It’s certainly a very interesting development, a store charging someone an additional fee (in addition to the cost of the item) for the privilege of buying something in their store. It feels a bit like the very surcharge's for digital payments that the government are trying to remove. Personally I think the issue with Trademe isn’t the success fee itself, but it’s the percentage charged. NZers don’t have a huge market to sell to, so Trademe should never be able to justify the level of fees the likes of eBay charge - despite this, I sell on both platforms, and I pay lower fees on eBay. ...

Henleyworks - I’ve raised this multiple times, after I was shocked to find out that overseas based sellers have an unlimited listing allowance and no high volume listing fees. Hence they can list hundreds of thousands of listings even if none of them sell. I’ve seen some sellers with 200,000 listings, and less than 100 sales across a 2 year period. I’m yet to comprehend how Trademe can think this benefits the site.

I guess the question is, “if I add a cash payment option”, how is this any different to offering bank deposit? The purchaser selects the cash option, and I email my bank details for them to make a cash deposit. Once the seller and buyer have each others contact details, there is nothing Trademe can do to prevent bank deposit being offered, leading to the same issues (fraud) Trademe say they are trying to prevent?

Flossy63 — I think bank deposit absolutely should still be allowed, and I say that as someone who even offers free shipping on top. My reasoning is pretty simple. Over roughly 10 years of selling on Trade Me, I’ve probably received around 2,000 bank deposits, and I’ve never encountered a single case of fraud. That’s not to say it can’t happen, but in practice it seems extremely rare if you follow basic precautions. I never ship anything until the money is actually sitting cleared in my account. Once funds are cleared, the risk is essentially gone. So I do struggle to understand how fraud is...

Callum — the logic here doesn’t really stack up. You can’t remove bank deposit as a payment method on the basis of fraud risk (this is their entire reasoning), while still effectively relying on it for shipping costs because Trade Me’s Ping system doesn’t properly accommodate variable freight. If bank transfer is supposedly unsafe, then allowing it in any part of the transaction undermines that entire rationale. At the moment, Trademe's position is contradictory. Bank deposit is “not allowed” for purchases, but is still required (or at least unavoidable) for shipping in many cases. That’s a...

AJ - Its clear from how the recent changes were implemented that Trademe completely forgot how buyers would pay for shipping for items paid by ping, (where shipping charges need to be calculated once a sale is completed and an address is known).Overall, I find the recent changes very poorly considered, I think i could have conjured up a better implementation with my eyes closed.

Just list the cash option, put a comment in your listing that buyers wanting to use bank deposit can select the cash option and you'll share your bank details once they select buy now - this achieves exactly what you are needing, being a bank deposit option. Just because you cant list bank deposit as a payment method, doesn't mean you cant offer this to your buyers once they have selected buy now, indicating cash payment.

As an in-trade member, I'm yet to see any of the dedicated tools and support Trademe are supposedly offering professional sellers.. this seems to be the justification as to why in-trade sellers are penalised to the extent that they are. There are options like sponsored listings, or trademe stores, but this isn't a dedicated tool, it's something we pay for. My products isn't a dedicated tool, its available to all including casual members. What are the dedicated tools and support offered?

I agree wholeheartedly Flossy63. I am in-trade and have for some time reported other members who are clearly reselling and who should be in-trade, they have multiple listings of the same item and list another as soon as one sells. It's been years of reporting the same sellers using community watch, without anything changing. I suspect they just ignore Trademe's email's requesting they declare themselves in-trade.  A lot of trademe's policies are not really policies, as they are not enforced. If they are going to advertise criteria for being considered in-trade, then they need to enforce the...

Here’s hoping there are positive changes to clearly differentiate who is in trade and who isn’t. The tiny almost impossible to see in trade banner is somewhat pointless. With these changes we need to have clear differentiation.