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How to safely buy car parts using Trade Me
Here's a guide we put together to show how can go about making sure you safely get the car parts you want.
24 February 2021Say I’m restoring my Ford Escort and I need some parts. I decided to put a ‘Car parts wanted’ listing on Trade Me.
Shortly after my listing went live I got a text. Toby had the part I was after but I couldn’t pick the part up because he was down in Wellington. Even with shipping, it was a great deal. Toby texted his account details for payment.
Before I paid Toby there were a few things I did to make sure that everything was fine:
I made sure that the part existed and that Toby had it. A while back I tried to sell my iPhone on Trade Me and they asked me for photos as proof that I had it in my possession.
Toby sent some photos of the part with a recent local newspaper. Because the part was big he ended up taking two photos, one close up so that I could see the date on the newspaper and one further away so that I could see the newspaper with the part.
I checked Toby out; I asked for his Trade Me user name and his last name.
I found Toby on Trade Me by doing a member search:
Trade Member profile page
From his profile page I could see that:
- The membership was registered to Toby
- Toby had been around for a while and had great feedback
- Toby was in Wellington.
The last thing I did was to match Toby’s full name against the bank account that I made payment into.
Because I had done a bit of checking I was happy with making my payment and I then got the part. I wouldn’t have gone through with my payment if their details didn’t add up.
When in doubt I can check in with the Trade Me team or pass the offer up.
Creative Commons image used courtesy pyntofmyld on Flickr.
