BEWARE. TM deducting extra costs when giving partial success fee refund to top sellers
Confirmed bug
A heads up to all traders who are top sellers. If an item is paid with ping, then this issue will not involve you. However if your item is paid to your bank account, and you have to do a partial success refund ( likely if you are combining shipping and have some shipping refund to buyer). then while TM will give you the partial success fee refund to your account, they will then remove the whole top seller discount from you( this maybe the topseller discount for all the trades combined in that combined shipping transaction). Check your TM account and you will see it happen. I recently had a partial success fee refunded, TM then removed the top seller discount for the whole trade and the top seller discount was 11 times higher than the success fee I had just had returned.
I have noticed this over a period of a few months with TM, they are aware it is an issue, but they are not fixing it. TM do refund the top seller discount back to me (once I make a hoha about it), but this is not the point. The system needs to be fixed. There will be thousands of people out there getting the partial success fee refunds, and not realizing that by doing this, they are putting themselves into a more negative financial position and being ripped off
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MichelleTrade Me staff - Community team
Kia ora electricfencenz, sorry for the hassle here and thanks for raising this, I can see that it has been passed on to the team to look into.
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I thought that the only payment options were Ping or cash?
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shortsbrandy. The only payment options that can be listed on a listing are ping, afterpay or cash. That does not mean a trader cannot pay to a bank account. Since TMs changes, I have noticed a heap of traders now selecting cash and then paying to a bank account. This is clearly a preference for many buyers and they feel more comfortable with not using ping
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flossy63 Community SuperuserEven Trade Me themselves have said in correspondence buyers can still pay via Bank deposit if they select cash, yes they just took focus off Bank Deposit by rewording it to Cash,
What you cannot do is draw attention away from Ping on your Listings, by having at top of listings Bank deposit available, just select cash etc. or do not pay via Ping etc. in listings,
Even this, stated on here by staff which implies the Buyer can pay by their preferred method and not use Ping.
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So why on earth did Trade Me ever make this announcement? Am I missing something?
"From Monday 3 November 2025, Ping, Afterpay and cash will be the only available payment options for in-trade sellers.
1 October 2025To create a safer and more streamlined experience, we are updating the accepted payment methods for in-trade sellers on Trade Me.
From Monday 3 November, new listings from in-trade sellers will exclusively use Ping, with cash and Afterpay as optional additions."1 -
AJ Community Superuser
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I like using Ping for the speed/ease. But changes to the shipping options (limited/missing options, no combined postage) made it difficult to use Ping because the buyer was in some cases forced to pay for the item by Ping and then had to pay separately, by internet banking, for postage. Those changes seem to have been reversed in the past 24 hours.
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Michelle
Kia ora everyone, to clarify, AJ is correct here, it is up to the buyer to choose their preferred method of payment, from the payment options on the listing, Ping, cash, or Afterpay are the only payment options we offer. At the moment the shipping options mean that buyers and sellers need to arrange shipping and payment separately, we realise this is extra work for both buyers and sellers, we'll continue to work on that.
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HowoldEditedTie ho, it is a contract between both parties so should be a mutually agreeable payment choice & option.
Just like at ordinary shops, there may be options how to pay but ultimately it must be agreeable between both parties.
Gosh, could you imagine how the ongoing saga to use Ping or Afterpay would play out if we were told that's the options to pay for one's groceries and necessities in life?
It's overdue that Monopolies and Anti-Trust and Anti Competitive practices were addressed by Trade Me / APAX.
It's shades of some in the 1970's and 1980's practices that came under scrutiny
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