First, here is something that I mildly found amusing…

As an aside, I don’t know about their business model anymore. I can’t say that buying from (or should it be through) them is necessarily the cheapest. While there are still bargains to be had, I have noticed that private individual sellers simply wishing to moved pre-loved goods on are getting fewer and fewer as years go by as they continue to get displaced on the listings pages by International Sellers or otherwise local drop-shippers, who often flood TradeMe with listings at asking prices higher than NZ RRP (Recommended Retail Pricing)…

Take for example this store… Bestart NZ. the Store in question (aside from their lower than average 92% Positive feed back rating) has listed on their TradeMe page, the Olympus Tough TG-5 at $803.00 where as on PriceSpy, the most expensive entry is Simitronics at $781.00.
In fact, if you go through and compare a lot of their product offerings, most of them are consistently higher than the most expensive retailer listed on PriceSpy for the same product. I posted a question on one of their TG-5 listings asking if there was anything different about the Olympus TG-5 they were offering compared to the Retailers listed on PriceSpy, I never got a response to my question.

This store is not alone, you have another outfit from Australia called Bestdeal4_u selling say a Netgear JGS516PE for $350.00 + $20.00 postage and if you check the pricespy page. Most other retailers are selling it for around $250.00. Again, you go through their TradeMe Listings and do randomized pricespy compare and many of their products appear to be priced well above what the other retailers are offering the same product at. I emailed the store regarding their above market pricing and they came back to me complaining about TradeMe’s Platform fees being “very high” and that they will give me a better deal if I bought directly from them.

There are many more examples, I just picked those two aforementioned stores because they are the ones who I seem to hit often in a search (before I threw my hands up in the air and uninstalled the TradeMe App from my phone). Anecdotally, there are reports trickling onto the TradeMe message board pointing out this Higher than NZ RRP phenomenon with plenty of other TradeMe stores.

It’s almost like retailers are simply listing there because TradeMe supposedly still have the eye balls (the audience) and indeed the reality is, the stores in question are still getting buyers — again if I trawl through their feedback and check the sale price, the products were being sold at prices higher than what most of the retailers listed on PriceSpy were offering the same product for. This brings into question: Is there really that many people out there who automatically assume TradeMe is the cheapest and not bother to exercise their capability as consumers to shop around given a lot of these retailers are selling their goods at higher than NZ RRP. I hesitate to call them lazy assuming there is another reason I am not aware of.