Hi Robert,   Sorry to hear you got scammed.  I'm new to TradeMe and was surprised how many sellers have cash or bank transfer as the only option. With Gumtree and Ebay in Oz it's pretty well an unwritten rule that bank transfer is never used for items sent by mail because of scammers. It's Paypal for delivery or cash if picking up in person. And yes, there have been lots of cases in Aus of criminals having accounts that the banks seem clueless about. One of the scams in Oz is criminals intercepting legitimate email invoices, changing the bank account details and forwarding doctored invoice ...

Hi Gary Ah, so an auto-bid might not meet the reserve? I notice that reserve is rarely if ever used on EBay these days as sellers just start the bidding at a minimum price that would equal a reserve. I must admit I see some odd bidding at my local collectors club. An auction will start at $5 with no interest so the auctioneer drops the start bid to $2. Two people then start bidding and the item ends up selling for $7-8. Odd.

Thanks everyone. I actually have a friend in Auckland that I can get items sent to plus I'm travelling to NZ in 4 weeks time.The lady host at Lake Taupo said we'll be glad of the air con.  Not sure what she meant by that.  Current apparent overnight temps in Brissie are 29-30C so day time temps of 23-24C at Taupo will feel like winter even without the AC. Also, how does one add emojis? Ta 

Thanks