Is that the seller who states on their listings that they aren't liable for any variations between the description & photos and what you actually get after you've purchased? I certainly wouldn't buy anything from a company that has such a wide ranging disclaimer in their listings. I would also be surprised if it is permissible under Trade Me's terms and conditions to sell you something which could be completely different to what they describe and show. I would report it to Trade Me and see what they say.  

This problem has been there for a very long time, and it's quite annoying. It might be worth reporting it to Trade Me, but it's very hit and miss whether they will do anything about it. I've personally given up reporting bugs, as there are now so many of them, and Trade Me don't seem to have the resources these days to do anything other than to fight the most urgent fires.

Interestingly, there's a new story on Stuff today about the Commerce Commission currently taking an active interest in companies that may be making a profit out of credit card surcharges. They quote the example of 2degrees, who have recently reduced their fee from 1.75% to 1%. They haven't yet ruled out introducing additional regulations to limit the fees that companies can charge their customers, but they currently seem to be focusing on educating companies on their obligation to not profit from these fees. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.

The 0.8% cap only applies to the interchange fee. That is one component of credit card charges, and is the fee that is charged between the two banks involved in the transaction whenever the card is used. There are also other components that make up the total charge for using a credit card. Although 1.95% is relatively high compared to what many others are charging, there is no specific maximum legal fee, they just shouldn't be profiting from the charges. As a guide, Consumer NZ considers a total charge above 2.5% to be potentially excessive, but it's open to interpretation. Anyone attemptin...

Rings are not covered by NZ Post's included insurance.

Personally, I don't think it's value for money in most cases. I think it's also getting questionable as to whether these "promotions" comply with the Fair Trading Act. When they don't clearly tell you what proportion of users are still on the old look (is it a minority or a majority?) who will actually get to experience the first listed benefit of the paid promotion, there is some doubt as to whether it's clear enough what you're actually getting in return for your money, especially with important information demoted to a small-print footnote.

New Zealand banks are behind the times compared to most banks overseas, and only process payments Monday to Friday (except public holidays). However, from around April 2023, most of the big banks here will start processing payments 365 days a year. Most other countries now have real time (instant) bank payments. There are plans to implement this in NZ eventually, but unfortunately there are no timescales yet.

In the recent webinar session, Trade Me did say they will be withdrawing the old shipping templates for professional sellers, which presumably means for everyone who is in-trade (although, like almost everything in the webinar, they were rather vague about the detail). They didn't give any timescale, but it's worth planning for losing access to the old templates if you're a professional seller.

Max, it's the way Trade Me has always worked, and yes, they're literally decades behind as a platform for commercial sellers. Trade Me was set up for casual sellers, and despite claiming that they are now targeting retailers and professional sellers (and they have no choice because the casual market is slowly fading away), they've completely failed to adapt to this market. Casual sellers need a simple platform. Professional sellers need a modern sales platform with "advanced" features, which necessitates a level of complexity for the seller. By continuing their mantra of simplicity, they're...

Flat rate shipping didn't work for me either. It resulted in 92% of my customers having to pay extra to subsidise the 8% of rural customers. The net effect was that I gained unprofitable rural customers, and lost profitable non-rural customers.