Oh dear. Do you know the seller’s preferred courier? If you go to https://www.addresscheck.co.nz and put in your address, it well tell you which couriers deem your address to be rural. It may well be that the courier they use does classify your address as rural and therefore a rural surcharge will apply. As for the $50 handling fee, that’s just them being ridiculous. Hope Trade Me can wade in and get this sorted for you.

Hi Cathy Just checking that you are aware of the Live Chat function where you can chat to the Trade Me Support team in real time? I can’t remember the hours of this service but you can get in touch by hitting the Contact Us link at the bottom of this page. Wait a few seconds and if they are online, a blue help button will appear on the bottom right.

Sometimes I receive insultingly low offers. At times I have been sorely tempted to reply with “Sure, if you’re happy to sell me your [listed item] for $ [discount their item by whatever discount they have applied to mine]” But I don’t really want to end up with something I don’t need so instead I just say “Thanks for your interest but I am happy to leaving the pricing as is for the time being :)”

Hi Holly As the item appears to have been damaged prior to shipping, the seller is responsible for paying the cost of return shipping. In my experience, cheapest courier option for large items is often Pass the Parcel courier. You don’t need to open an account with them to book a pick up from your home. If the seller is being difficult about covering the cost of shipping, you could offer to wrap the parcel back up for them, send them the parcel dimensions and let them book a courier from their end. Also open a dispute with Trade Me and if you haven’t already, make sure you take photos of th...

Would changing the account name help if the person has already added the OP to their favourite sellers list? I would have thought setting up a completely new account would be the way to go.

We’ve all done that or been very close to it David. It’s a rookie mistake and you generally only ever do it once!If you have plenty of time before the auction closes, you can ask the seller to remove your bid. There’s some rules or guidelines around removing bids but off the top of my head I can’t remember the details. I had the exact same situation the other day. I removed the leading bid and the chap has since placed another, much lower bid. That’s ok with me as it would be a bit unfair if I was to capitalise on someone’s mistake.  

Thanks Gary:) 

I am sure you have done everything you can to find your parcel at the moment. But just incase you haven’t, go online with PBT and lodge an enquiry. I use them from time to time and they are normally excellent. The one time I had a parcel go missing in transit, they were very helpful at locating it.

Robert, whereabouts did you see the information about a 10cm thickness limit? I’m concerned that I may have sent parcels that were thicker than 10cm as I always assumed that so long as your item fitted in a bag that was no bigger than the dimensions (width x length) given in BAC, then all was ok. 

As a seller, I definitely recommend offering Ping. It cuts down on admin and if you have to issue a refund for shipping etc, it is so much quicker and easier. As a buyer I always prefer to pay via Ping but will do internet banking if that’s the only payment option available. I continue to offer internet banking for buyers who are suspicious of Ping, particularly my older customers. I just had a look at last weeks stats and so far 29/38 sales were settled with Ping. Some of the other sales were paid via internet banking because of having to work out combined shipping costs after the sales we...