Trade Me cleared by regulator

The Commerce Commission has dismissed complaints about a plan by Trade Me to include retailers’ shipping charges when calculating ‘‘success fees’’ due to the company.

The regulator gave Trade Me the all-clear as the company reported a flat profit of just over

$46 million for the six months ended December 31.

Its earnings were up 3 per cent if a one-off gain in its previous accounting period was excluded, the company said.

Trade Me has until now based its success fees on the sale price of items, net of any shipping fees.

But it is changing that rule and including shipping fees in the calculation from March 14 to dissuade professional sellers from inflating their shipping charges to make their sale prices look better.

The company is offsetting the financial impact on traders by offering them a 10 per cent reduction on their fees if they offer prompt, free shipping and meet some other criteria.

The commission said last week that it had received 18 complaints about the fee change.

David Harcourt, of Thorndon Antiques & Books, has described it as ‘‘extremely unfair’’ and calculated it would bring in an extra

$500,000 a year to Trade Me in fees. But a commission spokeswoman said it had decided not to take any action as there was no evidence any law had been broken.

Trade Me spokesman Logan Mudge said the company had not attempted to forecast the overall effect of the change on its fee income.

Trade Me’s revenues for the half-year rose 6.8 per cent to $123m.

Chairman David Kirk and chief executive Jon Macdonald said in a statement that trading had tracked to the company’s expectations.