Serge S.

Please, don't be fooled with Trademe Buyer Protection Policy. If you happen to buy an item on Trademe and use online banking to transfer your funds to the seller you may be well in trouble. You are not protected at all in this case! To make it even worse, if the Trademe security system has failed and you used online banking to complete your purchases, you are still not covered!

Trademe refused to refund me $3000 I had paid to a Trademe fake seller, who hacked one of the Trademe accounts for scamming. Despite the fact Trademe failed to prevent the hacker from breaking into their system, the company said they had nothing to do with the incident, as I used the online banking at my own risk (!). Cynical? Indeed! I tried to convince Trademe that it was their security system that failed, and therefore it was on them to fully reimburse me and other victims of the fraud. However, they rejected all my claims and reasoning, shifting all their responsibility to the third parties (the banks, the police, dumb buyers who trusted Trademe and used online banking). After a couple of my emails insisting on the compensation, they stopped responding and ignored all my further enquiries and concerns. I am sure, cases like this should be made known to a wider range of people. What do you think?

That is how in a nutshell YouPic screws money out of you:

1. They find a photographer on the net (say, via Instagram), say how good an artist you are, and suggest you become a part of the YouPic community.

2. As soon as you sign-up for a free service, YouPic starts constantly bugging you with their messages to buy a subscription with a large discount (in my case 70%). Note: after one year of subscription, you will start paying disproportionately larger amounts!

3. After you have paid your money and subscribed for a year, you start realizing that their platform with all the revealed (due to subscription) features is no different from a plethora of other similar services like 500px, Flickr, Excio, etc. Moreover, they are much worse than their competitors UI/UX, services and price-wise!

4. YouPic return policy is contradictory and thus misleading, stating that "Payments are non-refundable" in the "Subscription Billing and Cancellation" clause, but at the same time saying that "if you are unsatisfied with any Photos, Videos or other Products you have purchased from YouPic, we will gladly accept the return of any Product you have ordered for any reason within thirty (30) days of your receipt of the Product."

5. Any attempts to return the subscription money in case of your dissatisfaction with YouPic fail mercilessly. This failure demonstrates how in real terms YouPic treats photographers by exerting their fraudulent and scammy marketing on them.

After a month of using YouPic I canceled the subscription and deleted my account completely, without any reimbursement from YouPic. I am very happy now I did it, though!

Please, be aware and don't trust YouPic whose major strategy is to screw as much money out of you as they possibly can!