I also agree with Fred1949, and I also agree with annie_kiwi. From my perspective, TradeMe has taken away our democratic right to trade how WE want, and adhere to their rules. Our banks set up Payee Confirmation for the reason that if we had any problems with paying into people's bank accounts wrongly, then we had that availability to re-check details before transactions went ahead. If we didn't and we went ahead with the transaction and lost money, then that was our mistake, and our responsibility not to make that same mistake again.  TradeMe need to rethink their strategy, and come up wit...

I will correct myself in that the success fee for casual sellers has been removed, but the fact that the service fee tier is for the buyer to foot is still wrong. We all understand that in any auction whether online or in regular auction houses in every day life the seller pays the commision of such and such a percentage because they put something up for auction, that's still not for the buyer to have to add on to what they won an item for. Why the heck doesn't TradeMe get the site back to how it was in the beginning. There were never the issues that there are now.

It is such a shame the original TradeMe model has been lost in amongst the mire of local shops and overseas sellers, especially when a lot of them aren't delivering on what they've promised. The scams will still continue on regardless of the Ping payment system and the service fee tier that's about to hit traders next week. Buyer protection isn't going to matter one iota when it can take up to a month or more to sort issues out, and by then heck knows where anyone's payment has ended up, and if the product is even going to arrive at its end destination. TradeMe needs to sharpen their pencil...

Now, what's interesting here, is that what AJ just stipulated that I find incredibly amusing and not impressed about, is that the buyer now pays a very small service fee to keep the site going. Now that's pretty rude. It's not up to the buyer to pay again after they won an auction or bought an item. The success fee is still taken off when the trader has sold their item. Yes, the success fee has been dropped in price, but the success fee should be the thing that is keeping the site operable, NOT an extra fee from the buyer. Please enlighten all of us how TradeMe decided to come up with that ...