When TradeMe beats Freecycle
Giving stuff away on Freecycle is more trouble than tossing it in a landfill.
Taking it to an op shop isn't trouble-free either.
But I'm not happy chucking out usable hardware and other items with plenty of life left in them. In my case this is a mixture of greenery, plain old-fashioned protestant hatred of waste and memories of hard times.
One alternative is to list unwanted items on TradeMe with a $1 reserve – for overseas readers TradeMe is New Zealand's home-grown equivalent of eBay.
Listing items on TradeMe is free. If they sell, there's a 6.9 percent commission fee. So if the item sells for $1, I'm 7 cents out-of-pocket. Or, more accurately, I'm 93 cents richer as it is something I'm ready to give away. These numbers are so small they are negligible. In effect, there's no discernible cost difference between selling on TradeMe and giving things away on Freecycle.
Yet the cash element involved seems to oil away some of the friction associated with Freecycle.
As mentioned in Frustrating Freecycle, Freecycle transactions don't always go smoothly. In my experience more than half fall through.
While many are fine, some Freecycle people are a pain to deal with.
On the other hand, when someone pays for an item on TradeMe, no matter how small the price, the nature of the deal is different. People turn up as promised.
I suspect the reason for this is people don't put a value on things they get free, so they don't value my time and effort at the other end of a Freecycle transaction and feel comfortable stuffing me around. When they pay, the transaction has a value to them and they act accordingly.
Thanks to Parsley72 who pre-empted this post in a comment on Frustrating Freecycle.
Your view may differ.
Benefits of TradeMe over Freecycle:
- Money oils away transaction friction
- Feedback scores show good people to deal with
- There's a legitimacy with TradeMe
- Questions and answers get dealt with in a single, visible place
- Efficient, no need to deal with tons of emails after items are taken
- Less email aggravation, less rudeness for disappointed recipients
- TradeMe has wider reach
Hi Bill,
Trademe has a minimum charge of 50 cents, as can be seen here – http://www.trademe.co.nz/Help/Topic.aspx?help_section=true&help_id=18
so, if you sell something for $1 then the effective commission is 50%.
http://www.sella.co.nz on the otherhand has a 0% commission policy. We founded it just over a year ago and its going pretty well at the moment, 400,000 users, 160,000 items for sale, 125,000 members and growing by the day.
Cheers
Shane
http://twitter.com/sella
Shane
19 Jan 10 at 9:25 am
Thanks Shane, I haven’t seen the 50 cent fee because my auctions generally reach higher prices. Even so, 50 cents is a small price to pay compared to the hassles of Freecycle.
What’s the business model for Sella?
Bill Bennett
19 Jan 10 at 9:33 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bill Bennett, Bill Bennett. Bill Bennett said: Just posted "When TradeMe beats Freecycle" http://bit.ly/7l5Z6y – money makes it easier to give things away [...]
Tweets that mention When TradeMe beats Freecycle at Bill Bennett -- Topsy.com
19 Jan 10 at 3:38 pm
You might be interested in my take on the Freecycle concept. I used it in the UK and totally agree that it was frustrating not having the ability to give feedback on users, or that you kept getting emails after the item had closed, so I’ve set a system up that takes care of that stuff.
It’s just started (literally today) so expecting a few teething problems, but you might want to take a look and perhaps make a post down the line when it has found its feet. http://www.freecycle.co.nz
Martin
30 Jun 10 at 12:42 pm
Sounds good Martin. I hate throwing stuff away, so I’d rather find a better way of giving it to others who can use it.
Bill Bennett
30 Jun 10 at 8:02 pm