A little patience after the Christchurch quake
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you will be aware that early on Saturday morning Canterbury was awoken by a big shake. It’s times like these that often bring the Trade Me message boards to life, and the weekend was no exception. It was humbling to see many messages posted that showed that people were not only talking about the earthquake and its impact, but exchanging information and working out how to help each other. When civil emergencies like this hit, the message boards act a pretty useful conduit to information and also a way for people to support each other.
At a purely practical level, we’ve received several queries from people asking about their trades, and what happens if the item they’re selling is broken, or if they’re waiting for an item from a seller in the earthquake zone. It probably goes without saying for many, but we’d urge everyone for a little bit of patience and understanding around these issues at the moment. If you are expecting something you have bought from a Canterbury seller please try to be as flexible as possible.
Obviously life has been disrupted for thousands of Trade Me members in Canterbury, and big issues like access to clean drinking water and getting the electricity back on are going to be higher up the priority list than packing off a Trade Me parcel! More...
‘Travel, events & activities’ category unleashed
We launched our new ‘Travel, events & activities’ category today. You’ll see it tucked in there below ‘Toys & models’ on the homepage.
This new category lets you buy and sell pretty much anything related to travel and tourism in New Zealand. Right now, you’ll find accommodation from around New Zealand at $1 reserve, and there are some cool international holidays being sold too. We expect the category will soon be home to everything from gift vouchers through to bungy jump experiences, event tickets and flights.
Our 3-year old accommodation booking website Travelbug (fronted by Trevor the travel bug) is heavily involved in this new category too, with many of the 2300+ Travelbug accommodation operators supplying deals to Trade Me. There won’t be any mucking around after winning a Travelbug auction either - stay dates are confirmed instantly on the Travelbug website and to keep it simple, payment is by credit card only. More...
Keep safe online
We were gutted to hear today of a West Coast couple who had been scammed into sending money offshore after being outbid on a Trade Me auction.
This type of scam typically involves the crook guessing the email of a person they see bidding, contacting them directly, and convincing the person to send money offshore, normally through an international money transfer service.
We seek to make Trade Me as safe as we can through a combination of 24-hour policing, prevention, investigation and prosecution. We have a formal relationship with Police and work closely with them to actively prosecute those that defraud or scam our members. Every day we try and make our site safer. More...
The Starship Spring Clean is under way
We're stoked to be supporting the Starship Spring Clean, which went live on Trade Me this week and is going for the month of September. It's a new way for us to help out one of New Zealand's most awesome organisations, the Starship Children’s Hospital.
There are 3 things involved: list an item (preferably at $1 reserve), pledge to donate auction proceeds to Starship, then donate once the item is sold.
It’s a win-win: while cleaning out your cupboards, you’ll also be raising money for a great cause – the major rebuild of the Level 6 Neurological and Medical Specialty Wards at Starship Children’s Hospital. More...
Services now on Trade Me
We’ve just launched our new Services category! That means you can easily search for local businesses, and also write reviews about the ones you’ve hired.
If you have a business you’d like to promote, feel free to add it to our new category. Until 15 September, you’ll pay just $9 for a 90-day listing. List your service today. (We’ve also updated our T&Cs with new rules for the category, so please have a look before you list.) More...