RNZ article here: Trade Me drops success fee, Facebook 'snapping at its heels'
More info from TradeMe
They're also getting rid of bank transfers as a payment option.
TradeMe Dropping Success Fees for Casual Sellers
TheDealMan on 05/03/2026 - 07:38
Last edited 05/03/2026 - 07:39
Last edited 05/03/2026 - 07:39
Comments
adding in service fees paid by the buyer for items selling over $20
Is that only if they choose to pay by Ping?
I took it to mean all sales over $20 have a buyer service fee added regardless of payment method, although not sure how that is enforced for cash.
TradeMe will get the fee from Ping paid by the seller.Okay - thanks.
Seems like it's only on Ping.
"To keep the platform running and provide local support, we’re introducing a tiered Service Fee on casual Ping purchases (excluding shipping).
Service Fee tiers:
$0.00 - $20.00 = Free
$20.01 - $100.00 = $0.99
$100.01 - $250.00 = $1.99
$250.01 + = $4.99
"So you get double charged if you use Ping, 2.19% transaction fee plus service fees. Good for cash buyers. I guess it's hard to charge them when the payment transaction doesn't go through the Trademe system.
@felixfurtak: That makes more sense, although you don't get double charged.
The seller pays the Ping fee and the buyer pays the service fee.
It's been slow and painful to watch.
I haven't sold anything on TM in years and have only very occasionally purchased anything. I have had excellent success on Marketplace.I think a lot of people have stopped using it. Always seems to have less stuff, priced way higher than Marketplace.
Can't beat it for getting stuffed delivered though. I'm lazy and hate picking stuff up so hardly use Marketplace. I'm not sure if anyone would ever get something delivered they bought from Marketplace right?
I've had a few items delivered via. Marketplace (and also sent items).
Apart from the items for delivery, I'm more likely to buy expensive stuff on Trademe due to buyer protection via Ping. I've also purchased Mitre10 digital vouchers on Trademe a few times ($70 - $80 for $100 worth). I won't do that on Marketplace for obvious reasons.
@xsolider: I've had one expensive item delivered via. Marketplace ($2k+). Initially I was a bit worried about being scammed. So I did my due diligence (checked Marketplace history, how long they had their profile for, what they had on their profile…even a Google search of the name), and there were no red flags. Even asked them to take some photos of the item and add them to the chat (wanted to clarify some things, but was also a good test of reliability on their part). The seller seemed genuine. The seller asked me to do a few things (screenshots of transfer etc) and admitted they had checked out my profile because they didn't want to be scammed. We had a good chuckle. I figured things were as safe as they could be in my situation.
The item was delivered the following day.
Yeah but they make up for it with thousands of listings of AliExpress and drop shipped stuff that will take 3 weeks to arrive and makes it impossible to find stuff you actually want to buy.
I, personally, love filtering through 10 pages of new products from China to find one used item locally on a used goods platform.
I totally agree with you. Just a tip you can actually filter by used listings and that helps me filter out most of the dropshipping slop.
@Pandyplaz2: I do use that, but sometimes people also sell New stuff casually, such as unwanted gifts.
Also some sections you can't filter by Used, such as generators, which annoys hell out of me.
https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace/business-farming-ind…
In the past I was looking for a broken, used 3-phase diesel generator and sorting lowest to highest just results in thousands of part listings.
What I learned is that you can filter that section used if you use the main search, not in the section but when people sell cheap stuff, their descriptions are always terrible so searching specific terms always misses, and TradeMe search as a whole is utter trash (it only searches titles, not descriptions, has no functions and it's strict) so "3 phase" misses "3phase" and "3-phase" and people who just list "generator" or "broken generator"
Seller has a spelling mistake? Well, buy a new one.
I filter by Most Bids so piggy back off what other people think is worth buying. Also seeing how many people Watchlist an item. Of course that means the price might be higher but I'm OK with that.
And my general rule of thumb is avoid anything that has a clean white background because casual sellers ain't got time for that.
I’ve got an iPhone 15 pro to sell and the $80 or so I’d expect to pay on trademe is why I haven’t intended to list it there (new phone arrives today )
This will be nice. Marketplace has eaten their lunch
There's going to be a lot of items being sold for $20 soon.
And adding in service fees paid by the buyer for items selling over $20