Trading Post’s auction plans: a wish list

The news that Telstra’s Trading Post site is adding online auctions with no listing fees and a choice of payment methods has been widely welcomed, not least because it provides the possibility of an alternative to eBay, which has been shedding users ever since it decided to make PayPal compulsory , thereby increasing its profits while allegedly improving security. The Trading Post has been working on its site for 18 months, and while that’s a decent development period, it still means a few useful features are missing. Here’s the main changes we’d like to see added to the site to make it really useful in the short term:

* Allow selling to a global audience. Sure, you probably don’t want to
flog that old BBQ to someone on the other side of the planet, but what
about that rare Whitlams CD? Not being able to sell offshore is an
obvious disadvantage.
* Alerts for new items. Collectors currently have no choice but to
check for their favourites every day. An alert system for keywords
would make life much simpler.
* Better online help. There’s broken links and irrelevant content
aplenty on the current site. Hopefully this will improve over time.
* True mobile accessibility. There’s a special mobile version of the
site being tested as we speak, but it will only be available to users
of Telstra’s network. Mobile commerce 101 says that walled gardens are
stupid. By all means make it free to browse on Telstra plans, but why
block it from everyone else?