High volume listing fees - am I missing something?

You are missing nothing. International sellers don't pay HVL fees. Never have.  

Wow , really?? What is the reasoning for that? I’d always presumed that local sellers would receive preferential treatment vs international sellers.

It’s no wonder the site is littered with thousands of listings from sellers with minimal sell-through rates.

I don't think Trade Me has ever explained it, but if HVL fees were required for international sellers a decent chunk of them would probably have to withdraw from this website. 

Trade Me no doubt uses active listings on the website as one of their parameters for reporting. Nice to tell the website owners that there is millions of listings and growing I guess.  Even if that is meaningless in terms of revenue. 

I guess it's possible that having a huge amount of items on here does help with things like google recognition and promotion as a premium website. You do want people to click through to Trade Me, even if there isn't a hope that some of these items International Sellers dump on here will ever actually sell. 

The playing field is definitely tilted in the international sellers direction - we the 'in-trade' New Zealand based sellers are treated like the smelly kids on the block.

I really struggle to comprehend the logic behind some decisions - here I am as a local seller being charged $50 per month to have between 100-150 listings at any time, generating success fees of approx $1000 per month, while international sellers have 300,000 listings with no HVL fees.

I can make a quick assessment by looking at their feedback and what they are selling that the success fee revenue they are generating is significantly less than I generate, some sellers have low $$ value items and less than half a dozen positive feedback messages per month.

There is every possibility that my sales are being impacted because the few in demand items I have are swamped by the 300,000 items which are not selling which an international seller has listed.

Trade Me do what they like simply because they can. When Trade Me opened up to international sellers, those sellers were treated much more favourably than the loyal base of NZ based traders who had made Trade Me the success that it was. They have actively punished NZ in-trade sellers to the point where many have left - disillusioned with the ever-increasing fees, the clutter, a website that is no longer as user-friendly as it was (even though it's the new improved version). I guess the last nail in the coffin to many was the mandatory payment by Ping for in-trade sellers .  The latter being a complete PITA at slowing down the whole sale process as buyers request bank account details that used to be sent out automatically. Trade me was once the golden goose, however now it seems more like a sad old battery hen - and we all know what happens to them.

shortsbrandy To answer one of your points. If you have cash listed as a payment option, and bank details ticked to be sent automatically, that still happens. So no change there really. At least that's how it's been working for me under My Products. 

Kia Ora greg23,

Gary wrote a Post on HVL fee management awhile back which you may find some help from. 

Reference: Tips for managing High Volume Listing fees – Help - Trade Me

Callum - since the inception of Ping as the preferred payment - I have to select the payment options for each auction - is there anyway the preferred option/s can be listed as default?

I've been digging a bit deeper, I think its OK for me to post a username here, for example user 'Gokinzo' a trademe store based in 'Selwyn' (South Island, NZ), with 28,000+ listings. A quick calculation, using 28,000 listings, and trademe stores which include 150 free listings before HVL fees apply:

Listings beyond the HVL free allowance is 27,850. Thats $2785 in HVL fees. Assuming listings expire with a 7 day cycle, meaning they are relisted approx 4 times per month, thats about NZD $11,940 per month in HVL fees, or $143,280 per year in HVL fees alone.

Looking at recent sales, they cant be coming anywhere close to doing sufficient business to cover the HVL costs?

Is this not a level playing field, or once again am I missing something?

Even more disappointingly, there are multiple trademe stores, clearly international sellers, with less than 100 feedback messages, who have been members for 12+ months, and have 20,000+ active listings?

How is having the site cluttered with thousands of listings, with a sell-thru percentage of less than half a percent, benefiting Trademe?

Quantity over quality?

shortsbandy. No I don't think so. I have the same annoying issue. Sometimes if you duplicate a listing they seem to carry across prefilled. But if you create a new listing you do now have to tick the payment boxes you want. Every. Single. Time.

greg23 Because they pay a premium to be a store, $399 setup and $79 monthly, TM probably give them a break on HVL fees. Yes, officially they get 150 free rather than 100, but I suspect it must be more than that. The only way to find out for sure would be to enquire about being a store, and see if you can get the same deal if it's something that interests you.TM do bend things for individual sellers so it wouldn't be unheard of. 

EDIT: You could of course always just ask that seller. Not sure if they would reply. These type of large dropshippers often seem a bit poor at the communication side of things.