Years ago a few of us were invited to an online meeting with TM managers. That's cool. We turned up online and got spoken at and then the meeting ended. Zero input. This scenario is ridiculous with shipping fees. If the buyer buys multiple items they often select shipping for each and TM expect me to email them begging for the success fee refund. But with combined shipping, sometimes you can combine item A with B but not A with C due to weight, fragility, size or shape. In my line, china and antiques, it is impossible to say I can definitely combine until I know what the items are. In short...

If I was a lawyer arguing ‘Does TM want in-trade sellers’ this would be my case: 1/ Ask in-trade sellers to identify themselves. 2/ Consider ways to disadvantage them. 3/ Put in-trade on their on their auctions 4/ Impose higher success fees than other sellers 5/ Impose success fees payable on their shipping 6/ Increase success fee maximum 7/ Impose even higher success fees 8/ Reconsider how successful these attempts have been 9/ Increase Ping fees 10/ make Ping mandatory whilst removing direct banking 11/ Imply in-trade sellers are responsible for scams by not extending mandatory Ping to ...

Wait for this - go to the home page and my main category, Pottery & Glass, isn't even on the list. Like WTF! They know about this, nod, and do nothing. So if you're just casually browsing, you won't even see the entire category. Who does that? You have to go "into" the site in order to see there are more categories. No way to tell if that's cost sales or not but it hasn't helped. 

Trademe apparently make their money from cars and property these days with marketplace probably being yesterdays news. Having said that I still don’t get the disincentives they throw at professional sellers who in the main would cause them less problems. Much of the secondhand items that are sold by dealers are sold with better descriptions and better service than randoms so when we are gone I’d say that’s the end of marketplace. As for feedback, there used to be a time when bad feedback was clamped down on, those days are gone. Same as sellers on multiple items flooding categories, n...

OMG! Tony! I did not know that. I often search for electronics and TradeMe goods are prominent. I just search for a couple of my own listings and NOTHING. Not only nothing, when I added TradeMe it only came up with 6 results and only TWO were TradeMe itself. What's going on there. This is actually way worse than I thought. No wonder our sales have crashed the past year or two. Not only did they remove our category heading from the home page, now they are not even showing up how any "normal" website would. WOW!

I'm selling up by year end. I've had enough and between TradeMe fees and restrictions and relentless postage increases, online auction sites aren't workable for antiques and collectibles. I may do something else, smaller, quicker turn around, but the antiques and pottery sections have been on decline almost from when I began 20 years ago. Back then a nice item would get 100 views and 10 watchers, a very nice item maybe 1000 views and 100 watchers. These days over half of my listings don't get a watcher and the entire category is now no longer on the home page for reasons only TM would know....

And does anyone notice how we are no longer posting under our name but our username now?

Forcing Ping is actually forcing other conditions on pro sellers in addition to removing certain payment options. More fuel for a complaint. TradeMe why are you charging us more and tightening and limiting conditions over casual sellers? You are disincentivising pro sellers which can only mean the net outcome is a higher percentage of casual sellers who by averages are more likely to lead to a poor selling experience. Just because someone is in trade does not mean they can ship economically in small batches. By establishing an arbitrary three day shipping period, you may force sellers t...

TradeMe should offer insurance instead of forcing Ping.In-trade sellers aren't the problem segment, it's untrustworthy sellers in-trade or casual. Imposing Ping is a blunt instrument punishment to in-trade to their detriment.Instead, Sellers purchasing by Ping could choose, or not, insurance. This would mean all sellers are equal, buyers get peace of mind, TradeMe still makes money. 

Popped in here to see what’s happening. Kudos to the person who has gone to the media. And kudos to the person who went to ComCom.