Good old ‘human error’ gets the blame again. The fact that two independent TradeMe accounts were suspended at, roughly, the same time and that they were both selling ‘Make Ardern Go Away’ MAGA caps is a completely random coincidence.
Sorry, not buying that at all.
TradeMe appears to have been caught out again and has had to backtrack. ‘Make Ardern Go Away’ MAGA caps are back online and, with all the free publicity, I imagine business is brisk.
Two Trade Me accounts selling “Make Ardern Go Away” hats were suspended last week, but the company says this was not the reason for the suspension. […]
The men were selling the hats for $40 and $20 respectively, before finding their accounts had been suspended by Trade Me.
One of the men was told by Trade Me he was suspended due to an “intellectual property” issue, while the other was told it was due to the nature of his account.
But Trade Me head of trust and safety George Hiotakis says the hats were welcome to be sold on the website.
“When we’ve gone and reviewed this it’s simply been human error,” he told Magic Talk’s Sean Plunket.
“At any one time we have eight million listings, and the people that we have here go and interpret those kinds of things – unfortunately, occasionally, we get it wrong, and this was one instance where we did get it wrong.”
Hiotakis said the accounts could be reinstated should they operate within the company’s terms and conditions.
“It has nothing to do with the cap and with the political message, it is related to how they have their accounts set up. […]
But one of the men told Magic Talk said he had not been contacted by Trade Me.
“No, that’s not true,” Hiotakis told Sean Plunket. “I don’t have my staff in the room with me but walking in here, my understanding was that we’d talked to all members involved.”
Hiotakis said there was no third parties or agencies of state involved the suspension of the accounts.
Newshub
Yeah, whatever …
The one seller who is successfully back online with the caps at present clearly has a sense of humour given his Twitter correspondence with President Trump.
However, it seems that TradeMe is still holding close to $1000 in the trader’s Ping account. Bad form, TradeMe, bad form.
Back by popular demand
THE WHOLE OF NZ IS WATCHING YOU NOW TRADE ME. Photo 3 and 4, ive asked mr Trump and he isnt bothered enough to answer so it is NOT intellectual property theft.
Because of the account ban on the weekend, i am not using ping as close to a grand was in the account when banned.
Cash or bank transfers only chaps.
TradeMe listing
Interestingly, when searching TradeMe for ‘ardern cap’, an ad for a 22 LR Ruger also appears. (The missing two results were also Make Ardern Go Away caps.)
A quick investigation revealed the reason why the weapon showed up in the search. The owner has been offered zero compensation for his weapon by the government and has been advised by the police to sell it on Trademe. He thanks Jacinda Ardern for allowing him to sell his A cat weapon on Trademe.
