How we decide a dispute

When you pay for something here, the money does not go to the seller straight away. We hold it, and pay the seller a week after we know the item arrived. There are three ways we find out that it arrived:

• The carrier tells us it was delivered to the address you gave. Everything shipped must have tracking, so for a package this is the usual way, and neither of you has to do anything. If the carrier records the delivery somewhere else, it does not count, and we tell you both.
• You tell us, with the button on the order. This is the fastest way, and it is the kind thing to do for a seller who got it right.
• The seller tells us. See below, because you then get a week to disagree.

Opening a dispute pauses the payment. While the dispute is open, the money stays with us. That is the whole point. Everything below is paid from money nobody has spent yet, rather than money we would have to ask for back.

A seller can tell us you have the item, no sooner than one day after the sale, and only if we have not already learned it arrived another way. You are told as soon as they do, and you then have 7 days to disagree.

This exists because of pickups, where there is no carrier to ask and most buyers never think to confirm anything. Without it, a seller who handed something over in person would wait a month to be paid.

If they are wrong, report a problem on the order. That covers both cases: you have not received the item at all, or you have it and something is wrong with it. Either one stops the payment. If you do nothing for 7 days, the seller is paid.

A dispute goes to the seller, not to us. Most end there, and that is what we want. The seller knows what they sent, and we do not. They have 7 days, and they can do one of three things.

• Refund you, in full or in part. It comes out of the money we are holding, so it reaches you whether or not the seller has any other money.
• Respond and decline. They have to say why, and we send you what they said. The dispute closes and they are paid on the normal schedule, not sooner, so any time you had left to report a problem is still yours.
• Say nothing at all. Then on the 7th day you are refunded automatically, out of the money we are holding.

That last one is automatic, and it happens only if the seller says nothing. A seller who responds in any way, including a flat refusal, has responded, and no automatic refund happens. It is not a judgment about who is right, and we do not make one. It depends only on whether anybody replied, which is the one thing about a dispute we can know for certain.

If the seller responds and declines, that is the end of it. We do not weigh their account of the item against yours and decide who is telling the truth. We never saw the item, it was never in our hands, and a marketplace that decides that is guessing with somebody else’s money.

So the protection here is real but narrow, and we would rather tell you now than have you find out later: what findTreas guarantees is that a seller cannot take your money and ignore you. It does not guarantee that you will win a disagreement about the condition of an item.

If you think you have been defrauded, not only disappointed, tell us. That is different from a dispute about a fault, and we can take action against the account, not only the order.

You can. A chargeback through your bank is different from a dispute here, and it is worth knowing how before you choose it.

• The bank decides, not us, and not the seller. It takes the payment back from findTreas while it investigates, following the card network’s rules and its own timeline, which usually takes weeks rather than days.
• While it investigates, nothing on the order can change. The seller cannot refund you, you cannot cancel, and the seller’s payment for the sale is frozen, as it is while a dispute here is open.
• We respond to the bank with the order’s own records (the listing as it was when you bought it, the carrier’s tracking, and what the two of you wrote), and we tell the seller it is happening.
• We record the bank’s decision; we do not make it. If the bank sides with you, your order shows the money as returned by your card issuer. If it sides with us, the seller is paid on the normal schedule. We do not influence the outcome either way.

A dispute here is faster, it goes to the seller first, and if the seller does not respond it refunds you on the 7th day. A chargeback is the right choice when you think you did not make the payment yourself.

We read disputes oldest first. What we can see is:

• The order, and the listing as it stood when it was bought.
• The condition the seller stated, which is what most disputes come down to.
• Your messages about that listing: the most useful record either of you can create, and the reason we tell buyers to ask questions in writing rather than by phone.
• The carrier’s own tracking, where there is a tracking number. We show the carrier’s words exactly and never reinterpret them.
• What each of you has written about the problem, including photos.

“The seller marked it as sent” is only the seller’s own claim, and we treat it that way. It is not proof that anything was shipped. A tracking number that a carrier has scanned is.

• We will not make a buyer send an item back at their own expense before they can be refunded. There is no required-return process here, and we are not going to create one. If a seller wants an item back, it is up to them to arrange and pay for it, and it is something to discuss, not a condition we put on a buyer.
• We will not decide who was telling the truth. We were not there, and we do not have the item. Where the evidence does not settle it, we say so.
• We will not charge either of you for a dispute. There is no fee, and opening a dispute costs a buyer nothing.
• We will not treat a single unresolved dispute as though it were a pattern. One refund is not a judgment about a seller. Removing listings or suspending an account is a separate decision with its own written reason.

This is the most important part to read, because it is what makes the rest of this page honest rather than merely reassuring.

• We have never seen the item. findTreas does not hold, inspect, photograph or ship anything. We cannot tell you whether a fault was there when it was shipped.
• We cannot tell when a photo was taken, or whether damage happened in transit, at home, or before the sale.
• We do not keep a record of who signed in from where. There is no login history and no stored IP address anywhere in this system. The privacy policy says the same thing, and means it literally. So we cannot tell you that an account was accessed from an unusual place, because we never recorded it.
• We cannot see a conversation you had somewhere else. We can see only messages sent through findTreas.

Where we cannot establish something, we say so honestly, and the decision rests on what the listing said and what the two of you wrote at the time.

Three things, and this is the complete list:

• Return a buyer’s money. While we are still holding it, this costs nobody anything and leaves no debt. The seller is not paid. Once the seller has been paid, we can still refund the buyer and take the money back from the seller, and whatever their balance does not cover becomes a debt owed to us. Until it is paid, their listings are hidden and they cannot sell. They are told the amount at the time, not billed for it without warning.
• Remove a listing, and send the seller a written reason.
• Stop somebody buying or selling here.

We hold the payment, and we are not a bank, an insurer or a court. Holding it only delays the payment to the seller. It is not a fund set aside for you and not a guarantee of anything. It is money on its way to the seller that has not arrived yet. We cannot force a seller to take an item back, cannot award anything beyond what was paid, and cannot make either of you do anything at all.

On a listing we only advertise, there is no dispute process, because there is no order. No money passed through us, so there is nothing for us to return. Those listings say so on the page, before you ask for the seller’s details. Check the item before you hand anything over. That is the main advantage of picking up in person, and it is the only protection you have on those listings.

The same is true of anything paid for in cash at pickup. A dispute can still be opened, and we will still read it and can still take action against an account, but there is no payment through us to reverse.

Write to us and tell us. Every action comes with a written reason, so there is something specific to respond to, and we still have the order on file.

findTreas LLC, 53 Verde Drive, Asheville, NC 28806. hello@findtreas.com. For a problem with a specific order, the dispute button on that order reaches us faster, with the order details included.