Seller agreement

One listing offers one item (or one item per combination, if you use options), you do not list the same thing twice, and you put it in the category it belongs in. The three rules and what they mean are in the terms of service, and they apply to every listing, including advertisement listings.

Payouts go through Stripe. You need a connected Stripe account before you can publish anything. We will not show a listing if nobody can be paid for it, because that would let the buyer down.

When somebody buys, the money goes to Stripe, our commission and the card processing fee are taken out, and the rest is yours. We hold it for a while before paying you, and we decide when. We pay you:

• A week after we know the item arrived. For a shipped package, the carrier tells us, which is why tracking is required on everything you ship. Your buyer can also tell us themselves, which is faster. If the carrier records the delivery at a different ZIP code from your buyer’s address, it does not count. That sale waits for your buyer to confirm, or for the final deadline below.
• Or a week after you tell us they have it. You can do this from one day after the sale. Your buyer is told when you do, and they have that week to disagree. Use this for pickup, where there is no carrier to ask.
• Later, if your buyer reports a problem. Your payout waits until the problem is resolved.
• Thirty days after the sale, if none of the above ever happens. That is a last resort for an order nobody has said anything about, not the normal schedule. If your sales are reaching it, add tracking or tell us when the buyer has the item.

In return for the wait, a refund during that time leaves you owing nothing. The money had not reached you, so there is nothing to take back and no debt. A refund on a sale we have already paid you for, by contrast, can leave your listings hidden until you have paid it back.

Everything you ship needs tracking. You cannot mark an order as sent without a tracking number and a carrier, and that is not for our convenience. Your payout waits for proof that the item arrived, and for a package without tracking the only proof is the buyer remembering to tell us. A tracking number that does not work is worse than none. It will never report a delivery, and it is your own money it holds up.

Your payout account must be working when we pay you. If it cannot receive the money at that point, we keep it and tell you, and we send it the next time we make payouts after you fix the account. Nothing is lost, but nothing arrives either, so keep that account up to date.

A buyer’s bank can reverse a card payment for months after the sale, and when it does, it takes the money from findTreas, whether or not we have already paid you. So until you have a track record here, three things are different:

• We keep back 10% of each payout for 90 days after the sale, and then pay it to you automatically. If a refund or a chargeback comes in after we have paid you, it comes out of that amount first, before anything is taken back from you or added to what you owe.
• The last-resort payout date above is 45 days after the sale rather than thirty. Nothing else about the timing changes. A week after we know the item arrived, or a week after you tell us the buyer has it, is the same for everybody.
• You can make up to $2,000.00 in card sales in any 30 days. Above that, buyers are asked to try again later. Refunds free up room again. Your auctions count too. A bid that could take you over the limit is refused, so an auction never ends in a sale you could not accept.

These end once 10 of your sales have been paid out, with the first of them at least 60 days ago. Sales made while they applied stay under them, even after they end for you. They come back for 180 days if a buyer’s bank rules against you in a chargeback on one of your sales, and end again automatically after that. None of this applies to a cash sale, where the money never passes through us.

Two deductions, always shown separately. Our 5% is ours. Card processing is Stripe’s and goes straight to them. We show them separately so you can always tell one from the other, and we do not mark up the second.

Our 5% is calculated on the item price alone. We do not take a cut of shipping. What you charge for shipping is yours. The commission is calculated on what the item sold for, never on the shipping charged with it. This is a term of this agreement, not a temporary promotion. If it ever changes, the notice period in the terms of service applies, as it does to any other fee change.

Card processing is the exception, and it is not ours. Stripe charges us on the whole amount your buyer paid, shipping included, so that deduction is calculated on the total. We recover what Stripe charges and nothing more.

Sales tax, where we collect it, is never yours and never goes into your payout. On advertisement listings we collect none, and handling the tax is up to you.

Two things can end up on your balance:

• Advertising fees, for advertisement listings. Monthly, per live listing.
• A refund we paid your buyer on your behalf, when a dispute was not resolved, or a buyer’s bank reversed the payment, after we had paid you, and neither the amount kept back on your first sales nor your balance covered what had to be taken back. This is now the exception rather than the rule, because we hold payments. A refund on a sale we have not paid out yet costs you nothing and leaves no debt, so this happens only when the money had already reached you.

The consequences are intentionally different, because the situations are. Owing more than a set limit for advertising stops you publishing new advertisement listings. Everything else you have stays up and keeps selling. Owing a refund is more serious: any amount at all hides every listing you have and blocks every sale until it is paid. A buyer lost money and we covered it with our own.

Most refunds never get that far, because of the wait above. While we are holding a payment, there is nothing of yours to recover. Whoever issues the refund, you or us, it comes out of money that had not been sent to you, so there is no debt to pay off and nothing gets hidden. This section is about a sale we have already paid you for.

You are never locked out of your account while you owe money. You can always sign in, see the balance and pay it. Locking you out would only stop you from paying.

Payments go toward refund debt first. You can see the whole balance and its two parts on your billing page.

They stay yours. We claim no ownership of anything you upload or write.

You give us permission to use them to run and promote the listing: to show them on findTreas, to resize and convert them so pages load quickly, and to send them to shopping services such as Google Merchant Center so people can find the item. That permission is non-exclusive, and it ends when the listing does.

There are two limits. A copy already sent to a shopping service or stored elsewhere is beyond our control once it has gone. And images are served from a public host, so anybody who already has a file’s address can still reach it after you take the listing down, even though nothing on findTreas links to it anymore.

Upload only photos you took or have the right to use. Listing with somebody else’s photo is grounds for removal.

To list anything for in-person pickup, you must be verified, and we will not publish a pickup listing from a seller who is not. Shipping does not require it. Nobody is meeting anybody.

You may already be verified without doing anything extra. Setting up payouts involves Stripe checking who you are, and if that comes back with a verified name, it counts. You are either verified or not across everything you do here. If it does not, you will be asked to complete a check of your own before the listing goes up. It works the other way too. If you were verified as a buyer, you are verified as a seller, and nobody is checked twice.

You are never charged for either. The $1.50 check fee applies to buyers only. We pay for yours.

Your buyer is checked as well, and that is the point. Checking only one of two people meeting at an address protects only one of them, so the requirement applies to both or neither. It comes from offering pickup, not from anything else you choose. A listing that can be picked up requires it, and one that can only be shipped does not, because nobody is meeting anybody.

We are told the result and the name on the document, and nothing else, never the document itself. If you sell anything for in-person pickup, that verified name is shown to the buyer once they have paid, or once you have agreed to an introduction.

You can stop selling at any time. Take your listings down.

Pay off your balance first. We will not close an account that owes money, and you cannot close yours while a balance is owed.

Prepaid advertising credit is not refunded. If you have topped up an advertising balance and leave with credit unspent, it is gone. It buys advertising and nothing else, and we have no way to pay it back. Do not top up more than you mean to spend. Advertising credit is also separate from what you owe us. It cannot be used to pay off a balance, and a balance is not taken out of it.

Orders you have already made stay on record after your account closes, without your name on them. The privacy policy explains exactly what stays and why.

We may suspend an account that breaks these terms or the prohibited items policy. A suspension hides your listings and stops you buying and selling. It deletes nothing and can be lifted. You will be given the reason in the same words we recorded.

A lighter step comes first where it fits. If several of your listings are removed within six months, you cannot publish new ones for a set number of days. Everything you already have stays on sale, your orders are unaffected, and it ends automatically. Both steps, and what the automatic check of listing photos can and cannot do, are explained in the terms.

Please note: a suspended seller cannot sign in to fulfill an order they have already been paid for. If that happens, the buyer’s option is a refund from us, which is a separate decision somebody has to make.

findTreas LLC, 53 Verde Drive, Asheville, NC 28806. hello@findtreas.com.