Bank Transfers

Kia ora fred1949,  We know bank transfers have been a familiar way to pay for a long time, but unfortunately, scams involving bank transfers are on the rise across New Zealand. While most fraudulent activities on Trade Me are resolved quickly, 90% of the scams that we couldn't help our members with last year involved bank transfers. Because these transactions happen outside of Trade Me, we have zero visibility over them, which means we can’t step in to help if something goes wrong.

To make Trade Me the safest place to trade, we’re also doubling our Buyer Protection from $2,500 to $5,000, giving our community more peace of mind than ever before. This means if a trade goes wrong, or an item turns up not as described, we will refund you up to $5,000. You can still choose to pay with cash, though please remember these trades aren't covered by our Buyer Protection.

I agree also - not happy with no bank transfers and yet TM is allowing cash sales - so a stranger comes to your door, they could be violent, but that is OK apparently.  On Facebook market place there are warnings about cash sales.  Also cash sales - hate them, a buyer says they will pick a sale up on, for example, 2pm Sunday on a specific date, they arrive at 2pm two weeks later or at 9pm that night and are surprised that you are not that friendly, or they never arrive at all.

I also agree with Fred1949, and I also agree with annie_kiwi. From my perspective, TradeMe has taken away our democratic right to trade how WE want, and adhere to their rules. Our banks set up Payee Confirmation for the reason that if we had any problems with paying into people's bank accounts wrongly, then we had that availability to re-check details before transactions went ahead. If we didn't and we went ahead with the transaction and lost money, then that was our mistake, and our responsibility not to make that same mistake again.  TradeMe need to rethink their strategy, and come up with a solution that is beneficial to their traders, and not just themselves otherwise they may find a huge loss if traders decide to close their membership. 

Just list the cash option, put a comment in your listing that buyers wanting to use bank deposit can select the cash option and you'll share your bank details once they select buy now - this achieves exactly what you are needing, being a bank deposit option. Just because you cant list bank deposit as a payment method, doesn't mean you cant offer this to your buyers once they have selected buy now, indicating cash payment.

Totally agree with what has been saud aboce. I have already started changing my listings to fjnal listing. I too have never had a problem with bank transfers. Maybe if trade me acted quickly to get the bad traders off the site there wouldnt be all this fraud happening. And yes we should be able to trade how we want, if you want to use Ping as a buyer or a seller do so but site is becoming more of a dictatorship and we all have the right to leave if we are unhappy.

I am not interested in being forced to use their ping payment system. So will just shift all my ads over to facebook marketplace. Trademe could have a little slice of a lot of sales, but they have got too greedy, so they can have 100% of no sales.

You do realise that with the removal of the success fees, in most cases the ping fee will be less so you'll actually be better off after this comes in?

It is not about potentially being better off in 'most cases'. It is about being forced to have my payment be diverted through a system that I don't want to use, instead of coming directly from the buyer to me. If you think Apax Partners are doing this for the good of the average Trademe user, then see my listing for the Harbour Bridge that I am selling....

I get that people dont want to use it - and probably for a variety of reasons. One of them being the fees, so Im simply responding to the comments about the fees specifically as some dont realise they will infact be better off financially.

In answer to this - and the other person who pointed this out - the "better off" only applies to the seller, not the buyer who has to pay the Ping fee and was never going to pay the success fee.  Or are all the sellers going to reduce their prices - yeah, right.

No, the seller pays the ping fees. The buyer pays a very small service fee.

Now, what's interesting here, is that what AJ just stipulated that I find incredibly amusing and not impressed about, is that the buyer now pays a very small service fee to keep the site going. Now that's pretty rude. It's not up to the buyer to pay again after they won an auction or bought an item. The success fee is still taken off when the trader has sold their item. Yes, the success fee has been dropped in price, but the success fee should be the thing that is keeping the site operable, NOT an extra fee from the buyer. Please enlighten all of us how TradeMe decided to come up with that little lightbulb idea.

I will correct myself in that the success fee for casual sellers has been removed, but the fact that the service fee tier is for the buyer to foot is still wrong. We all understand that in any auction whether online or in regular auction houses in every day life the seller pays the commision of such and such a percentage because they put something up for auction, that's still not for the buyer to have to add on to what they won an item for. Why the heck doesn't TradeMe get the site back to how it was in the beginning. There were never the issues that there are now.

It’s certainly a very interesting development, a store charging someone an additional fee (in addition to the cost of the item) for the privilege of buying something in their store.

It feels a bit like the very surcharge's for digital payments that the government are trying to remove.

Personally I think the issue with Trademe isn’t the success fee itself, but it’s the percentage charged. NZers don’t have a huge market to sell to, so Trademe should never be able to justify the level of fees the likes of eBay charge - despite this, I sell on both platforms, and I pay lower fees on eBay.

As Trademe have continuously increased the level of fees charged, the revenue they have made has continued to drop. At some point the success fees charged got to a point where sellers actively looked elsewhere. There was a breaking point.
Why didn’t Trademe simply lower their fees to drive more people away from Facebook - Trademe is certainly more secure and trustworthy, but it’s not worth 11.9% when other options are free.

There are fundamental failures which won’t be addressed with these changes, the clutter from millions of listings from overseas sellers has been a key reason many have left Trademe. Trademe have taken a stance of giving preferential treatment to overseas based sellers, despite them having minimal sales. It’s no longer a platform for kiwis to sell.

There is some logic with the buyer paying the service fee

1 some sellers believe if the buyer wants to use ping, they should pay for it not the seller. They do get extra benefits like buyer protection

2 most other auction places charge the buyer a "buyers premium" so it's not unusual in the auction world for a buyer to pay some form of "fee"

Except TradeMe is not an auction site running the auction bidding process but rather like a shopping mall hosting Sellers Listings for sale, there's a big difference there. Incentivising Buyers to return & shop through a discount or free shipping per purchase $ spent rather than road blocking with a fee when regular Members are already aware a Ping allowance has been built into purchase prices, the hike in shipping costs throughout the country and now applying a Service fee on top - Brand new items are becoming cheaper to purchase off site than second hand onsite - we're about to see another hike in listing prices as Casual Sellers work in their Ping allowance coverage now too! - I have no doubt the fee will work with the target market of a younger generation coming through However to throw an incentive in, independent of Sellers and given the profit margin the company has made, would attract a much wider shopping population boosting sales for all in a much shorter timeframe. - Plenty of NZ Business companies have taken the incentive approach which makes it extremely difficult for TM Sellers to compete in the market. The company could fare better by giving Sellers a hand out here by attracting Buyers back to the site through an incentive reward. - Cheers.

I disagree. Yes there are a lot of buy now new items from bulk sellers, but most of the things i buy have been via an auction. Most casual sellers will have cheaper fees now with no success fees so I cant see prices increasing to factor in the ping fee, more likely just keep the same (and make more from the same) or decrease to factor the cheaper fees. $1 fee on a $20-$100 item is nothing really. Yes it gets higher, but you'd then consider the overall price including that when purchasing - like when you factor shipping and any other costs.

Offsite vs onsite + shipping not onsite vs onsite purchasing was pointed to, it's about bringing Buyers back to the site not driving them elsewhere. One Seller has already stipulated they will reimburse the Service fee charged to Buyers = incentive driven, a method to attract Buyers back to site which the company would fare better faster to adopt rather than the Seller and as many NZ Business's have. The business brain works different to the casual and the Buyer just the same as the new generation coming through will react different to fees applied, what is nothing on top to the business brain is the straw, which we're hearing, that has broken the camels back. Yes! Buyers will see Ping fee + shipping + a service fee which are all factored in regardless of a drop for casual sellers in overall fees - the drop which may or may not be being comprehended isn't absorbed by the Buyer seeing all the charges they're factoring in and seeing offsite brand new is cheaper than purchasing onsite. Sellers could do with a hand from the company to attract Buyers back.

For casual sellers, you don't think its enough of a hand that trademe has dropped the success fee?

That's got nothing to do with what I've pointed out.

"sellers could do with a hand from the company to attract buyers back"

I don’t think it’s casual sellers which are Trademe’s main revenue stream.

In-trade sellers being charged 11.9% success fees, plus success fees on shipping, and enjoying none of the historical benefits causal sellers have seen like success fee free weekends, has and will continue to drive in-trade sellers away.

These recent changes are either going to make or break Trademe. Unfortunately I think the latter will be true

I’m also waiting for Trademe to highlight the tools they continue to spout as only being available for professional sellers, to somehow justify the fees in-trade sellers pay.

Michelle on here (Trademe staff) is yet to point out a single professional seller tool available to us (that we don’t pay extra for).
Sponsored listings is a paid product, my products is available to all including casual sellers, tradevine has a monthly fee, Trademe stores has a monthly fee.

Yes greg23,

I'm with you there hence calling for a Buyer incentive to bring buyers back for all Sellers. - Cheers.

I can't speak for others, but I just want a site where I can advertise an item I don't want, and be put in touch with someone who wants it. That's it, nothing else. The buyer and seller can sort the details from there.

All the other fluff that has been added to Trademe over the years, is of zero interest to me and is just clutter as far as I am concerned. I certainly don't want my money going through a third party system, that I have no control, or say in.

Trademe is following a well trodden path of small family businesses, being sold and resold to various cooperates, who just try and extract as much as possible, while simultaneously complicating things, to the point of failure.

It is such a shame the original TradeMe model has been lost in amongst the mire of local shops and overseas sellers, especially when a lot of them aren't delivering on what they've promised. The scams will still continue on regardless of the Ping payment system and the service fee tier that's about to hit traders next week. Buyer protection isn't going to matter one iota when it can take up to a month or more to sort issues out, and by then heck knows where anyone's payment has ended up, and if the product is even going to arrive at its end destination. TradeMe needs to sharpen their pencil even more rigidly to ensure traders feel more secure. Buckle up everyone!!!

If our financial institutions were adhering to Rule of Law, with the basics and opened banks back up in our communities, many of the issues raised with payments would disappear overnight.

Asking for online ID and Biometrics must comply with all manner of Regulations to comply with the Privacy Act and is no guarantee to verify one and the same person.

Anyone recall the collapse of Lombard Finance?

Or Tower Finance?

Look up the names of those people and it's merely the same sewerage seeping out involving the same Pass the Buck .

One must always have hands on checks and balances for Know Your Customer which in it's current copy & paste format is the disaster that Government Printing Office staff said in the 1980's would end up as a Fail.

Felinequwen, yes the scams will still happen but coming from someone who has been hit twice, paying by ping was a godsend. Got my $1600 and $1200 back within a few days. If i had make a bank deposit, who knows if i wouldve ever received the money back

AJ 

Were the traders you were paying New Zealand based locals?

A drop based trader with an outlet here?

Or an International overseas based trader?

Regardless, everyone should be factoring into account monies transfered don't always equate to a successful payment transaction as there may well be insufficient funds for whatever reason, including non payments from other parties as we have seen so often over the years because of Hardware and Software problems Internationally.

Once again, a link to none other than Billy Bot and the National Cash Register system.

Cash is King / Queen and always will be.

Regarding Bank transfers, why remove NZ Bank transfer if it's a problem with International transfers involved in scams?

As an aside, a well known former NZ Bank Chief Executive went to  USA several years ago and has pushed Digital transactions only which is in breach of individuals choice how they undertake one's life.

White collar crime is rife.

No idea where they were based - as with most scams, what they appeared to be, and what they actually are could be, and probably are completely different. Im just glad I used ping and got my money back as they looked quite legitimate.