Hidden profit for Aussie firm
using Trademe auction?

Is the exchange rate between Aussie and Kiwi dollars making hidden profit for one commercial sales outlet using Trademe?

VillagePRESS believes gostore.com.au may be misleading successful bidders into paying more than they originally contracted for.

VillagePRESS, on behalf of a local co-op group, won an auction on Trademe for a set of digital weighing scales. While the seller is trading on the auction website as genesis_online, instructions on payment and delivery came from gostore.com.au.

Gostore sought payment by one of two methods.  [*See email1 ]

The first – which they do say is  “displayed in order of efficiency”  -- is a direct deposit payment to a NZ bank account.

The second method allowed credit card payment.

Given the choice between:
      a)       setting up a one-off online bank transfer with potential problems (even if one has online banking in place) or
      b)   going and finding an ANZ bank branch, or
      c)      using credit card,
... what would most people choose?

So VillagePRESS went to the credit card payment site paymate.com.au – previously unknown to us -- and began the process of payment. 

Once there the site would accept only Australian or US dollars.

VillagePRESS went to a website providing conversion of the amount owed in NZ dollars to equivalent Australian dollars and proceeded. Next there was an unexpected additional charge: payment to Paymate for services [ AUD $2.63 ] – We could have cancelled it out, but let it go through to save time.

Now an email to Gostore to advise the adjustment calculation.

Back comes advice that the full NZ price must be paid in Australian dollars without adjustment.  Gostore advises they are charged by Paymate from the dollars received from the customer.
 [*See reply in email2 ]

While the postage charge was advised in the initial Trademe auction, no other additional charges appear anywhere we could see.

As well as this, payment by the customer in AU$ less a percentage, would still provide Gostore with more than the agreed auction price.  Because....
.... a winning bid of NZ$55.50 plus P&H fee of NZ$22 totals NZ$77.50
    But Au$77.50 is in fact around NZ$86 – say NZ$10 more.
After deduction by Paymate, (say 2%) – there still appears to be a  hidden profit of $8 on this sale situation.

And the sales made by  genesis_online (Gostore of course) through Trademe is shown as 3375. 
If a hidden profit returned only $5 per sale, this would be a nice addition of $16,750.

Of course there could be aspects of this matter that evade us here.  Perhaps Trademe might like to look into this and clear it all up.  We'll email them for their views. And advise Gostore so they can have their say too.

---- PER Editor, VillagePRESS

FOOTNOTE: A further exchange of emails saw Gostore accept the conversion to NZ$ and deliver the item purchased.