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What actually happens to your money after you pay
The buyer's money does not go straight to the seller. Here is an order from payment to payout, who is allowed to press what, and which clocks are running underneath it.
Contents
The part that makes buying used gear from a stranger uncomfortable is always the same: the money goes first and the parcel comes later. This is about what stands between the two.
The money is held, not forwarded
The moment a payment clears, the money is held. The seller can see that the order is paid and may start packing, but the money is not theirs yet.
What releases it is the buyer confirming the parcel arrived. That is one button on the order page, and pressing it is the act that changes who the money belongs to.
The item also leaves the catalogue the moment somebody pays, so there is no second buyer paying for the same object while yours is being packed.
Five statuses on the ordinary path, and what each one means
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Awaiting payment | the order exists, the money has not arrived |
| Paid | the money arrived and is held; the seller may not have looked yet |
| Preparing | a human accepted the order and is packing it |
| Shipped | there is a tracking number and the parcel is with a courier |
| Completed | the buyer confirmed, and the money was released to the seller |
"Paid" and "preparing" are deliberately separate. The first means the money arrived; the second means a person has seen the order and taken it on. Collapsing them hides the one failure worth measuring, which is an order sitting untouched for days.
There are clocks on both sides
Holding the money is not enough on its own if nothing moves. So there are deadlines, and all of them are run by the system rather than by anybody remembering:
- A checkout that is never paid is cancelled after 24 hours, so an item is not parked by somebody who changed their mind.
- An order that is paid and never posted is cancelled after three days, counted from the payment. Not from the moment the seller pressed "preparing", because a deadline you can push back by pressing a button is not a deadline.
- The money is released automatically seven days after the parcel is recorded as delivered, if the buyer presses nothing. That window is for inspecting the gear, not for waiting on a courier, so a slow delivery does not eat anybody's inspection time.
Who may cancel
The buyer, at any point before the parcel is posted.
The seller has no cancel button, and that was decided deliberately after a spell of the opposite. Cancelling is power over somebody else's money, and that money is the buyer's until the gear arrives.
Once there is a tracking number, cancelling is not a cancellation but a return, which has a path of its own: a reason, evidence, and a decision about who pays for the journey back.
If the gear is not as described
While an order is shipped, the buyer can open a dispute. A dispute needs a reason and a photograph, except for the parcel never arriving, which cannot be photographed: requiring a picture there would close the door on the case with the least evidence available.
A dispute stops the clock. An order being contested is not released automatically, because releasing money on a contested order is precisely the thing holding it exists to prevent.
Four outcomes are possible: the money goes to the seller, the price is reduced and the difference returns to the buyer, the gear goes back and the money is returned, or the order returns to shipped with a fresh inspection window.
Keep it in one place
Every conversation about an order belongs in the order's own chat rather than in a DM. Not as a rule for its own sake: if something has to be settled later, only what was recorded can be read, and messages in that room cannot be edited or deleted by anybody, including the person who wrote them.
The seller's side of the same story, from photographs to payout, is in how consignment works at Gearkeun.
