Trade Me 'glitch' sees it wrongly threaten to close accounts and wipe credit

Wednesday, 24 May 2023

Trade Me has confirmed the above email, though looking like a scam, was legit.

Trade Me has apologised after wrongly sending out emails to “a couple of hundred” customers warning it would cancel their accounts and wipe their credit if they didn’t log on to Trade Me soon.

Head of customer service Hannah Bryant said it had long had a policy of closing members’ accounts if their accounts had been inactive for 18 months.

But she said “a glitch” had resulted in it sending warnings to some customers whose accounts had been active.

In one case an email threatening to close an account in July was sent in error to a customer who had topped up their account as recently as November.

For some customers Trade Me can come into its own once a year as a dumping ground for unwanted Christmas pressies.

* More than 1000 Trade Me accounts swapped, briefly exposing personal information

* Trade Me phishing scam doing rounds again

Although emails sent to customers said credit would “expire”, Bryant said that if Trade Me reactivated an account that had been suspended due to inactivity, “that is done with credit intact”.

All that customers who had been inactive for 18 months needed to do to avoid suspension was to log on, she said.

Consumer NZ spokesperson Jessica Walker said it thought many New Zealanders would be surprised to learn Trade Me’s terms and conditions allowed it to keep members’ credit when their account was terminated due to inactivity.

“Trade Me’s terms allow it to do this. However, we think this is unfair and with advances in payment methods and the ongoing cost of living crisis, we’d encourage Trade Me to review these terms,” she said.

“This serves as a good reminder to always read terms and conditions, even when you’re dealing with a trusted company like Trade Me.”

Phone companies One NZ, Spark and 2degrees have a policy, that they do enforce, of cancelling customers’ pre-pay mobile balances if customers do not top their account over a period of a year.

One NZ spokesperson Matt Flood said that was clear in its terms and conditions.

He indicated that in the case of phone companies, there was a genuine cost in keeping inactive mobiles connected to its network.

After it disconnected inactive mobiles, it “recycled” the phone numbers so they could be sold to new prepay customers, Flood said.

“We do this due to the high volume of new customers we sign onto our pre-pay service each year and to manage associated network and service costs.”

Bryant said that in Trade Me’s case, it closed inactive accounts to ensure its site continued running smoothly.