Down Traden

Are you paying too much when buying goods on Trade Me? All it takes to find out is a couple of Googles.

Last July our juicer became redundant. That is, I was enthusiastically trying to clean out the hard-to-reach festering gungy bits of fruit pulp, and the thing just flew apart (I blame the designers – the fruit pulp should not have be able to reach impossible to reach places to begin with… surely).

So I trotted off to Trade Me to see what was on offer.

I’d heard about the Breville Juice Fountain – it lets you juice whole apples. On Trade Me people were asking around $120 – $150 (plus delivery charges) – which I thought sounded a bit steep for a used appliance.

So I Googled the Noel Lemming website.

They had a brand new one (on special) for $159.99 – not much more than the used models on Trade Me.

Next I visited LV Martin & Son – even better $149.95 (current price is $159.95), including free delivery to my area.

Now I’m all for recycling, but when it comes to modern appliances, I prefer to buy new.

Here’s more examples of where people could have saved money by spending five minutes shopping around (prices shown are what people actually paid):

My curiosity is, why are people prepared to get a second-hand model when, for about the same price, they can get one brand new, backed with a guarantee and free delivery?

• Is it because these people don’t know how to (re)search on the web?
• Is it because it doesn’t even occur to people that they have other options?
• Is it because they simply feel so comfortable using Trade Me that they will pay almost any price?
• Do people get carried away in the auction process?

I don’t know the answers, but come on people – shop around!

PS: There’s also some really crazy bargains on Trade Me, so my advice only really applies to when you’re shopping for new items.

PPS: I ended up going for the Sunbeam Juicer – $149.95 from LV Martin. Loving the funky green colour…