Trade Me Reviews 

Trade Me staff are extremely difficult to deal with during disputes. I question their ability to fairly assess situations and pass judgements when they choose not to listen to both sides of the story. Which therefore indicates their decisions will likely discriminate against those who were never given a chance to be heard.

I sold a used Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD that I had tested shortly before the sale. I provided dated, serial-number-linked evidence showing that Samsung Magician detected the drive and reported its health as “Good.”

The buyer contacted me only after performing several troubleshooting steps and reported that the SSD had gone from being detectable at one point to completely undetectable. Trade Me nevertheless decided that the buyer was entitled to a full refund.

My issue is not that buyers should not be protected. It is that Trade Me’s responses did not meaningfully explain how my objective evidence or the reported change in the SSD’s condition was considered. The buyer’s account appeared to be accepted, while my evidence had no visible effect on the outcome.

Trade Me ultimately decided in the buyer’s favour despite the objective, dated evidence I provided. This experience has left me with very little confidence that sellers receive balanced protection when the cause of an electronic item’s failure is uncertain. I will be reluctant to sell valuable used electronics through Trade Me again.

Trademe are crap, and if I had any other option in NZ, I would use it

The buyer of my product paid immediately into the trade me Ping system. I transferred it out immediately. Six days later the payment had been “lost”. The online help is useless. So I have just been ripped off to the tune of $98.75.

Whatever else people may say about them, buying on trademe is very safe option.

Selling has been easy. Thank-you Trade Me. But although buying is generally good, I’ve made three really expensive and bad purchases. Trade Me couldn’t get my money back and the sellers blacklisted me. TradeMe does need to provide a contact phone number and email.

Should be zero stars. Worst platform yet has a monopoly. Impossible to speak to a human. No chance of getting money back if frauds ect, most sellers say located Auckland, however are China and products are TIMU taking weeks to arrive. I use EBAY now and only trade cars on TradeMe

We sold something for around ~2k and got paid with Ping. All good. We shipped item next day and left the balance on the site since we needed to do some shopping over the following weekend and planned to use it. Item got delivered two days later and buyer IMMEDIATELY opened a dispute with Trade me saying that they never received anything, even though we used signature confirmation for delivery and package is showing up as Delivered on NZPost tracking. Trade me did not care about any of this and simply took the money from our Ping balance and sent it back to the buyer. They got to steal our item and Trade me stupidly facilitated this to happen. We are in the process of taking them to the disputes tribunal with our attorney.

Never use Ping!

I am absolutely disgusted by this website.

I sold an item through Trade Me, and the buyer paid using Ping. I delivered the item in person, and everything appeared to go smoothly. The nightmare only began when I tried to transfer the money to my New Zealand bank account.

Initially, I received an email saying my account had been suspended because they believed I had logged in from overseas. I explained that I had been using a VPN while streaming videos, and they acknowledged that explanation.

However, that was only the beginning.

They then withheld the payment that rightfully belongs to me and told me I had to complete an anti-money laundering (AML) verification through their third-party provider, Verifi. I completed the entire process, yet they still weren’t satisfied.

The requests just kept coming. They asked me to send emails without using a VPN, then instructed me to log in to my Trade Me account again. I repeatedly confirmed that I live in New Zealand, provided my local mobile number, my residential address, and completed every verification they requested. Despite fully cooperating, they continued to hold my money.

I genuinely don’t understand what is happening with this organisation. Holding a seller’s funds after a legitimate sale, despite repeated identity verification, is completely unacceptable and incredibly frustrating.

Rest assured, this is the last time I will use Trade Me. I would strongly encourage others to think twice before using their platform, especially Ping Payments. My experience has been nothing short of a nightmare.

1]My first experience with ping was my last, at least voluntarily. First use of a ping sale [worth thousands of $$ to me] was cancelled by tm, because the buyer did not know they had to confirm such a large sale. No flecibility from tm..
My solution: I do not accept ping payments...period. If you make a ping payment after [not] reading the auction fully, you will be asked to make a new payment direct to our bank account, and, of course, we will give you a ping refund.

2]Paying by ping guarantees tha you, amongst other guarantees, are guaranteed that the parcel will be covered by ping if, amongst other things, it gets lost. Thats part of the ping fee.
My general carrier or courier also charges me as part of the freight cost, that the item is covered by insurance against loss. So, I pay insurance once as part of the ping fee, and I pay insurance again, as part of the courier freight fee.
I AM PAYING TWICE.
If the parcel is lost, I presume I can make a claim against ping, and then also a claim against the courier company. After all I am paying insurance twice. Paying twice=claim twice.

Using ping as a buyer on my side was a new experience I didn’t know that after u pay then there is a whole process to verify payment with a bot, got thru this thought was all good until the seller poor elderly person doesn’t know that he needs to verify his bank account for ping to deposit funds in his account and is very confused I have asked bot to get human to help seller. 1 to 2 days for human to sort purchase so even though u pay for goods expect quite a wait before u can collect ur item. Overall trade me site is poor and wouldn’t bother buying from them again such a shame as it use to be great

Not surprisingly, TradeMe is hiding behind a 3rd rate chatbot with a hideous name (Tautoko?) and even less chance of actually getting anything constructive, let alone, actually done to fix issues. Two requests for a call back, and met with an inane "a representative will be in contact in 1-2 days." Fat chance :/

Just a whole lot of foreign companys claiming to be in New Zealand then drop ship once you purchase. Trade me doesnt care at all. Greedy money grabbing Trade me just helping lying over seas companys

Non existent customer service. Braindead chatbot. No one will even adhere to their own code of conduct of policy.

Very Poor site - if a 'buyer' does not complete a purchase for an item they have won there is no recourse for the seller, and all TM say is to relist - how is that sensible or fair? It is rife with scams and no better that Facebook marketplace.
Rather just leave stuff at the gate for people to take rather than go through the hassle for no result.

My trademe / ping account was hacked which has caused a lot of grief. I have tried working with their fraud department to get my account reinstated. They have been gaslighting me as well as leading me on by asking for information I then provided but then ignoring me after I provided it. I have requested a phone call to figure out how to understand and address their concerns. I've been ghosted.

I looked up the price of some hedge plants at Kaipara Coast Plant Centre on TradeMe. When I went out to buy 2 plants I was charged $10 more than the TradeMe price. When I contacted them I was told that price was for another batch. Yeah, right! Be careful with their pricing. Service was good, but......

Outrages dumb website with incompetant IT who like to hide themselves behind a wall of not be able to contact them. Time for the Commerce Commission to have a look at the monopoly they have in the market and start breaking this useless outfit up

I have been a seller on the platform for years and have endured the near 10% fees for longer than I care to remember. When they announced massive changes to fees recently, this sounded like a good thing at face value. No more success fees! However this is just the part they want you to focus on.

As both a buyer and a seller here are the various drawbacks.

1. Sellers who don't use automated listing software have to manually relist every auction one by one. Also having to manually enter the shipping rates for every listing. Quick relist does not work so this is extremely frustrating and not worth my time.

2. The ability to add a combined shipping option has been removed completely. Now buyers have to pay the full shipping charge for every item they buy from the same seller. And Trade Me collect the Ping fees off ever cent of that. You can only do one refund via ping so doing a partial refund removes your ability to do a full one later if things go wrong, leaving sellers out of pocket the fees.

3. The new "service fee" for buyers makes it unclear how much you will really be paying for an item. This practice is extremely misleading, like a seller quoting a price and only disclosing at the last minute that the price excludes GST.

4. Customer service is abhorrent. The chatbot doesn't work on mobile apps and when you email them they don't listen at all. They just ignore everything you say and gaslight you Into thinking you're crazy like an abusive partner would. I'd rather the NO customer service of Facebook Marketplace than the painful experience of dealing with the arrogant, anti-consumer Trade Me.

5. Buyers can no longer pay via the most common and most preferred option, bank transfer. This is also the safest option, contrary to what Trade Me says. You can't commit fraud by getting ahold of someone's bank account number - like you can with credit cards. If a seller sends the goods then the payment is reversed, seller is left out of pocket.

There will probably be more issues that arise over time but the reality is, even those who endured the high fees are currently being sent off to other platforms. Trade Me simply cannot be trusted.