Auction sites are hugely popular on the internet and Kiwis are lucky enough to have several New Zealand-owned sites to choose from.
The biggest of them Trade Me was started by Wellington’s Sam Morgan in 1999. Now boasting almost 75,000 members, Trade Me is going to be tough for any competing website to beat. The site is user-friendly with a tidy interface and plenty of features to make the auction process fun.
Unfortunately, on Tuesday night Trade Me was subjected to a spate of rogue bidders signing up and making inflated bids on auctions. While the site’s administrators acted promptly and disabled the members in question, the situation has angered many of the site’s members.
Although there are many complaints on the message board about the administrators failing to act on the members’ other concerns, Trade Me has acted on some of the suggestions offered, including adding a link to the end of each auction for members to report dodgy dealings.
Launched in September 2000, Recycle also has a tidy interface and is easy to navigate.
Recycle registered its 1000th member last month. While the site doesn’t have as many members or listings as Trade Me it is free to list auctions on this site.
Buy Me also offers free auction and classified listings but the site isn’t quite as easy to navigate as Trade Me and Recycle. However, it does offer extra features, such as competitions.
Another New Zealand auction site launched last year is Daniel Parker’s Done Deal. I haven’t joined this one because of my aversion to spam. Done Deal used 12,000 e-mail addresses harvested off the Trade Me site to send unsolicited junk mail advertising itself. This caused a bit of a backlash at the time and it might be something Done Deal will always have to battle to overcome.
Of course, the largest auction site on the net is eBay, which launched its New Zealand site last year. The site is huge and offers a wide range of goods for sale but don’t forget that all bidding is likely to be in US dollars.