Finding a Trade Me member

Hi Barbara, unfortunately there is no filter anymore for Members, but for now you can use the desktop profiles page to search for members.

A tip from many years ago was for sellers to have at least 1 listing with your membername in it so other traders could find you when doing a search and not remembering to choose the members filter like there is on the desktop site. This still holds true on the new site and in fact is even more handy now there is no more members filter.

Once you find them, you can always add them as a favourite, and if you don't want to get emails with their listings, you will still be able to find them again on your favourite sellers page here (desktop version), or here on the new pages, although on the new pages you can't search, only browse a page at a time to find the one you want.

It still seems to me to be a very backward move to remove such a useful feature as the Members filter.

I can't imagine that all members would be aware of that trick of putting their member name in one of their listings!

Unless they do so, there will soon be no way of finding them.

In nearly 20 years on Trade Me I have never heard of that trick before.

I'm not against change, in fact I find a lot to like about the new pages, just not this particular change.

The new set up makes it harder to do the simplest of things. No longer the one click on screen, you have to to here then there then look there etc etc. Most of the common things that people are posting on here that they can no longer find easily were common things that traders looked at regularly but now they have made them harder to find or you need to go all over the place to get there and everything is spread out (in large font) so can't even just go to one page you have to scroll around finding things. It is ridiculous really. I don't understand the need to change. It was not broken so why change it.

Thanks for asking this, I was about to ask the same! Funnily enough because a seller has suggested I could combine shipping with her husband's items, so she put her husband's member name into all her listings. But those don't come up when I search for his name either! (even copy/pasted from her listings)
I did find him using Gary's tip about the desktop profiles page.
And thoroughly agree that TradeMe's "improvements" have made it harder to find things quickly.
Especially the quirk that narrows your search results to a particular category (based off its algorithm) instead of all categories like you actually searched in.

You can go to https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/member/<member_name> to see a member profile on the new site (i.e. if I wanted to see listings from "bob" I can go to https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/member/bob).

Hey Nick, is that like the mythical McD's "secret menu", ie you can only find it by already knowing about it? lol

Trademe needs to have an easy and obvious way to find sellers by name. Otherwise how can sellers promote their lots in the real world? Not everyone's going to type out a whole web address on their offsite advertising/notices, and if it's too fiddly/annoying for a buyer to access many buyers won't bother.

Heather, hit the "unfollow" button under the original post. Should work.

Well, I'd expect it to work anywhere except TM right now, anyway.

I still can't find Closed Listings or whatever it's called.  The ones that are historical  - can't even remember the name of it.  

Expired listings is what you are looking for Lesley. Just put that in the search box up top here and you'll see a whole list of posts asking the same question, and the answers.

Hi Heather. Re your post above...

What's your Trademe membername? I can do a search then, to see what's potentially going wrong.

Hi Heather. I've looked through all your pages of listings, and there are none that have 123kitchens in the titles, hence they won't be found. My original posting was a copy/paste from a few years ago. Unfortunately Trademe changed their search engine a couple of years ago so it no longer searches descriptions unless the search term is put in " ", so a general search normally for 123kitchens shows nothing, but a search for "123kitchens" shows 242.

If you have 123kitchens in at least some of your TITLES, they will be found and then  from there, people can click on Sellers other listings.

Hi Heather, our Buying guide does in fact suggest using quotation marks to help refine a search. 

Hi Lucy. Unfortunately there is nothing that spells out that only Titles are searched unless enclosing a search term in " ", in which case Descriptions are searched too.

You may want the team to add to that buyers guide the other searches from the expired listings search page, as these don't seem to be anywhere in the new Help system.

Search Tips:

• Use quotes " " to find an exact phrase, e.g. "Bob the Builder"
• Use an asterisk * to search a partial word, e.g. Tea cup* matches cup, cups and cupboard
• Use an uppercase OR between two search terms to find either one of the terms, e.g. Canon OR Nikon will give you results for either one of those brands. You can also use a pipe | to perform this function, e.g. Canon | Nikon
• Use an uppercase NOT with two search terms to find the first term but ignore the second term, e.g. iPod NOT shuffle will give you results for iPods but exclude references to shuffle. You can also use a minus sign - immediately before the second term to perform this function, e.g. iPod -shuffle
• By default, Trade Me will find variations of search terms, e.g. fish will give you results for fish and fishing. Use a plus sign + immediately before a search term to find only that exact term, e.g. +fish

Also, on the buying page as below, the paragraph with Click Here for keyboard characters doesn't actually do that, and you can end up going around in circles.

Don't think that there is a way that you can search for members on the mobile site but if you are able to flick back to the desktop site you are still able to access them. And I agree this is a major stuff up!

Having to use those quotation marks when searching is plain silly too!

Yes Heather, this is about finding a member and as Gary has said above, using quotes can be used to refine a search of that kind.

I will definitely be feeding back that this is a tip that isn't clear in the Buying guide, and that the member search is a feature that a number of you want to see back. 

Yvonne, considering I've just noticed 20-odd notifications and most seems to be one line from Heather, I suspect a  mod has decided she was trolling/spamming and cleaned up by removing all her comments.

Lucy> TradeMe made so many changes that long time users are essentially having to relearn how to use many features as if from scratch. Helpful functions that had been obvious before now have to be searched for in the "Help" pages, yet even then many don't actually come up when average joe tries to search for them?

But its good to see a TM staff member actually looks at the forums.

It's actually a lot harder to use the site now than when it first appeared many moons ago. It was fairly basic and simple in those days and that's the way it needs to be. Things have to be easy to find otherwise people won't bother and that's bad for sellers and bad for Trade Me.

Agree with most of the above. I boxed on using half new site which flicked back n forth between the two. Didn’t realise how many of the old familiar useful features have actually been removed or made darn hard to find. Even when I do spend ages scratching around for a solution rather than use Chat. 
I use expired listings daily to check actual SOLD prices as a guide for my listings.. So much more useful than looking at other current listings. It doesn’t seem possible to just select USED items as opposed to NEW.

I have always used the laptop to do my listings as it’s practically impossible for me to use the iPad touch screen for that. Same goes for iPhone. Just can’t cover the detail as well without a “ proper” keyboard :-)) like many other members actually…

It is fairly obvious that site techs don’t think like regular Sellers and use intuitive thought processes. Rather the “we will build it and you can like it or lump it” seems a shame.

anyways, enough of my blither for now. Sorry if my message seems a tad garbled but best I can do all things considered :-))

Go to your feedback Barbara you could see from there if thy are still active with listings

How do I get hold of trade me staff to discuss “missing credit”… there’s apparently a chat. I don’t know where…

Here it is Bryan.....This topic link here..

Actually if you view TM using the desktop site, the old filter is still there in the categories.  What is missing now is searching for expired listings.

In the past when there was a bid on an auction of mine I could click on the bidders name and it would take me to their profile. Then I could check their feedback and town etc. Now I don't seem able to do that.  ( or I could look under Members)  Any easy way around that?

It looks like we are being kept in the dark now!!!

Hi Paul. It's quite a few extra clicks needed now.

Click on the members name and it takes you to their listings. From there, click their name again and it takes you to their old style feedback page, where you can then click their profile.

You can still search members on the member profiles page here...

What has happened to the TM site ? Cant find Expired Listings, Members Profiles and Site Stats (and many other useful information needed to ensure a fair and decent trade.) Please don't tell us to drill down into the bowels of the site to access this stuff.. we need good clean and quick access... seems TM is heading south !!  They should not forget just who is paying their wages.

Yet according to Trade Me's own research the new site is very popular and most are happy with the 'improvements' they have made. I just wish they'd asked me!

You are right Brett. They don’t care. The message boards were fun and informative. To be brutally honest I wasn’t surprised they ditched them. They would have seen it as providing something with no returns. That discounts the time I spent flicking between the boards and various listings, either listing to sell or trawling to buy  

I was surprised to read that Trust and Safety has 30 people working. Someone finally got hold of me about my dispute a bit over a week ago. So, 3 months from my initial complaint. This is slightly over the 6 days they promised in their auto email when I filed the dispute. 

in the interim I’d worked my way through getting a chargeback on my credit card and had received the money back in my account. 

I asked several times if the chargeback from PING would eventually be clawed back from the seller or only from TM. I got no reply. 

I reckon the TM staff could do with a course on customer service, including reading and writing emails. 

If the only advice you get from Trade Me is to fossick around in the help and tips pages, maybe they could reconsider their basic design. How can people have a good experience if nothing is clear, and can only be found if you know the right tricks?

Yeah, I won't waste time playing cat and mouse waiting for the chat icon to appear (don't understand why they hide it when they are all engaged, that causes confusions in many people who can't find online chat due to that). I would just submit a "Contact us" form and forget about it. The good thing is someone will eventually get to it and reply (usually within a week), so far so good.