Yeah, you have to keep bugging Trade Me on this. There are sellers who try to game the system.

Pack and Send may be able to help you, try getting in touch with them https://www.packsend.co.nz/clarifying-lithium-battery-sending/

Callum, your "hit rate" has dropped from 67% to 50%, ie. error rate has gone from 33% to 50%. That's expected, rural dodgers will take full advantage of this flawed template design. Just like grumpy buyers will blame sellers for "promising" a delivery "estimates" and then the couriers deliver the parcels late (let's wait for statistics on these...haha). The rural/urban field can be separated into a radio button (mockup view below), but that's going to be a DB/UI/backend change, probably something too complicated by Trade Me's standard...haha  

IMHO, of course the priority goes to whoever hit "buy now" first. There's no reason to "hold" for someone who's on the way to view, what if they change their minds? Or they found the bus not suitable? If you were serious about giving them the priority, you should have withdrawn the listing. As long as the listing is still live, you can't stop anyone from hitting "buy now".

The buyer should be the one raising a dispute with Trade Me, not you. Just ask them to raise a dispute with Trade Me and stop responding to their demand. After they have raised the dispute, you explain the situation to Trade Me. Sometimes it's hard to communicate with buyers. Oh yeah, and don't forget to blacklist this buyer.

Unfortunately, there's no running away from rural dodgers. Usually when there's a need to get in touch with a buyer, I'll try to send just two emails within 24 hours and leave it after that. I reckon if the first email got sent to their spam folder, the second email might reach them, otherwise, my emails will never reach them. I'll have to wait for them to try to get in touch. I recently had a buyer like that, they won my auction and paid, but my emails to arrange pick up got no response. They eventually emailed me with a different email address (sometimes people do that, their Trade Me ema...

Yes, you can use BAC for that. Strange seller though, I specifically mention in my listings that I won't handle courier arranged by a buyer, because they are a hassle and I can't load the shipping price with packaging, etc.

This could be a "frequent request" but IMHO definitely not crucial, there are so many crucial fixes traders are waiting for, I'm happy this is not on the priority list, or not even considered, for now.

From a seller's point of view (I hope you don't mind haha), I'd send tracking details as soon as the parcel is ready for pick up by the courier. That's when my job is done, the rest is the courier's job. If they don't pick up on time, it's still the courier's problem. I'll of course make sure the parcel goes out somehow (even to the extent of dropping it off at the post shop myself). But if I delay sending the tracking details (even when it's already available), then that becomes my (the seller's) problem.

33% error rate is waaaaaay too high!!! Callum's templates are extremely simple, with only 2 options and yet still managed to achieve a 33% error rate, that's shocking! Just shows how the rural dodgers are going to take full advantages of this flawed template design.