Off the record - Craig Box

Got a reply from Trade Me on my pulled listing:

Dear Craig,

Thanks for contacting us.

It is assumed that members of the same household, workplace or close friends would purchase goods off each other outside of the Trade Me auction process. Hence bidding by family members, flatmates or friends is considered "shill bidding" and is in breach of our terms and conditions.
Re: section 4.2 of the Trade Me terms and conditions "You shall not manipulate prices through ghost-bidding or assuming multiple roles in a single transaction."

It appears that members that you are linked to were bidding on your auction #69170303 and this is considered shill bidding.

You are welcome to list this on the site again, permitted that no further shill bidding occurs. Unfortunately you will need to do this manually as we are unable to restore the listing.

If you have any further questions or if I can be of any further help please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

Amy

I managed to get a copy of the original text out of Trade Me, via a friend IMing someone who worked there. (Ironically, it was the same friend who was trying to buy the laptop!) However, I paid promotion fees which I have not been refunded. I'll get back in touch (there is no 'reply' facility, I'll have to just use their contact form again).

My problem is that their initial assumption is wrong. People do not always conduct their sales outside of Trade Me, for reasons previously stated.

</rant>

Tags: trademe

This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Technical, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.