Terms of service

findTreas is a marketplace, not a seller. Sellers list their own goods, set their own prices and describe their own items. We do not own what is listed, and we do not inspect it, store it or ship it. The contract of sale is between the buyer and the seller. We are not a party to it.

What we do provide is the marketplace itself, payment processing for sales paid for through findTreas, identity checks for the members who need one, and moderation. Those are real services, and most of this document explains their limits.

You must be 18 or older to use findTreas, and you are responsible for anything done through your account.

• Buyers pay the price the seller set. We add nothing to it. Sales tax is added where we are registered to collect it, and shipping costs whatever the listing says.
• Sellers pay 5% of the item price, out of the payout. We deduct it from your payout and never send a bill for it. Card processing is deducted and shown separately, so a seller can always see what went to us and what went to the card network.
• We do not take a cut of shipping. The 5% is calculated on what the item sold for, never on the shipping charged with it. Card processing is the one deduction taken on the whole amount, because Stripe charges us on the whole amount.
• The identity check is $1.50, once, and only buyers pay it. It covers what the provider charges us, is charged once for as long as you have an account, and is not refunded, because the check has already been done. Sellers are checked too and never pay for it. A seller offering in-person pickup must be verified before the listing goes up, and so must the buyer. We pay for the seller’s check.
• Advertisement listings are billed monthly per live listing, whether or not anything sells. Their own terms explain this. Read them before you use advertisement listings.
• Nothing may be listed below $5.00. Below that, card processing costs more than the sale is worth.

If we change our fees, we will tell you before the change takes effect. A change never applies to a sale already made.

You may list only what you own and are allowed to sell. Describe it accurately, including its faults. Buyers rely on the condition you choose.

Some things may not be listed here at all. The prohibited items policy lists them, and it is part of these terms.

Three rules apply to every listing, whatever it is:

• A listing offers one item. If you use options, each combination is one item. You may not photograph everything you are clearing out and list it as a single thing, unless it sells as a set, which a chess set does and a box of unrelated tools does not. To sell several of the same thing, use the quantity box. To sell variations of one thing, use options.
• Do not list the same thing twice. One live listing per thing you are selling. With two listings for one item, one of the two buyers will be told it is gone. Relisting something that ended or was withdrawn without selling is fine. What matters is that only one listing is live at a time.
• Put it in the right category, as best you can. The categories are Google’s, and there are thousands of them, so nobody expects you to know them all. That is why the form suggests one first. We ask for honesty, not expertise. What this rule forbids is putting something in a category where it does not belong to reach a busier part of the site.

The first two rules are enforced by a person reviewing listings, not refused automatically by the software. The third comes up when you list. The Sell form suggests a short list of categories that seem to fit and asks you to pick one, and if none of them fits you can open the full list and choose for yourself. No category is ever refused. The shortlist is only a suggestion.

Breaking any of these rules has the same result as breaking any other rule here: we take the listing down and tell you why, in the same words we recorded.

You keep ownership of your photos and descriptions. By listing, you give us permission to show them on findTreas and to send them to shopping services such as Google so the listing can be found. That permission ends when the listing does, except where a copy has already been sent out and is beyond our control.

A listing can stop being editable. Once somebody has bid on it or bought from it, what they agreed to is fixed, and from then on the listing can only be withdrawn. This is intentional.

When you pay, your contract is with the seller, not with us. We take the payment, pass on the seller’s share and keep the sales tax where we are registered to collect it.

For in-person pickup, both buyer and seller have their identity checked before anything is arranged. That check tells you an identifiable person is responsible for the account. It is not a promise about the person who shows up, the item, or the meeting. Arrange those sensibly, and meet in public where you can.

On a listing that accepts offers, you can suggest a lower price, and the seller can accept it, make one counteroffer, or decline. Neither of you is committed to anything until one of you accepts. An accepted price is not a reservation. Nothing is held for you. The item stays on sale at the asking price the whole time, whoever pays first gets it, and an accepted price expires after two days.

No seller can pay for a higher position here. There are no promoted listings, no sponsored spots, no keyword bidding, and no way to pay us to appear above somebody else. Search results are sorted by whichever the visitor chose, relevance, newest, price, ending soonest or nearest, and by nothing else.

We are making this part of the terms, not only a description of how the site works today, because selling placement is something marketplaces eventually do and we want to be held to not doing it. If it ever changes, it will change here first, with the same notice period as any other fee change.

Two things do involve money, and neither moves anything up or down. We list them so the promise has no hidden exceptions:

• Advertisement listings are shown only while a seller has at least 10 of them live, and each live listing has a monthly fee. That is a minimum for being shown at all, not a position in the rankings. Below it, none of the seller’s advertisement listings are shown and none are charged for. Once shown, they are ranked by the same rules as every other listing.
• Sellers can buy advertising on Google. That affects what Google shows, on Google. It buys nothing on findTreas, and we do not take a cut of what sellers spend there.

Contact the other person first. Most problems end there. If a seller does not sort it out, a buyer can open a dispute and we will look at it. The returns policy goes through the steps in order, and is part of these terms.

How we decide a dispute explains what we look at once a dispute reaches us, what we will not do (we will never require a buyer to send an item back before refunding them), and what we do not know and cannot find out. It is part of these terms, and worth reading before you need it.

We hold a buyer’s payment for a while before paying the seller. We pay the seller a week after we know the item arrived: because the carrier delivered it to the buyer’s address, because the buyer told us, or because the seller told us and the buyer did not disagree within that week. If a dispute is opened during that time, the payment waits, and if the seller does not respond within the stated number of days, the buyer is refunded from the money we are still holding. By selling here, you agree to this.

A refund during that time costs the seller nothing beyond the sale. The money had not reached them, so there is nothing to recover and no debt, and the buyer does not have to rely on us collecting from somebody who has stopped responding.

If the seller has already been paid, a different process applies. We may refund the buyer and recover the money from the seller. If their balance does not cover it, it becomes a debt owed to us, and until it is paid their listings are hidden and they cannot sell.

Holding a payment only delays it; it is not a fund kept for anybody. It is money on its way to the seller that has not arrived yet. We are not a bank, an insurer or a court, and it is not protected or set aside for you. What we can do is return a buyer’s money, remove a listing, and stop somebody selling or buying here. What we cannot do is force anybody to keep their side of a deal, or decide who was telling the truth.

Anybody signed in can report a listing or a member. We review reports in the order they arrive. We may remove a listing or suspend an account, and whenever we do, we record a reason and give the member that same reason. You cannot appeal a decision you do not understand.

Software also checks listing photos, and it can hide a listing before a person has looked at it. It hides a listing right away if it thinks the photos show something that cannot be sold here. If it thinks they do not match the listing, it hides nothing and a person looks first. Neither is a decision against you. A hidden listing is not canceled, nothing is refunded, no sale is affected, and it does not count against you. You are told why it was hidden, you can reply on the listing itself, and replies are reviewed before anything else waiting. If a person then disagrees with the software, the listing goes straight back on sale and nothing is kept on your record.

If a person decides against you, one of three things can happen, from least to most serious:

• The listing comes down, and you are told why. Nothing else changes.
• You cannot publish new listings for a set number of days, if several of your listings have been removed in the past six months. Everything you already have stays on sale, your orders are unaffected, and you can still message buyers, pay what you owe and edit any listing, including the one that was removed. It ends automatically on the date we give you. You do not have to do anything.
• The account is suspended, which hides the member and stops them buying or selling. Nothing is deleted, and it can be undone in one step.

Removing a listing does not refund anybody. That is a separate decision. Only removals decided by a person count toward the second and third of these, never something the software flagged, and never a listing we refused to publish in the first place.

You can close your account at any time from your settings. Some obligations continue after that: money you owe, and the records described in the privacy policy.

findTreas is provided “as is.” We do not guarantee that listings are accurate, that sellers will do what they agreed to, or that the site will always be available.

To the extent the law allows, our liability to you for anything arising out of these terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

Some states do not allow some of these limits, in which case they apply to you only as far as that state permits.

These terms are governed by the law of North Carolina, and the courts there have jurisdiction over any dispute about them.

If we make a meaningful change to these terms, we will announce it on the site before it takes effect. If you keep using findTreas afterward, you accept the change. If you do not want to, close your account.

Send questions about any of this to hello@findtreas.com, or by mail to findTreas LLC, 53 Verde Drive, Asheville, NC 28806.