ill have a raffle :)

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TinyTim

1041 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#706692 26-Oct-2012 09:12

gjm: Maybe next time Ill have a raffle :)

Then you'll have the DIA on your back!

blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#706694 26-Oct-2012 09:17

GBristow: It's a monopoly. Due to the nature of the industry, competition is almost impossible. It's another good example of a business/industry which doesn't function efficiently in an open market. eBay attracts similar complaints, and a similar dominant position. Trademe will continue to raise fees, and they will get away with it because other sites don't have the critical mass of users required to receive market price for a good.

The only realistic solution is legislation of some sort, but that's problematic for many reasons.

I don't think that's quite right, and legislation is definitely not the answer.

Competition exists for trademe, but as it stands people are happy to use trademe because it is better than the competition. Like you point out, the competition is inferior largely because they don't have a critical mass of users, so its better to go to trademe.

When trademe raise their fees, people complain and they will drive some people to start using the competition. The entry barrier for moving is actually quite low is it not? Sellers just need to take their time to list on two sites, buyers just need to visit two sites to check for goods. If they raise their fees too much, more people will go to the competition and it will become a more viable alternative.

If people can't be bothered to do this, doesn't it just show that they are happy to pay what trademe are charging to save their time in doing things twice?

If you legislate, what are you going to legislate? You can't legislate that half the people go to one auction site and half to go another, so more likely you are talking about legislating fees. I guess you are limiting that to auction fees? I guess to online auction fees? (presumably on the basis that trademe are abusing their monopoly power by charging high fees?).

I think that given the other methods available to buy and sell goods, and the ease with which you can switch between methods, unless trademe had policies to prevent you from using a competitor it would be pretty hard to say they are a monopoly and harder still to say they are abusing any monopoly power they do have.

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