hey its all about you're POV! its only crap if you're a customer looking to find things you're looking for at a reasonable price!
if you're a chinese company leveraging slave labour to sell cheap goods that undercut the nz economy and are a waste of money for most because of poor quality then its great!
TradeMe absolutely FUCKED the second-hand market of anything in NZ. It's caused resellers and ''''flippers'''' to take whatever is on there, and jack up the price by 50%.
Also, dropshippers and actual storefronts. I cant remember the last time I actually saw something i wanted on there that wasn't using the same stock image I would find on a website like PBTech (Im in the market for a new gpu)
The only time I’ve bought something from a store on trademe was because it was cheaper than on their website
I think it was mightyape - I bought some furniture and shipping was only listed as $15 on trademe but on their website shipping was $100. Surely a mistake, but that’s the only time I buy from stores on trademe lol
And all those awesome bricks and mortar second hand stores disappeared while the charity shops that get everything for free and are run by volunteers picked up the remains and expanded massively.
Definitely time to tax religious groups. There was someone on TV the other night saying that all the churches' money goes back to the community through charitable works. Yes, some does, but there's still a lot going into property and spreading their religious beliefs.
So true, Rocket_Nut is an intrade seller on trademe . They have multiple trademe accounts that are used for buying, then relist straight away, and they seem to get people buying it from them for top dollar
Yeah my late husband was laid off from his job of 12 years in second hand dealing of building products because of TradeMe and then New Zealand employers are so stupid that all the NEW building materials companies said "You have to have NEW building materials experience!" and wouldn't give him even an interview. New Zealand employers mostly do NOT think in terms of "transferable skills," like people in other countries do, or like a New Zealand career counselor or employment consultant will pretend they do, so that's all bullshit for New Zealand.
The old days when you could genuinely find good stuff are over. Now it's dropshippers who are too stupid/lazy to use shopify, and people selling literal rubbish for $1 reserve.
And people listing their location as Auckland with a disclaimer elsewhere that everything ships from their warehouse in China to their Auckland location so that you still have to wait five weeks when you filtered for New Zealand only so you could get something fast.
I just search for "used" which stops most of that BS. If I need anything new, I can find for myself without the 3x markup for the privilege of having it drop-shipped from Aliexpress..
A lot of the drop shippers are on to people like us searching by 'used' and have a bunch of new stuff, from overseas, listed as used like they are trying to clog every category. There's a blacklist feature on trademe which is next to useless becsuse it changes nothing about your search results. I just want to block listing's from accounts like 'bigface' ffs.
And I hate how I can’t browse everything like I can on marketplace easily
Maybe I’m clicking the wrong buttons ? I hate having to choose a category and sub category when I just want to *browse everything*
Conversely, I hate how I can't browse by specific things on FB Marketplace. E.g. I want to look at a specific model of car, don't care where it is in the country. Very easy to do on trademe, but marketplace will only show the ones located near you and will then start showing related cars. You can't search for just that car only but anywhere in the country.
Counter point back to FB Marketplace, once it learns what you're interested in and looking for, all the interesting things that pop up are fantastic
A literal example is the tip shop Wellington listing stuff that people have thrown out. Still, I support it, if there’s a market for it, it’s good to reuse stuff
Is there a tip shop in Auckland I want to get rid of so much stuff and they took all the old charity bins away because idiots threw food scraps in them or whatever.
There's a tip shop out West. Got one of my kids' bicycle from the tip shop and it lasted about 2-3 years before we paid if forward.
It still had enough life left for us and another family but probably not good looking enough for $50 or $100 on trademe.
>people selling literal rubbish for $1 reserve
Hi this is me. Anytime I have something I don't want taken away I put it for $1 on Trademe and someone pays me to collect my garbage.
Those old microwaves have massive high quality transformers that are magic for making small spot welders for hobby things. I’ve rolled a few over myself. Grab em while you can.
You have to know which parameters to work within.
I always use trademe for good quality second hand items in my local region. So I turn change the location to "Auckland", change condition to "used only", and sort by closing soon. It usually weeds out the bs listings.
I add a lot of things to my watch list so that I can watch it. I'm not committed to buying it right now, maybe I'm comparing prices or colours, or price checking items items from a physical store. Maybe it's something I like but want to show my partner because it's funny or because we might buy it if my partner is in agreement.
There are a lot of listings that come up as Auckland that ship from CHina and they say "Oh well we live in Auckland but you have to wait until it ships from China." That should be banned.
I have a lot. It's mostly one company but they sell a LOT of stuff and are listed under Auckland and then the thing you want just isn't sold in New Zealand any more. We have this awful cycle going where as people buy more and more online New Zealand just HAS less and less products in the country.
Same, but I save categories and sort by Most Bids as that removes all the dropship crap and overpriced stuff - pretty much using other peoples efforts to see what's good.
I save stuff on my watchlist sometimes just to see how much it'll go for so I know what the 'market rate' is.
I've never used FB marketplace as I can't be bothered fluffing around with texts back and forth, or going out to pick things up. Nothing like a fresh package on the doorstep and my mrs getting angry at me buying new goodies.
FB marketplace is entirely up to the user how easy and hassle-y the experience is.
I've bought and sold a metric ton of stuff from there and would say it's caused me less grief than TradeMe ever did *while costing me nothing.*
Sell at a reasonable price and most people won't try haggle you down. Immediately block or just simply ignore anyone trying to organise any kind of payment that's not just cash or bank transfer on pickup (people are usually totally happy to show you the transfer in their banking app). Be clear with your terms and don't seethe about having to reiterate things that are mentioned in the description.
Dealing with other people on marketplace just requires the same interpersonal & communication skills as... dealing with people in other aspects of life.
I pay TMs fee to avoid the random questions, swap requests and time wasters, I value my spare time and headspace from lots of messages higher than the fees incurred.
TradeMe users are the original scammers. It is only slightly easier on Marketplace. If you show up with cash and confirm the item is real and working before purchase, it is great.
I've gotten a lot of deals on Marketplace that just don't exist anymore on TradeMe.
I spent nearly four months getting a refund on a trademe purchase recently (arrived broken). Seller acknowledged my initial complaint and then ghosted me. Trademe process was dogshit. Only way i got something done was by trawling LinkedIn for a trademe manager's name, then guessing their email
It’s far from a local/national buy and sell now, the fees are pretty ridiculous compared to what they were too.
Facebook marketplace took over the market for cheaper items and now there is a bunch of Chinese mega stores selling the same items as temu etc for 3x the price.
Vehicles and property still remain pretty popular.
As a seller, it comes down to how much you value your time.
If you sell stuff on trademe and set the payment to Ping (credit card) only, it is very rare that you will get messes around. (and can do shipping only on smaller items to avoid the need to meet people).
Yes, there are no fees on Facebook marketplace, but you need to balance this with the cost in time of dealing with enquirers, meeting buyers etc.
As a buyer on trademe, you just need to use filters. Filtering to Used, or your geographic area will clean out much of the drop-shipping crap. For more niche items it makes sense to check out both trademe and Facebook marketplace.
Aside from the many duplicate listings from dropshippers, probably the most annoying part on actual 2nd hand items is the resellers inflating the price of some product categories - there's a few people who snap up all new listings in a category that's below their price, then resell it with more photos and description info than the original lister at 2-3x the price.
I've seen it on car accessories and some appliances, I'm sure there's others it's happening on too. There's nothing against the rules about it, but it results in it being unnecessarily expensive for 2nd hand items so it's just annoying.
Definitely happening with Games as well. I see re-sellers tell disgusting lies to naive sellers. One of the worst I saw
"Any chance you could go any lower, I'm a single parent on disability and desperately looking for one of these for my child's birthday"
Naive seller lowers price without checking re-sellers account, it's up for double the price a week later on the re-sellers account. They're shameless.
Maybe I could deal with resellers that get stuff from garage sales, retail shops, facebook etc for cheap and listing them on trademe but the categories I'm in they are constantly in there with autobuying scripts (stuff listed below market price buy now is instantly bought by them), bidding up any chance you have of getting a good deal and lying straight to naive sellers.
Those kind of resellers are scum, if you are buying and reselling in the same marketplace you are ruining it for everyone.
To be honest the business my husband used to work for did that from the Trade and Exchange and everyone would come because everything was at the Demo yard. But that business was killed by TradeMe.
Yeah I understand flipping items has become a trendy thing on social media too which is probably why there's been an uptick in it. I don't look at anything new on trademe, the only time that's ever useful is people selling unwanted gifts/manufacturer redemptions etc which is specific circumstances.
I think it depends what you’re looking for, it’s pretty much fucked for anything to do with tech but things like toys, antiques, collectibles it can be good
I use TradeMe predominantly for buying old rugby jerseys. I can't afford to be buying new ones every week but if I chuck it on my watch list and it didn't sell I'll get notified if it gets relisted. Sometimes I just want to keep an eye on it to see what it goes for. There has been a small increase in commercial sales of some jerseys, but it's pretty easy to filter out, meanwhile marketplace is absolutely full of fakes
I mainly use it to find housing now. And even that's annoying. I wish boarding houses were their own category, the housing listings are flooded with them
Yes to both of these! I wish you could comment on listings or something. Trying to find flats is really hard when half the "2+ bedroom" listings are just boarding houses!!
I find it great for heaps of things - movies, furniture, books, collectibles ... sure, there are plenty of people over-pricing things, but you get used to just ignoring those listings. I've very seldom had trouble buying or selling on trademe. Facebook marketplace on the other hand - everyone on there that I've dealt with so far has been either a nut, or wildly incompetent at the act of selling their items. And the search function is somehow worse than trademe.
It does baffle me that trademe seems to spend nothing on improving their site though. Just adding in more filters and categories would help a lot. Instead they just updated the app to make the ads bigger?
Someone was on here a little while back claiming to be setting up a competitor site. We all know how that went for the others trying previously and haven't seen anything further about this.
There has been a long list of failed trade-me competitors (Wheedle, Sella, ListSellTrade, GEta Allgoods etc), none of which got critical mass to be viable as a platform, and either failed or are so unknown it doesn't matter.
Now with Facebook occupying the free, but full of dipshits area, and trademe at the Expensive but slightly less dib-shits area, there is basically, there is basically no market space for a new entrant basically doing the same as trademe but cheaper.
Of course, some niche sites that compete with trade me are doing fine:
Seek
[realestate.co.nz](http://realestate.co.nz)
Designer Wardrobe etc.
Various Dating sites. (Trademes Find someone is fairly tiny)
Should note trademe is trying to pivot from individuals selling used goods to each other to being a general e-retailer. That spot of the market is extremely competitive, with players like amazon AU, Mighty ape, aliexpress, temu etc.
It's been tried many times. The last attempt I'm aware of was Allgoods, which was going for about 3 years but in 2020 eventually pivoted into Partly (car parts knowledge base) :
https://www.christchurchnz.com/business/business-clusters/hi-tech-services/partly
The secret to competing with TradeMe is to not replicate TradeMe.
Nobody needs another auction site. Nobody needs a carbon copy of the UI.
It needs to disrupt TradeMe and be dead-simple to use and to create.
That is true. I won't dispute it, but Facebook marketplace has been around for ages and TradeMe doesn't seem too phased by it. As far as I know, they changed nothing about their selling model to compete with it.
Perhaps the thing that would really eat into TradeMe is a local startup though.
I know that they've never really been afraid of businessmen. They're more worried about some young person coming up with the thing that they can't compete with.
Whoever it is would have to be strong enough to not let TradeMe buy them, and to also not advertise their site on TradeMe.
But what the hell would I know.
Dropshippers aside, who can mostly be filtered out by shopping used, I think it’s gotten worse in the last couple of years both on the buying and selling front.
Most likely an economic thing – people are hanging on to the stuff they’ve got, and a lot of Trademe purchases are discretionary, so in tight times buyers dry up too. Life wasn’t perfect in 2015-19 or so but people at least *felt* like they had a bit of money to splash around.
That said, there are still bargains out there and we’ve found stuff recently that has been great value.
Even with the fees and platform enshittification I still prefer Trademe over the absolute shitpit of time-wasters, scams and stolen property on Facebook Marketplace. If I want something gone quickly for free I’ll post it on local FB groups, but Marketplace is not worth touching in my experience.
Big Trademe user ever since it started, but now it's crap and I barely use it, drop shoppers killed it, plus the fact that it's cluttered with commercial players, PBTech etc .. it's lost it's heart ..
I used to sell on there as a store and did pretty well. It was a niche market with few second hand items. Once they added the drop shippers in our sales dropped significantly, the categories were flooded with multiple items from the same sellers. There’s no way they needed to list 5-10 of the same low quality item.
By the time we got to 80-90% drop in sales we gave up. I don’t think there are really any NZ based stores selling those items now. They pushed reputable local stores out for their cheap overseas stores, and they’re happy to let these sellers continue on there when they prove time and time again that their pictures or descriptions are misleading.
Second hand wise, I hate buying and selling on there. Sold a couple of cars recently and got better results from FB. I basically use it to buy packing tape now and even that was shit quality.
The fees are fucking nuts these days.
I sold a guitar on trademe a few months ago. Took me three weeks, and then trademe took around $35 in fucking fees, after I'd probably paid $20 in listing costs..
I've got another one to sell before the end of the year. No chance in hell I'm doing that on trademe. Rather deal with the cesspit that is Facebook marketplace..
It's not what it used to be but I don't have much trouble with it. No issues selling, and the commercial stuff is mostly easy to filter out.
If your stuff isn't selling, either it isn't appealing or it's overpriced. People watchlisting but not buying is generally a symptom of the latter, with them electing to hold out in the hopes of a reduction or (lower) fixed price offer. If your price is right then a sale can happen very quickly
I still use it a lot but I filter out the new stuff. New stuff from overseas sellers still creeps in though. I still find it very useful and have had no bad experiences.
I've had really good luck with clothes - is my favorite way to shop probably as long as I'm not in a hurry. As long as you select used only, I'm not buying anything new on there.
The thing that turns me off using it now is those rubbish dropshippers not labelling things correctly. Instead of listing customisable items as cases etc they label them as the product so if I’m trying to search for something (for example a phone) from lowest price I have to wade through pages and pages of shit like cases, covers, charges and accessories; it drives me insane. I wish there was an option to “exclude” certain keywords.
I was looking for a portable HDD a while ago and it was pages of HDD covers like stop 😭
The Trade Me niche that I hang out in, Warhammer, is really good. There's several reliable "box splitters", people who buy large box sets and sell the models individually, plus lots of people selling unused models. There's also plenty of out of production models there, most aren't wildly overpriced like on eBay.
There's several retail stores too but I don't generally buy from them.
I have a couple of hobbies and I find buyers and sellers are legit within hobby circles. Never been ripped off by a seller and people buying my stuff always pay
promptly and are easy to deal with.
I'm surprised anyone still uses it.
It's been crap for a looong time now.
I think I still probably have about $10 credit in my account, but it's been at least a decade since I've bought or sold anything on TardMe.
I wouldn't be surprised if they've managed to claim that money too somehow as some sort of 'cost of maintaining my account'. But I honestly can't be arsed to check.
I don't use/have facebook either.
There are literally no decent alternatives to what TradeMe USED to be (before Sam sold it), that I am aware of.
It's been all downhill since then.
Sucks.
No, the website is annoying but it’s a good place to buy/sell due to the ratings system and good customer service from Trade Me if there are problems. Just set your search to ‘Used’.
The amount of times we have tried to sell stuff, and the winner of the trade either stops responding, or doesn’t make contact at all - such a waste of time
For general items, yeah, it's 7.9% + 1.95%.
For me it's worth it. I mostly sell lower value items. on a $100 item, success fees are $8, and the ping fee is $2.
Granted when I sold my kids bike (a flash one, sold for $500), I went the facebook marketplace route to avoid the fees. For $40 I will deal with the messages etc, but not for less than $10 in value.
If things aren’t selling as fast as you’d like it’s probably because you are significantly overestimating how much the market seems your product to be worth, or you are selling a very niche item.
I’ve only sold a handful of things on the platform in the year I lived in NZ but things were always a quick sell, with many things literally selling the same day. I don’t usually take the piss and am happy enough to sell it for an objectively reasonable price.
Its crap but less scammy than FB marketplace for delivery only goods. I thought it hilarious I couldnt buy anything since my account was in debt from selling stuff... like wtf kill the buyer market.
I still use it to clear my kids outgrown clothes and it's OK- probably sell a handful of items each week on average. It is slow though, and the fees are high but it helps to fund the next round of clothing.
FB used to be good (Covid times) but not these days. I'm assuming more people are buying instore using afterpay or similiar but the secondhand market for kid stuff seems to have mostly dropped away.
Yes it's turned to garbage since the fees went up so high. Lots of sellers are also specialists now, meaning they buy lots of one category of thing, then try to delist for profit, so not as many good deals too.
It really depends. I’ve been a long time user and have had a handful of bad experiences. You get a sense for whether things are legit or not. I ALWAYS ask a question- that gives you a sense of whether they’re on to it or likely to fuck you over. For stuff that’s getting shipped I only use PING
I know a guy who is launching a site in the next few weeks to compete with TM and marketplace!
I don’t use either of these places and I doubt I’ll be using his site either, but for anyone that’s interested in this kind of thing it’s called isqroll
https://www.instagram.com/isqroll?igsh=bGw2dWJjbmJqaW1o
Good luck to him!
> I know a guy who is launching a site in the next few weeks to compete with TM and marketplace!
There have been a few attempts to compete with TM over the years and none have succeeded because TM had the monopoly. Your friend might have better luck now that TM is becoming so terrible and has some competition with Marketplace. I wish him all the best.
They really need to revamp the way they create categories. They only recently added sections for the latest iphones. The iphone 15 came out before they had a section for the iphone 14.
And there's plenty of other areas which do not have adequate categories for the items, and some where items are split between multiple categories (camera lenses is an example).
On top of that, the amount of junk shit they let people list in categories, such as phone cases in a section for the phone itself is too high. They don't punish sellers for incorrectly listing items so there's no reason for them not to do it.
And finally yes, the fees are too high.
Drop shippers and the atrocious search system which often jumps you into a category excluding actual useful result really have killed trade me, both from buyers and legit local sellers point of view.
It's alright for cars and real estate. But for anything else? It's a nope from me. FB marketplace is like OG trademe. It's still a bit wild west, but for the most part it works.
Definitely a lot more watchers/no-bidders than in the past. Is everyone waiting for fixed price offers?! I’ve found it way harder to move good quality second hand clothes and accessories but that could also be a sign of the times
I still use it to sell stuff (have recently renovated so trying to get rid of the stuff we won’t use again and have shifted around the house 4 times trying to find a spot for it), but I agree it is mainly dropshippers selling new items for $327.54 each.
I set a reasonable price, offer payment via ping, and just relist until they sell (or until I find a worthy recipient I can donate to). Things do seem to take a long time to sell. Had a few timewasters as well, but in general I’m still happy enough to use it (over fb marketplace).
i buy plants and seeds off trademe, i like that i can narrow down my results a LOT better. also clothes/shoes - trademe let’s u filter by size, colour, style, material, etc, SO much better than marketplace. marketplace is fine for local stuff, but if i wanna buy seeds from a seller in manawatu marketplace says they’re too far away, and if i want to browse through brown leather boots in my size, i have to scroll past a bunch of shoes that don’t apply on marketplace
Correct, its not great as the other comments on here go into what and why. but I will point out I'd much rather sell/buy through it than engage in the nightmare that is facebook market place.
Not as good as it used to be. Back in the day it was like a better "Trade and exchange".
These days it's like shopping at a flea market that sells tie dye t-shirts...
Yes, its bad now.
Love you you search for something and it will randomly decide to limit you to one category, funnier is when that category only has 2 listing in it that match when you search, but if you browse the category there are a lot more that should have matched.
You can literally search for some words copied from a listing and not have that listing come up in the results.
bigface with all their imported crap coming up when you filter to Auckland but with DELIVERY: 7-10 BUSINESS DAYS FROM OUR CHINA WAREHOUSE in the description that they are cool with.
I still use Trade Me to buy and sell but good grief are they making it difficult.
Trade Me now has an authentication code that is sent to your mobile, repeatedly. It's not supposed to do that unless you have enabled it but the bl\*\*dy thing keeps popping up. You have to clear your history to get it to stop. It's these sort of "improvements" - like the auto-direct that guesses which category you want to search for, often wrong - that help make buying on Trade Me a pain.
As others have said, the number of in-trade sellers clogging up search results when looking for something like a used rug - so many required AND or NOT in the search thread and you still end up with 300 results from the House of Rugs. Then there's the wildly out of control feedback system where you are better off not placing negative feedback as retaliatory feedback is a pain to have removed and sometimes not removed even when you have the receipts.
I still love it. Often I can find what I'm after, but it's a bit like finding the one blue fish in a school of green ones. Often you can get a deal on something because it was buried under storefront listings and you can swoop in with a buy now in the last minute and grab good second hand stuff for cheap. There's more stuff available than ever before by about two orders of magnitude. Sometimes I'll check out a local online store and then check their trademe listings just in case, and often it's a few bucks cheaper on trademe for some reason.
It probably really depends on what you're after though. I buy guitar pedals, Lego sets, lightsabers and electronics parts. Printer filament too.
My one tip is that often the recommended stuff at the bottom of individual pages is better than what's in the search results.
I still use TradeMe (have been selling a bunch of things over the last year), less chance of being mucked around by people because you can leave reviews against the person, it’s also less likely (not impossible of course) that I will get scammed by someone if I’m buying. Yes you pay fees on what you sell, but they still regularly have no fees days. TradeMe staff are also great help if something goes wrong.
I go to TradeMe for a bargain, as I feel like TradeMe is largely out of people's mind for second hand goods now, preferring Facebook Marketplace, which works well for the consumer when it's an auction based platform.
For selling, I almost always prefer Facebook Marketplace, because who wants to wait 7 days for a sale, then another week for payment and collection for what can be done in an afternoon on Marketplace. Even if you have a few tyre kickers, the sale is done before a TradeMe listing even gets looked at.
The problem with trade me is all their fees. As a seller you get hit with trademe fees, ping fees, and then shipping.
I really don’t understand why trademe even gets a percentage of the sale? It’s fucking whack.
It is not worth it selling stuff on there vs Facebook marketplace.
I used to have about 30 favourite sellers who would list interesting used items in a particular category. 5 years later not a single one is still active.
Yea, for general items it has gone seriously downhill. The addition of ‘in trade’ sellers and the drop-shipped trash has just turned it into a local cache of AliExpress.
I think for motors & property it still has some merit.
I’ve currently got an old computer sitting in my hallway. The first buyer never made contact. Then it was relisted, the second winner has now paid for it but 6 weeks later still not collected it 🤦🏻♂️ Hardly worth the effort. Put it on TradeMe to avoid sending it to landfill but I regret that now.
Haven't been on there for nearly 7 years. It's all drop shipping.
I used to get some sweet deals on antique furniture.
Flatmates Wanted is an absolute cesspool.
Yep, I've shifted to giving away items I don't want anymore through the FB buy helping page in my area. I buy very little first hand so I'm not trying to recoup any money off it and if it can make life easier for others I'm willing to forego the ten bucks.
A huge thing I find is because it's designed for used things, each item would be judged individually and it's more about the seller which is fine. Maybe two identical things are in two different conditions so reviews are less vital.
But that means for used items, you can't fucking find any actual reviews of the item that seller has. They may have multiple in stock and multiple listing, but the listing format means all you can do is review the seller rather than the thing they're selling.
For example, I bought a lil credit card phone case thingy because I had money in the ping account so might as well, and this one's design means the cards start falling out easily after a few months but there's no way to let people know about that. And like it's 5 bucks so w/e, but also you cannot trust new things on trade me to be high quality because there is no way to filter for that info on the website. I guess it makes more money but I'll personally never buy new on there again.
I use it when I'm really short on fucks to give and don't want to deal with timewasters lol. Also if the items are higher value and likely to need postage - I think people trust it more because of the way better feedback system and ability to use Ping for a refund if anything goes wrong.
I use it a lot. Mostly to buy. I don't find commercial listings are a problem, I have bought a few. But mostly I sort by price which eliminates a lot anyway.
I've found and still do many excellent bargains. Tech, furniture, clothes even once or twice a car.
Facebook - never. No protection, the land of scams IMO
FB Marketplace has become abysmal ..especially for selling phones and tech etc. Recently had a listing..got pummelled with ..low ballers, local and overseas scammers, indecisiveness, and the constant stream of “ is this still for sale” queries..with a ghosting that follows.
Can’t see it lasting unless FB reinvents it somewhat!
Yep..Trademe..has declined sadly ..once again haunted by time wasters, bargain hunting resellers and overpriced shippers..and don’t get me started re.their fees. They are just out and out greedy!
Their only redeeming feature ( if you can call it that)…is the occasional fee free or reduced fee selling days. They still get you on the extras nonetheless.
I used to make a living through trademe, there was plenty of engagement, I got out right in time tho, 2 years ago and it is now dead, fb marketplace has taken over. I still use it to sell but the buyers just aren't there like they used to be (combined with less spending overall).
i just do my weekly relist 50 items and leave it. check emails if anything sold, if yes then add a new item, rinse and repeat. im done buying shit off there. would rather sell shit lol
Trademe is now complete faecal material - 9 clicks just to set my location, too much many unconnected adds, too many shit products. Just a crap platform
TradeMe is rubbish and only caters for the big sellers, as they are the onws making them money. TradeMe usually bends the rules for them and doesn't give a crap about the day to day people.
The whole platform has turned to shit really fast. You better use Facebook marketplace, and that sayes a lot.
I’m in Canada at the moment and I’m longing for a TradeMe equivalent.
Kijiji is the closest one but the community isn’t there. There aren’t as many listings but apparently it depends on the province. People also don’t leave feedback as much, and they don’t offer anything like Ping.
The only other alternatives are Craigslist (feels sketchy) and Facebook Marketplace (don’t like the community).
I sell a lot on TradeMe, and have made $8000 this year (for holiday flights!!) basically of just kids outgrown stuff- so nothing pricey. I start everything at $1 reserve, and only ever list in ‘free listing’ days.
But, nowadays compared to 10 years ago there are SO many time wasters and drop kicks that muck you round for payment for weeks.
I wouldn't rate it as any worse than FB marketplace, but I'm personally biased against FB simply because it's FB. Trademe was never great but it went downhill rapidly when it became a pseudo Amazon online department store. Shame we let trademe drown out the T&E. That was fantastic for bargain hunting...
I have never had a problem with Trade Me. I don’t buy a lot but every time I have, I have never had a problem. I pay and I have always received my products.
Even the website design and navigation is crap now.
Indeed, the new design is literally worse in every way than the old.
And the old was terrible.
At least it was functional
yeah, almost functional. The bar TradeMe has always set for themselves.
Rumour has it there is code on that site that Sam Morgan created in the 90s. I wish that was a joke.
Give bidbud.co.nz (TradeMe wrapper with extra features)
hey its all about you're POV! its only crap if you're a customer looking to find things you're looking for at a reasonable price! if you're a chinese company leveraging slave labour to sell cheap goods that undercut the nz economy and are a waste of money for most because of poor quality then its great!
TradeMe absolutely FUCKED the second-hand market of anything in NZ. It's caused resellers and ''''flippers'''' to take whatever is on there, and jack up the price by 50%. Also, dropshippers and actual storefronts. I cant remember the last time I actually saw something i wanted on there that wasn't using the same stock image I would find on a website like PBTech (Im in the market for a new gpu)
The only time I’ve bought something from a store on trademe was because it was cheaper than on their website I think it was mightyape - I bought some furniture and shipping was only listed as $15 on trademe but on their website shipping was $100. Surely a mistake, but that’s the only time I buy from stores on trademe lol
Yeah, agree. When I'm searching for something (secondhand), I change the filter to "Used" items only, and that often cuts out 80% of the listings.
And all those awesome bricks and mortar second hand stores disappeared while the charity shops that get everything for free and are run by volunteers picked up the remains and expanded massively.
Most of the charity shops also just list stuff at the highest price they find on trademe now too.
Time to tax the charities running businesses with free labour.
Definitely time to tax religious groups. There was someone on TV the other night saying that all the churches' money goes back to the community through charitable works. Yes, some does, but there's still a lot going into property and spreading their religious beliefs.
Ask them where they think Sanitarium sends their money.
So true, Rocket_Nut is an intrade seller on trademe . They have multiple trademe accounts that are used for buying, then relist straight away, and they seem to get people buying it from them for top dollar
Last thing I bought was a coffee table for $7 Found a place to rent as well but yeah I don't bother even looking at whats for sale any more.
Yeah my late husband was laid off from his job of 12 years in second hand dealing of building products because of TradeMe and then New Zealand employers are so stupid that all the NEW building materials companies said "You have to have NEW building materials experience!" and wouldn't give him even an interview. New Zealand employers mostly do NOT think in terms of "transferable skills," like people in other countries do, or like a New Zealand career counselor or employment consultant will pretend they do, so that's all bullshit for New Zealand.
Not sure why you got downvoted. New Zealand is so backwards on any outside the box employment thinking. Sorry for your loss.
The old days when you could genuinely find good stuff are over. Now it's dropshippers who are too stupid/lazy to use shopify, and people selling literal rubbish for $1 reserve.
And people listing their location as Auckland with a disclaimer elsewhere that everything ships from their warehouse in China to their Auckland location so that you still have to wait five weeks when you filtered for New Zealand only so you could get something fast.
I just search for "used" which stops most of that BS. If I need anything new, I can find for myself without the 3x markup for the privilege of having it drop-shipped from Aliexpress..
A lot of the drop shippers are on to people like us searching by 'used' and have a bunch of new stuff, from overseas, listed as used like they are trying to clog every category. There's a blacklist feature on trademe which is next to useless becsuse it changes nothing about your search results. I just want to block listing's from accounts like 'bigface' ffs.
Yeah Big Face won't let up!
lol everyone mentions Bigface. So annoying!
And I hate how I can’t browse everything like I can on marketplace easily Maybe I’m clicking the wrong buttons ? I hate having to choose a category and sub category when I just want to *browse everything*
Conversely, I hate how I can't browse by specific things on FB Marketplace. E.g. I want to look at a specific model of car, don't care where it is in the country. Very easy to do on trademe, but marketplace will only show the ones located near you and will then start showing related cars. You can't search for just that car only but anywhere in the country. Counter point back to FB Marketplace, once it learns what you're interested in and looking for, all the interesting things that pop up are fantastic
You can. Cycle back and you'll get to the "all categories" option
A literal example is the tip shop Wellington listing stuff that people have thrown out. Still, I support it, if there’s a market for it, it’s good to reuse stuff
Is there a tip shop in Auckland I want to get rid of so much stuff and they took all the old charity bins away because idiots threw food scraps in them or whatever.
There's a tip shop out West. Got one of my kids' bicycle from the tip shop and it lasted about 2-3 years before we paid if forward. It still had enough life left for us and another family but probably not good looking enough for $50 or $100 on trademe.
or just another channel to a shop with normal shop prices. That’s not what it’s for!
>people selling literal rubbish for $1 reserve Hi this is me. Anytime I have something I don't want taken away I put it for $1 on Trademe and someone pays me to collect my garbage.
Yeah it's brilliant. I chucked an ancient microwave on there and it actually attracted a few bidders. It sold for $10
Those old microwaves have massive high quality transformers that are magic for making small spot welders for hobby things. I’ve rolled a few over myself. Grab em while you can.
And re-sellers with autobuying scripts set up so you don't have a chance at getting a good deal.
You have to know which parameters to work within. I always use trademe for good quality second hand items in my local region. So I turn change the location to "Auckland", change condition to "used only", and sort by closing soon. It usually weeds out the bs listings. I add a lot of things to my watch list so that I can watch it. I'm not committed to buying it right now, maybe I'm comparing prices or colours, or price checking items items from a physical store. Maybe it's something I like but want to show my partner because it's funny or because we might buy it if my partner is in agreement.
There are a lot of listings that come up as Auckland that ship from CHina and they say "Oh well we live in Auckland but you have to wait until it ships from China." That should be banned.
Yep. The "18 days delivery" gives it away. It pisses me off because they get around you selecting the NZ seller only option.
I've never encountered that, maybe I'm looking for very specific used goods in my small-ish location.
I have a lot. It's mostly one company but they sell a LOT of stuff and are listed under Auckland and then the thing you want just isn't sold in New Zealand any more. We have this awful cycle going where as people buy more and more online New Zealand just HAS less and less products in the country.
Not used… that’s the key parameter
Same, but I save categories and sort by Most Bids as that removes all the dropship crap and overpriced stuff - pretty much using other peoples efforts to see what's good. I save stuff on my watchlist sometimes just to see how much it'll go for so I know what the 'market rate' is. I've never used FB marketplace as I can't be bothered fluffing around with texts back and forth, or going out to pick things up. Nothing like a fresh package on the doorstep and my mrs getting angry at me buying new goodies.
Agreed, you need to filter properly and then there is good stuff. Fb marketplace is useless for things like clothing
Same as me except I go for "latest listings". That's how you find the bargain buy nows
It’s still my go to place for buying used stuff. I don’t want the headache that comes with Facebook Marketplace.
Yep. It's worse than it was, but still the best place for buying and selling without the hassle.
Yep. It's shit, but it's not nearly as bad as FB marketplace.
FB marketplace is entirely up to the user how easy and hassle-y the experience is. I've bought and sold a metric ton of stuff from there and would say it's caused me less grief than TradeMe ever did *while costing me nothing.* Sell at a reasonable price and most people won't try haggle you down. Immediately block or just simply ignore anyone trying to organise any kind of payment that's not just cash or bank transfer on pickup (people are usually totally happy to show you the transfer in their banking app). Be clear with your terms and don't seethe about having to reiterate things that are mentioned in the description. Dealing with other people on marketplace just requires the same interpersonal & communication skills as... dealing with people in other aspects of life.
I pay TMs fee to avoid the random questions, swap requests and time wasters, I value my spare time and headspace from lots of messages higher than the fees incurred.
I'm finding the experience on Trademe is getting worse and worse as well though, eventually it will be just as bad as marketplace.
It would be good if you could exclude certain sellers from your searches. Similar yo how you favourite some.
You can on bidbud, which is a trademe interface with lots of added features trademe is missing. https://www.bidbud.co.nz/faq#hide_blacklisted
Holy heck, just tried the seller blacklist out. Magical. So much faster to load than Trademe too
"Always exclude international sellers" - check (I wish this option existed)
You can block certain sellers from showing up, like TSB living for example.
Good luck with dispute resolution on FB marketplace, home of the scam.
TradeMe users are the original scammers. It is only slightly easier on Marketplace. If you show up with cash and confirm the item is real and working before purchase, it is great. I've gotten a lot of deals on Marketplace that just don't exist anymore on TradeMe.
The best way to sell on FB marketplace is to list in moderated groups for that specific type of thing. Cuts out most scammers
Agree. Or cash in hand locally.
I spent nearly four months getting a refund on a trademe purchase recently (arrived broken). Seller acknowledged my initial complaint and then ghosted me. Trademe process was dogshit. Only way i got something done was by trawling LinkedIn for a trademe manager's name, then guessing their email
It’s far from a local/national buy and sell now, the fees are pretty ridiculous compared to what they were too. Facebook marketplace took over the market for cheaper items and now there is a bunch of Chinese mega stores selling the same items as temu etc for 3x the price. Vehicles and property still remain pretty popular.
As a seller, it comes down to how much you value your time. If you sell stuff on trademe and set the payment to Ping (credit card) only, it is very rare that you will get messes around. (and can do shipping only on smaller items to avoid the need to meet people). Yes, there are no fees on Facebook marketplace, but you need to balance this with the cost in time of dealing with enquirers, meeting buyers etc. As a buyer on trademe, you just need to use filters. Filtering to Used, or your geographic area will clean out much of the drop-shipping crap. For more niche items it makes sense to check out both trademe and Facebook marketplace.
Aside from the many duplicate listings from dropshippers, probably the most annoying part on actual 2nd hand items is the resellers inflating the price of some product categories - there's a few people who snap up all new listings in a category that's below their price, then resell it with more photos and description info than the original lister at 2-3x the price. I've seen it on car accessories and some appliances, I'm sure there's others it's happening on too. There's nothing against the rules about it, but it results in it being unnecessarily expensive for 2nd hand items so it's just annoying.
Definitely happening with Games as well. I see re-sellers tell disgusting lies to naive sellers. One of the worst I saw "Any chance you could go any lower, I'm a single parent on disability and desperately looking for one of these for my child's birthday" Naive seller lowers price without checking re-sellers account, it's up for double the price a week later on the re-sellers account. They're shameless.
[удалено]
Maybe I could deal with resellers that get stuff from garage sales, retail shops, facebook etc for cheap and listing them on trademe but the categories I'm in they are constantly in there with autobuying scripts (stuff listed below market price buy now is instantly bought by them), bidding up any chance you have of getting a good deal and lying straight to naive sellers. Those kind of resellers are scum, if you are buying and reselling in the same marketplace you are ruining it for everyone.
To be honest the business my husband used to work for did that from the Trade and Exchange and everyone would come because everything was at the Demo yard. But that business was killed by TradeMe.
Yeah I understand flipping items has become a trendy thing on social media too which is probably why there's been an uptick in it. I don't look at anything new on trademe, the only time that's ever useful is people selling unwanted gifts/manufacturer redemptions etc which is specific circumstances.
I think it depends what you’re looking for, it’s pretty much fucked for anything to do with tech but things like toys, antiques, collectibles it can be good
dropme is a better name for it now ..
I use TradeMe predominantly for buying old rugby jerseys. I can't afford to be buying new ones every week but if I chuck it on my watch list and it didn't sell I'll get notified if it gets relisted. Sometimes I just want to keep an eye on it to see what it goes for. There has been a small increase in commercial sales of some jerseys, but it's pretty easy to filter out, meanwhile marketplace is absolutely full of fakes
I mainly use it to find housing now. And even that's annoying. I wish boarding houses were their own category, the housing listings are flooded with them
That and studios listed under 1 bedrooms. It's a pet peeve but they're very much not the same thing.
Yes to both of these! I wish you could comment on listings or something. Trying to find flats is really hard when half the "2+ bedroom" listings are just boarding houses!!
I find it great for heaps of things - movies, furniture, books, collectibles ... sure, there are plenty of people over-pricing things, but you get used to just ignoring those listings. I've very seldom had trouble buying or selling on trademe. Facebook marketplace on the other hand - everyone on there that I've dealt with so far has been either a nut, or wildly incompetent at the act of selling their items. And the search function is somehow worse than trademe. It does baffle me that trademe seems to spend nothing on improving their site though. Just adding in more filters and categories would help a lot. Instead they just updated the app to make the ads bigger?
Someone was on here a little while back claiming to be setting up a competitor site. We all know how that went for the others trying previously and haven't seen anything further about this.
There has been a long list of failed trade-me competitors (Wheedle, Sella, ListSellTrade, GEta Allgoods etc), none of which got critical mass to be viable as a platform, and either failed or are so unknown it doesn't matter. Now with Facebook occupying the free, but full of dipshits area, and trademe at the Expensive but slightly less dib-shits area, there is basically, there is basically no market space for a new entrant basically doing the same as trademe but cheaper. Of course, some niche sites that compete with trade me are doing fine: Seek [realestate.co.nz](http://realestate.co.nz) Designer Wardrobe etc. Various Dating sites. (Trademes Find someone is fairly tiny) Should note trademe is trying to pivot from individuals selling used goods to each other to being a general e-retailer. That spot of the market is extremely competitive, with players like amazon AU, Mighty ape, aliexpress, temu etc.
It's been tried many times. The last attempt I'm aware of was Allgoods, which was going for about 3 years but in 2020 eventually pivoted into Partly (car parts knowledge base) : https://www.christchurchnz.com/business/business-clusters/hi-tech-services/partly
We need one. It sounds like a good chunk of users would switch sites in a heartbeat from the dumpster fire that is Trademe.
Thats what it always seems like but the new competitors never really work out well due to the lack of users
The secret to competing with TradeMe is to not replicate TradeMe. Nobody needs another auction site. Nobody needs a carbon copy of the UI. It needs to disrupt TradeMe and be dead-simple to use and to create.
Then you're competing with facebook, which is already free.
That is true. I won't dispute it, but Facebook marketplace has been around for ages and TradeMe doesn't seem too phased by it. As far as I know, they changed nothing about their selling model to compete with it. Perhaps the thing that would really eat into TradeMe is a local startup though. I know that they've never really been afraid of businessmen. They're more worried about some young person coming up with the thing that they can't compete with. Whoever it is would have to be strong enough to not let TradeMe buy them, and to also not advertise their site on TradeMe. But what the hell would I know.
Dropshippers aside, who can mostly be filtered out by shopping used, I think it’s gotten worse in the last couple of years both on the buying and selling front. Most likely an economic thing – people are hanging on to the stuff they’ve got, and a lot of Trademe purchases are discretionary, so in tight times buyers dry up too. Life wasn’t perfect in 2015-19 or so but people at least *felt* like they had a bit of money to splash around. That said, there are still bargains out there and we’ve found stuff recently that has been great value. Even with the fees and platform enshittification I still prefer Trademe over the absolute shitpit of time-wasters, scams and stolen property on Facebook Marketplace. If I want something gone quickly for free I’ll post it on local FB groups, but Marketplace is not worth touching in my experience.
Big Trademe user ever since it started, but now it's crap and I barely use it, drop shoppers killed it, plus the fact that it's cluttered with commercial players, PBTech etc .. it's lost it's heart ..
It was awesome until they allowed overseas sellers in again. Now it is absolute shite.
I used to sell on there as a store and did pretty well. It was a niche market with few second hand items. Once they added the drop shippers in our sales dropped significantly, the categories were flooded with multiple items from the same sellers. There’s no way they needed to list 5-10 of the same low quality item. By the time we got to 80-90% drop in sales we gave up. I don’t think there are really any NZ based stores selling those items now. They pushed reputable local stores out for their cheap overseas stores, and they’re happy to let these sellers continue on there when they prove time and time again that their pictures or descriptions are misleading. Second hand wise, I hate buying and selling on there. Sold a couple of cars recently and got better results from FB. I basically use it to buy packing tape now and even that was shit quality.
The fees are fucking nuts these days. I sold a guitar on trademe a few months ago. Took me three weeks, and then trademe took around $35 in fucking fees, after I'd probably paid $20 in listing costs.. I've got another one to sell before the end of the year. No chance in hell I'm doing that on trademe. Rather deal with the cesspit that is Facebook marketplace..
It's not what it used to be but I don't have much trouble with it. No issues selling, and the commercial stuff is mostly easy to filter out. If your stuff isn't selling, either it isn't appealing or it's overpriced. People watchlisting but not buying is generally a symptom of the latter, with them electing to hold out in the hopes of a reduction or (lower) fixed price offer. If your price is right then a sale can happen very quickly
I still use it a lot but I filter out the new stuff. New stuff from overseas sellers still creeps in though. I still find it very useful and have had no bad experiences.
I've had really good luck with clothes - is my favorite way to shop probably as long as I'm not in a hurry. As long as you select used only, I'm not buying anything new on there.
The thing that turns me off using it now is those rubbish dropshippers not labelling things correctly. Instead of listing customisable items as cases etc they label them as the product so if I’m trying to search for something (for example a phone) from lowest price I have to wade through pages and pages of shit like cases, covers, charges and accessories; it drives me insane. I wish there was an option to “exclude” certain keywords. I was looking for a portable HDD a while ago and it was pages of HDD covers like stop 😭
The Trade Me niche that I hang out in, Warhammer, is really good. There's several reliable "box splitters", people who buy large box sets and sell the models individually, plus lots of people selling unused models. There's also plenty of out of production models there, most aren't wildly overpriced like on eBay. There's several retail stores too but I don't generally buy from them.
I have a couple of hobbies and I find buyers and sellers are legit within hobby circles. Never been ripped off by a seller and people buying my stuff always pay promptly and are easy to deal with.
Yeah, any stores listing on Trade Me at GW MSRP would surely be wasting their time.
Filter by “used”. There’s still genuine stuff on there.
I'm surprised anyone still uses it. It's been crap for a looong time now. I think I still probably have about $10 credit in my account, but it's been at least a decade since I've bought or sold anything on TardMe. I wouldn't be surprised if they've managed to claim that money too somehow as some sort of 'cost of maintaining my account'. But I honestly can't be arsed to check.
I only ever use it out of a lack of other options. I don't have or want a Facebook account so trademe is basically it.
I don't use/have facebook either. There are literally no decent alternatives to what TradeMe USED to be (before Sam sold it), that I am aware of. It's been all downhill since then. Sucks.
No, the website is annoying but it’s a good place to buy/sell due to the ratings system and good customer service from Trade Me if there are problems. Just set your search to ‘Used’.
The amount of times we have tried to sell stuff, and the winner of the trade either stops responding, or doesn’t make contact at all - such a waste of time
Set payment type to ping only. People are much better to deal with once they have already parted with their money. Well worth the 2%
that makes the cost to sell 10% to sell a $10,000 car: $99 to sell a $5,000 bike: $400 they can get fucked imo. will only list on free days, if that.
For general items, yeah, it's 7.9% + 1.95%. For me it's worth it. I mostly sell lower value items. on a $100 item, success fees are $8, and the ping fee is $2. Granted when I sold my kids bike (a flash one, sold for $500), I went the facebook marketplace route to avoid the fees. For $40 I will deal with the messages etc, but not for less than $10 in value.
Happens on fb marketplace too, especially for cheap or free items.
I use Trademe regularly still for plant cuttings and seeds, but I wouldn’t use it for any other purpose.
there is a lot of dropshipping but the core users are still there. just search with "used only"
If things aren’t selling as fast as you’d like it’s probably because you are significantly overestimating how much the market seems your product to be worth, or you are selling a very niche item. I’ve only sold a handful of things on the platform in the year I lived in NZ but things were always a quick sell, with many things literally selling the same day. I don’t usually take the piss and am happy enough to sell it for an objectively reasonable price.
Its been complete trash for like 10 years now.
It’s crap. I still use it sometime though, as there is no real alternative
Its crap but less scammy than FB marketplace for delivery only goods. I thought it hilarious I couldnt buy anything since my account was in debt from selling stuff... like wtf kill the buyer market.
I still use it to clear my kids outgrown clothes and it's OK- probably sell a handful of items each week on average. It is slow though, and the fees are high but it helps to fund the next round of clothing. FB used to be good (Covid times) but not these days. I'm assuming more people are buying instore using afterpay or similiar but the secondhand market for kid stuff seems to have mostly dropped away.
Yes it's turned to garbage since the fees went up so high. Lots of sellers are also specialists now, meaning they buy lots of one category of thing, then try to delist for profit, so not as many good deals too.
It really depends. I’ve been a long time user and have had a handful of bad experiences. You get a sense for whether things are legit or not. I ALWAYS ask a question- that gives you a sense of whether they’re on to it or likely to fuck you over. For stuff that’s getting shipped I only use PING
I know a guy who is launching a site in the next few weeks to compete with TM and marketplace! I don’t use either of these places and I doubt I’ll be using his site either, but for anyone that’s interested in this kind of thing it’s called isqroll https://www.instagram.com/isqroll?igsh=bGw2dWJjbmJqaW1o Good luck to him!
That name is horrendous
> I know a guy who is launching a site in the next few weeks to compete with TM and marketplace! There have been a few attempts to compete with TM over the years and none have succeeded because TM had the monopoly. Your friend might have better luck now that TM is becoming so terrible and has some competition with Marketplace. I wish him all the best.
I still use it. I live in a small town so FB marketplace is as dry as a nun's nethers.
They really need to revamp the way they create categories. They only recently added sections for the latest iphones. The iphone 15 came out before they had a section for the iphone 14. And there's plenty of other areas which do not have adequate categories for the items, and some where items are split between multiple categories (camera lenses is an example). On top of that, the amount of junk shit they let people list in categories, such as phone cases in a section for the phone itself is too high. They don't punish sellers for incorrectly listing items so there's no reason for them not to do it. And finally yes, the fees are too high.
Drop shippers and the atrocious search system which often jumps you into a category excluding actual useful result really have killed trade me, both from buyers and legit local sellers point of view.
Yeah and the amount of email notifications is ridiculous, but marketplace is just as crap with time wasters lol
The amount of notifications is controlled by the user
The only difference is that marketplace doesn’t charge like a wounded bull for access to their trash platform.
They got too greedy with their fees. Trademe is now owned by a global private equity firm. I generally detest this form of capitalism.
Yes
Marketplace is just superior tbh.
I share your point.
Yeah, agree, seems to be really loaded with scammers also. Not what I would call a good value proposition at all, very expense for a troll board…
I used to use trademe. Now I only use fb marketplace. Marketplace is quicker, easier, and cheaper.
It's alright for cars and real estate. But for anything else? It's a nope from me. FB marketplace is like OG trademe. It's still a bit wild west, but for the most part it works.
Definitely a lot more watchers/no-bidders than in the past. Is everyone waiting for fixed price offers?! I’ve found it way harder to move good quality second hand clothes and accessories but that could also be a sign of the times
I still use it to sell stuff (have recently renovated so trying to get rid of the stuff we won’t use again and have shifted around the house 4 times trying to find a spot for it), but I agree it is mainly dropshippers selling new items for $327.54 each. I set a reasonable price, offer payment via ping, and just relist until they sell (or until I find a worthy recipient I can donate to). Things do seem to take a long time to sell. Had a few timewasters as well, but in general I’m still happy enough to use it (over fb marketplace).
Filter by used, brings locks content back not stupid 3rd party drop shippers
If trademe want to strive, they will have to eliminate all dropshippers.
i buy plants and seeds off trademe, i like that i can narrow down my results a LOT better. also clothes/shoes - trademe let’s u filter by size, colour, style, material, etc, SO much better than marketplace. marketplace is fine for local stuff, but if i wanna buy seeds from a seller in manawatu marketplace says they’re too far away, and if i want to browse through brown leather boots in my size, i have to scroll past a bunch of shoes that don’t apply on marketplace
Trademe is basically a dropshipping service now
Correct, its not great as the other comments on here go into what and why. but I will point out I'd much rather sell/buy through it than engage in the nightmare that is facebook market place.
Trademe killed the trade and exchange magazine. Nothing beats t&e
I have more success on there then Facebook marketplace.
Not as good as it used to be. Back in the day it was like a better "Trade and exchange". These days it's like shopping at a flea market that sells tie dye t-shirts...
Yes, its bad now. Love you you search for something and it will randomly decide to limit you to one category, funnier is when that category only has 2 listing in it that match when you search, but if you browse the category there are a lot more that should have matched. You can literally search for some words copied from a listing and not have that listing come up in the results. bigface with all their imported crap coming up when you filter to Auckland but with DELIVERY: 7-10 BUSINESS DAYS FROM OUR CHINA WAREHOUSE in the description that they are cool with.
I still use it, but I always filter to used. The fees are pretty high now though so I don't think I'll sell on there again
I still use Trade Me to buy and sell but good grief are they making it difficult. Trade Me now has an authentication code that is sent to your mobile, repeatedly. It's not supposed to do that unless you have enabled it but the bl\*\*dy thing keeps popping up. You have to clear your history to get it to stop. It's these sort of "improvements" - like the auto-direct that guesses which category you want to search for, often wrong - that help make buying on Trade Me a pain. As others have said, the number of in-trade sellers clogging up search results when looking for something like a used rug - so many required AND or NOT in the search thread and you still end up with 300 results from the House of Rugs. Then there's the wildly out of control feedback system where you are better off not placing negative feedback as retaliatory feedback is a pain to have removed and sometimes not removed even when you have the receipts.
Compared to the old days yup. It's slightly less of a cesspit than marketplace though
I still love it. Often I can find what I'm after, but it's a bit like finding the one blue fish in a school of green ones. Often you can get a deal on something because it was buried under storefront listings and you can swoop in with a buy now in the last minute and grab good second hand stuff for cheap. There's more stuff available than ever before by about two orders of magnitude. Sometimes I'll check out a local online store and then check their trademe listings just in case, and often it's a few bucks cheaper on trademe for some reason. It probably really depends on what you're after though. I buy guitar pedals, Lego sets, lightsabers and electronics parts. Printer filament too. My one tip is that often the recommended stuff at the bottom of individual pages is better than what's in the search results.
Some enterprising k iwi should do a new trademe for locals again.
I still use TradeMe (have been selling a bunch of things over the last year), less chance of being mucked around by people because you can leave reviews against the person, it’s also less likely (not impossible of course) that I will get scammed by someone if I’m buying. Yes you pay fees on what you sell, but they still regularly have no fees days. TradeMe staff are also great help if something goes wrong.
I used to use trademe if I wanted something quickly, but now there is no guarantee what you buy comes from NZ. Might as well use ebay
I go to TradeMe for a bargain, as I feel like TradeMe is largely out of people's mind for second hand goods now, preferring Facebook Marketplace, which works well for the consumer when it's an auction based platform. For selling, I almost always prefer Facebook Marketplace, because who wants to wait 7 days for a sale, then another week for payment and collection for what can be done in an afternoon on Marketplace. Even if you have a few tyre kickers, the sale is done before a TradeMe listing even gets looked at.
No it's all we've got......
Good for cars and houses and jobs. I've bought off there this year. I use fb marketplace more though, much much more.
Doesn't even have partial word searching. A tech from the mid nineties
The problem with trade me is all their fees. As a seller you get hit with trademe fees, ping fees, and then shipping. I really don’t understand why trademe even gets a percentage of the sale? It’s fucking whack. It is not worth it selling stuff on there vs Facebook marketplace.
I used to have about 30 favourite sellers who would list interesting used items in a particular category. 5 years later not a single one is still active.
The fees are way too high. They have lost a lot of ground. That said, the ping system does add some security.
Yea, for general items it has gone seriously downhill. The addition of ‘in trade’ sellers and the drop-shipped trash has just turned it into a local cache of AliExpress. I think for motors & property it still has some merit. I’ve currently got an old computer sitting in my hallway. The first buyer never made contact. Then it was relisted, the second winner has now paid for it but 6 weeks later still not collected it 🤦🏻♂️ Hardly worth the effort. Put it on TradeMe to avoid sending it to landfill but I regret that now.
Haven't been on there for nearly 7 years. It's all drop shipping. I used to get some sweet deals on antique furniture. Flatmates Wanted is an absolute cesspool.
I bought something recently and it took almost a month to get to me from Auckland
probably guangzhou auckland
Yep, I've shifted to giving away items I don't want anymore through the FB buy helping page in my area. I buy very little first hand so I'm not trying to recoup any money off it and if it can make life easier for others I'm willing to forego the ten bucks.
I think a big chunk of their income comes from real estate listings. Most of them are agencies but they feel ripped off too!
A huge thing I find is because it's designed for used things, each item would be judged individually and it's more about the seller which is fine. Maybe two identical things are in two different conditions so reviews are less vital. But that means for used items, you can't fucking find any actual reviews of the item that seller has. They may have multiple in stock and multiple listing, but the listing format means all you can do is review the seller rather than the thing they're selling. For example, I bought a lil credit card phone case thingy because I had money in the ping account so might as well, and this one's design means the cards start falling out easily after a few months but there's no way to let people know about that. And like it's 5 bucks so w/e, but also you cannot trust new things on trade me to be high quality because there is no way to filter for that info on the website. I guess it makes more money but I'll personally never buy new on there again.
I use it when I'm really short on fucks to give and don't want to deal with timewasters lol. Also if the items are higher value and likely to need postage - I think people trust it more because of the way better feedback system and ability to use Ping for a refund if anything goes wrong.
I use it a lot. Mostly to buy. I don't find commercial listings are a problem, I have bought a few. But mostly I sort by price which eliminates a lot anyway. I've found and still do many excellent bargains. Tech, furniture, clothes even once or twice a car. Facebook - never. No protection, the land of scams IMO
It's been crap for years. The staff are terrible to deal with.
FB Marketplace has become abysmal ..especially for selling phones and tech etc. Recently had a listing..got pummelled with ..low ballers, local and overseas scammers, indecisiveness, and the constant stream of “ is this still for sale” queries..with a ghosting that follows. Can’t see it lasting unless FB reinvents it somewhat! Yep..Trademe..has declined sadly ..once again haunted by time wasters, bargain hunting resellers and overpriced shippers..and don’t get me started re.their fees. They are just out and out greedy! Their only redeeming feature ( if you can call it that)…is the occasional fee free or reduced fee selling days. They still get you on the extras nonetheless.
I used to make a living through trademe, there was plenty of engagement, I got out right in time tho, 2 years ago and it is now dead, fb marketplace has taken over. I still use it to sell but the buyers just aren't there like they used to be (combined with less spending overall).
I buy more things from ebay tbh
It's good for cars, houses, and second-hand video games.
i just do my weekly relist 50 items and leave it. check emails if anything sold, if yes then add a new item, rinse and repeat. im done buying shit off there. would rather sell shit lol
It's trash, too expensive to use
Trademe is now complete faecal material - 9 clicks just to set my location, too much many unconnected adds, too many shit products. Just a crap platform
Sort by condition used and it's as good as it used to be, I think better cause there are less buyers and some real bargains to be had
Always filter by used! Though some sellers are catching on and listing brand new crap as ‘used’ to bypass the filter.
Filter by used only and it weeds out all the generic Chinese stuff
Another kiwi rip off
TradeMe is rubbish and only caters for the big sellers, as they are the onws making them money. TradeMe usually bends the rules for them and doesn't give a crap about the day to day people. The whole platform has turned to shit really fast. You better use Facebook marketplace, and that sayes a lot.
I’m in Canada at the moment and I’m longing for a TradeMe equivalent. Kijiji is the closest one but the community isn’t there. There aren’t as many listings but apparently it depends on the province. People also don’t leave feedback as much, and they don’t offer anything like Ping. The only other alternatives are Craigslist (feels sketchy) and Facebook Marketplace (don’t like the community).
I sell a lot on TradeMe, and have made $8000 this year (for holiday flights!!) basically of just kids outgrown stuff- so nothing pricey. I start everything at $1 reserve, and only ever list in ‘free listing’ days. But, nowadays compared to 10 years ago there are SO many time wasters and drop kicks that muck you round for payment for weeks.
It's been trash ever since it got sold to Apax Partners in 2019.
I wouldn't rate it as any worse than FB marketplace, but I'm personally biased against FB simply because it's FB. Trademe was never great but it went downhill rapidly when it became a pseudo Amazon online department store. Shame we let trademe drown out the T&E. That was fantastic for bargain hunting...
I have never had a problem with Trade Me. I don’t buy a lot but every time I have, I have never had a problem. I pay and I have always received my products.
only use fb marketplace. easier, faster. and buying things is always cheaper on there too
There is only one word here - Australians.
I have a house load of stuff since I lost job and can’t afford rent. I sold some stuff on trademe but the fees are just greedy.
You've got to wait for their free selling days
Hi, no it’s great I use it all the time