When Trade Me Traders See Red

Some days I regret ever hearing about Trade Me. Of course the first stories I heard were all about the amazing bargains friends were able to secure and the uncommon goods they could so easily find. My sister sold empty used CD cases, used (but clean) underpants, her children’s faded and worn clothes. It was the true tale of someone else’s trash being someone else’s treasure.

I joined in 2004 and have over 360 trades myself now. It’s five and a half years later. That should put some perspective on it. That’s on average 65 trades a year, buying or selling. I’ve accumulated 356 positive feedbacks, 1 neutral blue face, and 2 angry red faces which is about to increase by one. There have been more than four sour trades in that time, but some trades take a while to complete (or not complete) and the time limit for posting feedback elapses. Still, four traders unhappy with me is less than one a year. So, that should make me feel better. It should…

What takes me a while to get over is the nastiness that can spew forth in to my inbox when disagreements arise. Some disagreements are simple: I say ‘the goods never arrived’, they say ‘I sent them’, I say ‘can you check the address’, they say ‘yes I sent them to that address’, after waiting a lot longer I repeat ‘well they have not arrived,’ they say ‘bad luck I can’t take responsibility for New Zealand Post – tell them.’ So I go to NZ Post and they happily accept, given the Trade Me receipt and email thread, that I have a valid claim, but the sender has to corroborate the story. Should be no problem. Should be. But, so and so-I’m-operating-as-an-under-the-table-secondhand-dealer-on-Trade Me gets some twisted perspective that she’s being hard done by by me and lies to NZ Post that the goods were delivered as intended. What? It wouldn’t even have cost her a cent. What spite! Yes, I posted a red face to warn people. And, of course so does she against me.

There’s been a couple of times buyers have been unhappy with what I was selling. One time I was selling DVDs on behalf of a family member. Hmmm lesson learnt there – they were bad foreign dubbed copies. I should have watched them first, but I didn’t suspect and there was a small box full. The buyer wasn’t mean about it at all. I gave the remainder of the DVDs back to their owner. If I sell on behalf now, I check the goods first.

The latest angry face comes from a disappointed buyer who claimed that the item I sold was faulty. Damaged in transit? No, he was sure I deliberately sold it with the fault. Plus, he was unhappy that there was a piece missing which was clearly obvious from the photo pre-sale. Then he used the item and wrote again that it worked but it really wasn’t what he expected. I parried the emails politely expressing disappointment also, assuring that I’d not had any problem with the appliance myself. Weeks passed, Trade Me sent a reminder to post feedback. The buyer wrote again, ‘what should he post, he’d never had any trouble with Trade Me traders before.’ Well I have, I said. It happens. What did he want? Asked outright, he recoiled and spat, ‘you’ve got three choices: 1) give a full refund and pay to have the item freighted back; 2) give him $30 (which amounted to the cost of the freight he’d paid); or 3) do nothing and he’d post negative feedback to warn buyers to be wary of me.

It’s happened to me – I bought a bike. It was old, said to be in working order. It wasn’t. The left hand gear handle was bent, not working and the guys at the bike shop just looked at me like I was an idiot – not worth fixing they said. It was a dud trade. Ripped off. That’s the risks you take if you buy sight unseen from an online auction site from anonymous traders. The seller denied the damage was pre-existing and refused to reverse the sale. So, I onsold the bike, giving an accurate description and got $5 for it. So I lost maybe $30. Another trade, I sold a car stereo unit out of my old dunger which sold for half what the stereo had cost me. The buyer reckoned it didn’t work, so I drove over there, picked it up and gave him his money back. He’d tried to ‘fix’ it. The casing was damaged where he’d attacked it like a novice burglar jemmying the back door. Had to just chuck the thing out. Sometimes, somebody’s trash is just trash afterall.

Some new items for sale on Trade Me selling at bargain basement prices – like an odometer for my brand new bike bought from a proper bike store, belong in the bargain basement from whence they came. But that’s the risk, my risk, that I chose to take. No point abusing the seller. The cycle gloves I got cheap from the same people are okay. Live and learn, I console myself. Why can’t other people do that? Just take responsibility for their decision to buy secondhand stuff sight unseen on Trade Me? Just tell themselves off for getting caught up in the competitiveness of the bidding which leads them unwisely to pay too much and learn from it.

The nasty incidents do cause me to step back from Trade Me. I try to minimize contact with people with low emotional intelligence who are quick to project their anger (that more correctly should be directed at themselves) onto others. But, I hate doing garage sales because the contact there is face-to-face. Admittedly though I’ve never had a garage sale buyer return repeatedly to score blows. Anything worth over $10 really should be sold via a Trade Me type site or Trade and Exchange paper, because people rarely want to give you more than $2 for anything at a garage sale. The exorbitant Trade Me fees undermine the worth of the experience as well… but that’s another blog.

I’ll be staying hooked on Trade Me though, at least as a buyer, because I can still find strange and wonderful things that I might treasure, that others need to trash. And sometimes, the price is right. And most of the time, it’s quick and easy and there’s no quarrel. I’ll just have to keep reminding myself of that, to keep it in perspective.