Gumtree Australia

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How do others feel about gumtree.com.au ?

I thought I would try them out to list a car for sale. Their website makes listing easy, but if you want to edit what is already there, it drops half of what you have already got, and forces you to re-enter many of the fields. Their support staff came back with a canned response, asking “What browser are you using, eg Firefox 11, Internet Explorer 9 ?”. Wow. ( For the record, I use Firefox 57 and Chrome 62 )

To add insult to injury, every single reply to my ad has been spam or a phishing attack. I’ve deleted it, but then discovered that there is no way to delete your account yourself. You have to request that their Support staff do it, and it will take days. Why ?

0 stars out of 10. Would not use again.

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For anyone who might not know, ebay owns Gumtree since 2005.

A number of observations I have read is that ebay is evolving to position themselves against Amazon as a commercial platform, and their preference is for the ‘unclean, unwashed, 2nd hand market’ to move over to gumtree. Most notice quite quickly the sites are night and day different, as are the results of posting ads.

As a low budget site Gumtree is supported by, drum roll, low budgets. I read an opinion that could be spot on that it is intentionally buggy and sometimes dodgy to reinforce low cost, not big business, to the intended audience, in the same way Bunnings is not cheap but the warehouse look and feel has been a real winner.

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Listed a couple of different things on there and had no issues. Also had lots of success purchasing items.

That said, I’d really love the completely cut down interface of Craigslist to take off here. There has been a Sydney market for at least 10 years, but going up against the early Trading Post and later Gumtree has meant really no traction here.

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Thanks Phil. I note that Gumtree does have a lot of paid options for their ads.

But, if the free ad experience is so awful, why would I subsequently pay them ?

I use eBay quite a bit, as both a buyer and seller. As you note, the experience is chalk and cheese.

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Have used Gumtree to buy and sell things with success.

Find as a seller you gain many contacts that are not genuine. I used to hold items for a particular buyer at their request, but lost potential buyers in doing so, particularly when the person I have held the item for was a no show.

I now work on the principle that the first to arrive and buy wins. I then contact other interested parties saying it has been sold. I also make this approach clear when responding to enquiries. I find only those genuinely interested make further contact.

I also limit information used to set up Gumtree account…to the bare minimum and no link to Paypals or such like.

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I’ve used GT as both a buyer and seller. Had a car listed in parallel with Carsales.com.au. Lots of time wasters resulted from GT listing with the “I got cash of (half amount listed price), I come now and get car” type spam. Sold as result of Carsales listing.

Sold some smaller items, there is a major issue on GT that people have no consequences for not honoring their communications, mainly things like I’ll be there in 1 hour and never hear from them again. Bought a few items and had as purchaser just one issue where I made an offer ~90% for an item that had been listed for about 3 weeks and not listed as price firm, the seller came back with a heap of attitude “you cheapskate, seriously mate”

Amusing reading here about experiences on GT https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2634319

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Gumtree is really about trying to keep other trading sites out of EBay’s slice of the online market or reducing their impact to EBay’s bottom line. I don’t think they really care too much about an individual experience as long as their market share is not damaged too much, I could be entirely wrong on this but I am entitled to my suspicions.

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I’ve purchased things using Gumtree without issue, but not much luck as a seller. I tried the site’s internal paid promotions and found it was far more effective to put up a Facebook ad linking to Gumtree from outside the network instead. Subsequently, ended up selling my items on a Facebook buy/swap/sell group.

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I’ve bought a couple of things off Gumtree, particularly in regional areas I think there is a perception that it’s ‘more local’ but I’m not sure why.

I’ve chased a few ads on Gumtree only to be told the item was no longer available yet the ad persists and in a couple of cases continued for some time … it certainly doesn’t have the more managed feel of Ebay.

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I’ve never purchased on Gumtree but it has been a good selling vehicle for me . I usually list the price as posted to anywhere in Australia to avoid strangers coming to my home . I do have a group of regulars who purchase from me . I sell Mah Jong sets and high end imported collectable fishing reels such as US made Fin Nors , Pens etc . I have made many friends within that particular group and they are always welcome to visit me at home . They are the exception rather than the rule ./

What I do not like about Gumtree is I often list , we’ll say a spray foam gun for a Karcher Power washer for instance and a pop up appears below my add of the same item on Ebay for less than half the price . Usually post free from China . I know Ebay own Gumtree but that is " dirty pool " in my opinion . Still Gumtree " is what it is " as they say . Warts and all . It basically works for me and in the end I guess that is all that matters .

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Wow, I must have been very lucky. My experience with Gumtree is so different to yours @ScottOKeefe.

I have been using Gumtree for years mainly to sell, but occasionally to buy as well. I haven’t had a problem listing or editing, and nor have I had to re-enter information into fields.

It works well for a free product. Sometimes an item doesn’t sell for a long time, and then I will have numerous items in one day. You never can tell. I just keep renewing the ad until it is sold, or I decide advertising that item is just a waste of time.

I have a reluctance to throw away stuff which is still good and can be utilized by someone else. We give some stuff away, and the good but inexpensive stuff we give to op shops. The more expensive/valuable items I try to sell through Gumtree.

I put fair prices on items, and have found being politely resolute weeds out many of the painful ‘tyre kickers’ and people who aren’t willing to pay a ‘reasonable’ amount. Also, I always have:
=>No Holds. Cash sale with personal pickup only, thank you.<=
to make the handover a clear cut and simple process. First to come with cash, gets it!

In the past, many times people committed to coming, and never turned up leaving me waiting twiddling thumbs. Now, I will only give out my suburb and ask people to SMS me when they are heading over to be at our place at a negotiated time. Only then do I send them my address. This means there is a high probability they will turn up.

It is irksome to have to renew ads every fortnight, but that is a minor beef.

With this system I have managed to sell a lot of no longer used items, which makes the wife woman very happy. (The getting rid of stuff bit :smirk:, not necessarily the money bit,)

I occasionally have time for garage sales which I find through GT, and have also searched for and found a few things we needed.

So all up, my experience of GT is good.

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I like that idea. I’d need to scale it down a bit to work here - you can walk across town in 20 minutes and we don’t have ‘real’ suburbs, but it would still work …

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I have generally been happy with gumtree as a basic but free market, but you have to keep your scam-dar antenna up.
It is in my opinion deliberately clunky and a little user unfriendly as that makes the mother site ebay more attractive choice.

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A bit of a cautionary warning when using Gumtree . If you receive an email message regarding one of your listings be careful how you answer . /

It gives you two options "to respond by replying directly to this email or via My Gumtree ". Always use the Gumtree option . I have had friends reply directly which gives out your email address to the sender. The spam they received had to be seen to be believed . There are a lot of spammers out there . Don’t give them a foot in the door .

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It sounds like it really comes down to individual experience. I have used Gumtree to both buy and sell. Buying has always been extremely easy, and prices are generally cheaper because listings are free. I have also listed items for sale, and while the success is varied, the experience has also always been good. I’ve never received spam as a consequence, and as I have never “held” items or had no-shows (which has just been luck, I imagine) I haven’t had any issues in that respect either. Anecdotal feedback from friends has been that selling is really easy: one friend effectively sold most of her household contents on Gumtree prior to moving interstate, however I haven’t had her luck in that respect.

Personally, I use Gumtree for anything local that I am happy to collect. eBay is my platform of choice for commercial items that are cheaper when bought overseas (like my Miele replacement vacuum cleaner bags!!) or hard-to-find items that can be posted within Australia.

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I’ve sold a few items on Gumtree, but as others have said, you get a fair number of people who are no-shows, and there are the scammers, but I’ve found them easy to weed out. However, generally the selling experience has been ok if used with care, and I do have a few other items I plan to sell on GT.

I’ve bought items on ebay and found there are quite a few shills there, from commercial dealers, not private low volume sellers - obvious when you are apparently in a bidding competition with someone and lose, only to have the seller contact you very shortly afterwards offering to sell at your last bid. The answer has been “no thanks”, as I don’t want to encourage that behaviour.

A few years ago I was selling excess/superceded solar gear on ebay and Gumtree in parallel for my employere, and found ebay to be a lot more successful.

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Gumtree in Perth has been hijacked by used car dealers, so to find a private seller you have to wade through all the dealers ads

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I have been using Gumtree for several years.
One big advantage is that you can restrict searches to your local area, so you not only buy local, you can view and collect, paying in person. I have bought and sold many items, rarely with any problem - only one time was an item I paid for never received. Several times a buyer didn’t turn up - but that happens with newspaper advertising too.

However Gumtree has degenerated recently: the search by region has not been working properly, so had the Q of which browser I was using, and whether I had deleted cache. Then I was told the problem had been fixed - but it hasn’t. Also, commercial advertising used to be just at the top but now is all through the listings. I find that truly annoying and time wasting.

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This article might be of interest to the thread:

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Not just in Perth; it seems to be the same everywhere.

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