TradeMe
One of the most useful tools when moving to New Zealand is TradeMe. It is the end all, be all in online peer-to-peer selling in New Zealand. If you’re looking for anything, the first resource people mention is this site that seems to do it all: job listings, property listings, and a general marketplace for everything else. It also facilitates the payments from person to person (while taking a small cut for themselves, of course.) It is as if Craigslist, E-Bay, Zillow, and Poshmark created one lovechild website.
To get an account, you have to be in New Zealand or Australia. However, if you’re not here quite yet, it is possible to email them with your date of arrival, and they will create an account for you. If you don’t have a specific date, they won’t bend the rules for you, so do not be vague when you contact the support desk.
Even without an account, it is possible to browse posts and listings. This may be especially important to get an idea of the availability and cost of housing in your desired neighbourhoods. But please, don’t go signing a lease without stepping foot in the property yourself! Pictures can be deceiving. (See my post on renting for more detail on this.) The same rule applies for cars. Use TradeMe before arriving to research general availability and price for models you’re interested in, but resist the temptation to purchase sight unseen.
Unlike Craigslist, it isn’t free to buy and sell goods online. In this respect it is more like E-Bay or Poshmark (though Poshmark has a much simpler way of calculating fees.) There are quite a few ways TradeMe tries to get money from you, even for a general listing. In fact, you’re required to have at least $10 worth of credit with them before making your first post to make sure there’s money available to cover their fees. Be aware of everything from a second category listing fee (99¢) to a 10 day auction fee (25¢) to the 7.9% success fee. Make sure you check through the full list of fees before calculating your sale price. From time to time there are discount days where there might be a 50% off listing fees or no auction fees for a day or two. If you can wait to list items, it is beneficial to wait for one of those deals.
One of the biggest issues I see reselling on TradeMe is that my goods are going to be up against professional photographers and studios set up to make products look as good as possible while I’m working with an iPhone and a piece of poster board as my backdrop. Not an ideal situation, but people certainly do it. There is a mix of both professional salespeople and homemakers listing their goods on the site.
I appreciate TradeMe because I’ve been able to find otherwise difficult to find goods on it. When my daughter started gymnastics, I couldn’t find an inexpensive gymnastics leotard anywhere, and I really didn’t feel like shelling out NZ$60 (about US$38) the gyms were charging for something she might only where a couple of times. The only place I found leos? TradeMe - for NZ$28 (US$18) which included shipping. Not exactly the $13 I would’ve paid on Amazon, but not too far off, either. I’ve also tracked down wooden art boxes, large wine racks, and a few other odds and ends. It is a really useful tool because shopping in New Zealand is a lot of the same stuff over and over again, and anything different can be downright impossible to find locally in a traditional store.
Like with other peer-to-peer selling sites, it is a good idea to be safe about exchanging goods and money. There are scammers out there, so read the reviews, be smart, and use common sense when purchasing.
