Trade Me Reviews

I’d give them a negative score if I could. Customer service is almost non existent and when you do hear from someone after frustratingly dealing with their mind numbing chatbots and the odd half a human for two weeks, and then eventually end up with some arrogant ignorant power tripper (Cody) who couldn’t care less that you were loyal to them for years and had a 100% rating. That all counted for nothing! They used to be my go to place for trading. Not anymore, never again. You screw over my loyalty, it will come back tenfold! Trademe, you won’t get away with this unacceptable behaviour of loyal customers! Hurry someone and create a new trading platform! Good riddens to trademe!

Date of experience: April 30, 2024

Tried to sell a book, within seconds of listing a scammer offered a price way above my asking price and TradeMe took away the commission immediately… only a few exchanges of emails later I found it was a scam but imagine how many people could be be scammed if in my situation. The fact that TradeMe allows scammers to roam the platform is shame on them. Also the selling experience is horrible — there is basically no service at all for the horrific percentage of commission they’re taking from a sale, and your listing is only good for 7 days, if the item is not a quick sale the relisting process is pretty time wasting. Thinking about going to EBay now.

Date of experience: March 20, 2024

Been around 25 years but spend all their effort on woke bs and none on core functionality.

Its ok all round but management needs to go

Date of experience: April 30, 2024

Got scammed on trade me asked for there help. Useless and pointless exercise. If you pay by bank transfer as most do for purchases trade me are simply have zero interested in investigating scammers using there website to defraud buyers and give zero guarantees. Guy probably still scamming under new name. They don't care got their commission.

Date of experience: February 26, 2024

There is no buyer protection with Trade Me. They used to sort things out within the week. Now they say they’ll get back to you within 4 weeks and then you wait 4 weeks and zero response has happened from them! Meanwhile on eBay same kind of issues are sorted out in 1-2 days consistently! eBay has real guarantee get what you ordered or your money back and that includes when sellers do a slack job of packing and the item breaks in the post, refunds are near immediately whereas with Trade Me non existent! Better to minimally use TM when buying or selling and use safer alternatives instead.

Date of experience: April 22, 2024

This was a very good website to buy my Toyota Aqua. It was a fast trade and very cheap compared to other Aquas on the market. Haven't received it yet but the photos looked great!! Cant wait to receive my Toyota Aqua!!

Date of experience: April 11, 2024

I reported a faulty product from a supplier on trademe.co.nz. The product was faulty. I have provided proof as well as communication from the seller not responding. It took trademe.co.nz approximately 2 months to respond. Unfortunately, since we relocated, I could not hold on to the faulty product. Trademe.co.nz, with all the proof I have provided, refused to honour the consumer protection promise. DON'T RELY ON THE CONSUMER PROTECTION POLICY. You are not protected when you buy on Trademe.co.nz.

Date of experience: April 22, 2024

I have been a member since the early 2000's, and had left a 5 Star review back in 2019 - which I have now deleted and updated with a 1 Star.
Something's have changed for the better, while others for the worse. Very hard to communicate with Trademe, recently had an issue with them taking a hardline with little to no consultation or feedback for what appears to be a misunderstanding from both sides. Meanwhile there are people being dishonest, scamming, ripping off honest traders, failing to pay for items, giving honest sellers the run around.
Their customer service and communication definitely needs working on.
I used to think Trademe was fantastic, but after this experience, not so much, it can be convenient, but definitely looking at other options for buying and selling, as they have lost their vibe. Sadly a solid 1/5 from me :(

Date of experience: April 10, 2024

The worst thing about TradeMe & the reason you shouldn't join it is because you can't just close your account. *As a buyer only, I'm not sure it's legal for them to be able to treat people like that - you have to contact them & tell them you want to leave, then it takes 3-5 days for them to get back to you. *TradeMe only works because most of the people trading on there are honest. *But a lot of people do get ripped off & you have virtually no protection if you pay for something & don't get what you paid for. *They can't force people to supply the goods or get your money back for you. *They say if you pay with Ping you get buyer protection; but I know someone who paid with Ping & got messed around terribly by TradeMe when they were ripped off by the seller, & I don't think they have yet got their money back from TradeMe.

Date of experience: April 09, 2024

There’s no efficient way to contact Trademe and report scammers who open trademe accounts for the sole purpose of scamming genuine users. For example I paid an extortionate $139 fee to sell my car, within an hour I have a new trademe account holder offering to buy my car if I go to a website and pay a fee for a vehicle report. It’s a scam, the website takes your credit card details and robs you of any money they can. It’s an old scam yet there’s no option to report this trademe account holder other than a trademe online form thats states it will be answered within 7 days! How many others did this trademe account holder try and scam!

Date of experience: March 26, 2024

Sold a broken MacBook that clearly described it was broken. Guy bought then got upset he couldn’t fix it. Demanded a refund which I didn’t think was fair. Took me to tribunal. I tried contacting trademe for help, I got a reply a month later! I responded back and I’ve still not heard from them. Ended up having to refund this guy after 3 months of time wasted. Have asked Trademe to delete my account as I won’t use them going forward. No customer service at all. I’ve always used trademe and it’s just gotten worse over the years. Better off using Facebook marketplace and dealing with the automated “is the available” messages. Just don’t even bother with them.
It was also clear by the guys reviews that he had done this to other people before.

Get your act together Trademe you’re a joke!

Date of experience: February 05, 2024

Appalling customer service. Took nearly $600 of my money rather than paying it to a seller and a week later still haven't refunded it! Believe we are scammers because we sold a PS5 that the buyer removed the "signature only" from and it went missing. I honestly thought the buyer was the scammer as the postal service paid them out the full amount they paid, but they believed it was us despite having an account for years with great feedback!!! Turned up 4 months later with a big apology from the postal service and Trade me still think we're the scammers and closed an account down again stealing $100's from our ping account which was not refunded when they shut the account down, they probably have around $800 of our money now! THEY love making good honest people feel like criminals. The fact they still have my money is incredulous!! Giving them another 2 days before I have to get lawyers involved to try and get my own money back. TRADEME you should be embarrassed, and I believe I'm owed an apology!!!

Date of experience: April 05, 2024

Very rarely do I leave a review, but TradeMe's quality of service truly disappointing.'

Functionally, there are many issues with both the app and website, to name a few -
Buy now only listings show as unsold when sold.
Using the withdraw from Ping button crashes the app if you don't wait at least 5 seconds.
The product thumbnails in my listings/sold/unsold are all low resolution versions, but looking through
product search, they show as expected.
If you have product attributes on a product selected, then change the product category to another category that doesn't have the same attributes, then the attributes will still stay on the listing, and you have to change back the category and select none for the attribute for it to stop showing.

And to top it off, half of their website is still using their "Old Version" and half the new, before they seemingly gave up development of that.

This wouldn't be a huge problem if they addressed it, but these issues have been present for years, without any effort to fix them. Their support team says they are aware of the issues, but they don't seem to be making an effort to fix them.

Ping disputes take upwards of 2 months to be looked at by their staff, they claim there's a "backlog" but this has been the same turnaround time for at least the last year. Seems they are under-staffed and under-resourced.

TradeMe's Ping payment processor requires staff to manually review payments for fraud prevention, which means it can take up to 4 days for a payment to clear, incredibly inconvenient for pickups, as the buyer is force to wait.
They weren't able to provide any reason why it isn't automated, like other payment providers, so I'd assume it's because they haven't allocated enough resources to develop a competent solution.

All in all, seems pretty typical for a company bought out by foreign investors.
Little to no investment in keeping the service competitive as long as it's turning a profit, until it's left behind in the dust by more competent competitors.

Date of experience: April 19, 2024

Don’t Buy Trade me insurance. It’s a big time scam. It’s been 11 months already since May 2023 my 2 cars got bumped into each other and got badly damaged on my driveway.firstly Trademe took ages to decide on to fix my cars as they put our claim on Red flag 🚩 in their system. It means they are not interested to deal with you. Then they decide to fixed only damages after 9 months wait and still engine and other faults are there and they are not taking any responsibility and keep passing case to one of another Manages and none of their members are trained enough or have guts to make or take action or responsibility or even decide what to do. Very disgusting customer service. No one even bother to reply your emails back. My Both cars are unable to drive and family is struggling to go anywhere. These people are looks like run by mafias. Just stay away. Don’t get trapped by their cheap insurance premiums. These guys are bandits. Scammers. I don’t give them even -1 ⭐️ rating . They underwritten Tower Insurance.

Date of experience: April 02, 2024

I used to have so much trust in trade me being a reputable means on buying goods however now know it’s so better than buying something from Facebook marketplace. I was scammed out of $1000 after someone hacked another users account and sold me an iPad (that did not exist). I contacted trade me multiple times but got nothing but automated responses, I will never use the site again. Sad that New Zealand’s in-line mainstream second hand goods reseller has taken such a downhill dive.

Date of experience: December 01, 2023

Bought goods which were advertised as being worth $2400, had them valued $100 on a very good day. Trade me disputes process is a complete joke. Apparently they cant help as i paid by bank transfer!!!! Seller is clearly a fraudster. Update 5 March. After a lot of pressure the seller refunded my money. The goods went straight back on TradeMe. Clearly TradeMe are more interested in comission than supporting customers.

Date of experience: February 22, 2024

Got hack emailed trade with all the information they said we will contact you 3 to 5 working days been 3 weeks now and still haven’t heard from them

Date of experience: March 13, 2024

Daughter asked me to list some clothes - all in the $10-20 range. A pair of pants I put up she decided she wanted ; I initially withdrew the wrong pair ( this was the day of listing, no bids on them) I then withdrew the pair she wanted to keep ( again only priced at $10 and no bids ). Trade me took $6 off my account for withdrawing an item ! Would not refund even after I relisted one item.
Straight out extortion !!

Date of experience: March 21, 2024

TradeMe was once a reliable and safe place to buy & sell. Sadly it has now devolved into an u trustworthy platform with very limited support in cases of fraud and scamming. I lost NZD4200.00 to a fraudulent listing. The sellers profile had 100% positive feedback and had been a member of TradeMe for 19 years. Deeply disappointed in TM’s handling of my case and disregard for any back up support. I strongly advise caution with this service.
Member for many years.

Date of experience: February 22, 2024

While I'm sure the majority of transactions go perfectly because they are executed by two honest parties, Trademe fails miserably when things don't go as planned. The dispute process is automated showing that the corporate monster is gobbling your cash and doesn't really care about the customer at the end of the day. I guess you can sell your stuff on... wait for it... Facebook.

Date of experience: February 03, 2024