We just received the email about Ping being mandated for In Trade sellers. With a "no reply" return path on the email in question and as Trade Me has a convoluted and far from transparent system for contact hopefully this finds its way to someone who matters. In light of this mandating of a payment method that we do not want and seems intent on increasing Trade Me's cashflows we will be ceasing listing our business's products on Trade Me as a result. We already have robust security built into our business model and do not want to raise our prices by 2% to offset this added cost in the curr...

Callum, I wouldn't regard that facetious so much as simplistic. We have buyers not fronting up with payment for orders on our website too. When it happens there we just wait an appropriate period of time before cancelling the sale. No drama, no drawn out procedures with a third party, no commission to claw back, we just walk away. Allowing Trade Me to control what is a non-existent problem for us is unneeded and unwanted. We have such a small percentage (<5%) of our sales via Trade Me so walking away from listing here is an easy decision. We did the same for Ebay when they started demanding...

Pulling down your listings for a day will result in Trade Me charging you withdrawl fees. In our case we will cease listing on November 3rd. End of story. Trade Me is such a small percentage of our sales we're not going to miss them. Our own website is miles ahead in throughput.

Back in the day Trade Me was the go to platform to make online purchases. These days TM is useful to find a business here that sells what you need so you can then hunt out their website to deal direct with them without the complications and added costs that go with the arm's length transactions resulting from TM serving as a 'third wheel' in the process. The whole Ping mandate situation will only make this all the more the case except I'm suspecting there will be less In Trade sellers to choose from very soon.

Robert, You missed the bit where communications with buyers were moved in-house to prevent sellers from accessing buyers' email addresses to facilitate repeat sales from being done outside of Trade Me's commission structure. 

Dixie's case is a prime example of why many of us don't want to be forced to rely on their resolution system by having to accept Ping. Their communication with users of Trade Me is convoluted and clumsy so unable to gain a fair solution in many cases. In our case I have lost count of the number of sales where an approach to TM to sort out a slow payer has resulted in a refunded success fee only to have the buyer eventually get in touch with us and the sale completed. I don't want to be on the losing end of this level of TM incompetency.

@Jeffery, For us out in the regions Neighbourly is a safe and effective way to move items, particularly ones that aren't easily shipped.

It's time like this RemovePaywall dot com comes in handy. 3rd option did it on that article from memory.

Yes I was joking Gary, in the same vein as some of Robert's points.  Seriously though as an online trader one of our most valuable assets is the database of past customers' contact details. They are used to compile a Mailchimp direct mailing list for promotions to target those who have expressed interest by purchasing our products in the past. There's unsubscribe functionality so those that want to avoid promotional emails can do so to keep us compliant with spam laws. As Trade Me has degraded its online presence and its listings now seem invisible to Google and other search engines anythin...

@Diana, Your footnote idea is pretty unworkable. The presence of Ping will catch buyers' attention and hijack the payment process. Lets face it, the average buyer here is not very tech savvy. We have buyers that keep paying our higher Trade Me prices despite our email contact with them including a direct link to our website where the products are cheaper.