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Friday 2 June 2017

TradeMe's Customer Service, or "How to pay for your own data"

I had a rogue entry on a two month old bank statement, and wondered if it were a TradeMe payment made to me on an auction, without the purchaser having remembered to load the reference number.

Being tax time, I really wanted to know where this transaction had come from, so I could classify it correctly. So I thought I would pop into TradeMe and view my sales history. This is something I do regularly with Amazon and eBay.

However, when I got to TradeMe, I was only able to access the last 45 days. That can't be right, I thought. I checked every single link in 'MyTradeMe'. I checked the 'help' files. I googled it. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

OK, I thought: I must just be tackling this the wrong way, or using the wrong words.So I emailed TradeMe to ask.

A bit over one week later, I got a very polite response, which was great. But the content was not so great. In summary, I had to PAY $20 to get an extract of my data. I also needed to specify what period I wanted the data from, and what particular data I wanted from a helpfully provided list (Sold items; Won auctions; Ledger; debits & credits; GST Receipts; or the Pay Now ledger).

What peeves me is that to access my own sales and purchase transactions for any time longer than 46 days ago, I would have to pay $20 for the privilege. It also might well be that if I specified the wrong data set, I would have to pay another $20 to get the right data set. Ouch.

TradeMe cheerfully takes our commissions, but then refuses to provide OUR OWN data unless we pay them again. And possibly have to pay again, if we make a mistake on our requested data set.

So let's have a think about why we want our old data. It is because we have forgotten the transaction. That doesn't happen within 45 days: that happens months down the track. It happens at GST time (a 60 day cycle plus 30 days before it is due) or at tax time (a 365 day cycle).

eBay allows customers to access at least three years of our own sales and purchase transactions online. Amazon allows access to all our transactions since we started our account (I have 17 years of history that I can browse whenever I want to). So why can't TradeMe allow at least two year's worth of our own data?

All in all, I have decided to take a bit of action, and let people know about TradeMe's lack of customer service (never mind taking eight days to come back to me when promising a turn-around on queries in 24-48 hours). Together, perhaps we can change their views.

Forward this post to people you know and leave a comment.


Sam

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