www.trademe.com.au

We recently received this email from a frustrated Trade Me user (I’ve removed the name of the company to protect their privacy):

Hi There

We here at [company name] are Trademe fans , and since 2 weeks ago they have barred the trademe address (www.trademe.co.nz) and also the IP address of (https://202.21.128.2) I was wondering if you could provide us with other access points to get on to Trademe, currently we are using (www.trademe.com.au) . We have a lot of staff members here that would love to get back on trademe .

Thanks

Sigh.

Lots of organisations seem to try to block staff from accessing Trade Me. I don’t think it’s unreasonable if somebody is taking the piss and spending all their time browsing the web when they should be working. And, it doesn’t seem to impact us at all.

But, there are surely lots of different ways to solve this problem, and I doubt that blocking IP addresses is the most effective.

I think Mod put it nicely when asked to comment about Carter Holt Harvey blocking Trade Me for their staff in 2005:

Some companies treat their employees like grown-ups. Some don’t. It’s nothing new.

Source: Worldwide Online Auctions News, August 3, 2005

Indeed.