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When a buyer pays, the money is held until they confirm the item arrived as described — the seller isn't paid before that. If something goes wrong, the buyer opens a dispute and we review the evidence from both sides. Read the details on our Buyer Protection page.

For shipped orders, the payment is held until the buyer confirms the item arrived as described, or automatically 14 days after the carrier confirms delivery if no dispute has been opened. For local pickup, it releases when the buyer confirms pickup — by sharing their 6-digit code or tapping Confirm Pickup — or automatically 3 days after the scheduled pickup date.

If an item arrives damaged or is materially different from the listing, report it within 3 days of confirmed delivery. If it never arrives at all, report it any time before the 14-day auto-release closes. Open a dispute from your order page — that keeps the payment held while we look at it. We aim to review disputes within 48 hours.

Open a dispute from your order page within 3 days of delivery — before confirming receipt if you can. Photograph everything as it arrived, including the packaging, and keep the box until the dispute is resolved. Your payment stays held while we review both sides. If the claim is upheld we'll put it right, usually with a full refund from the held funds; depending on the case that may instead be a partial refund or a return to the seller. You're never left paying for an item that wasn't what the listing promised.

That depends on the seller. Every listing states its return policy — either "All sales final" or a return window of 7 or 14 days from delivery, saying who pays return shipping. You'll see it on the listing and again at checkout, before you pay. If the seller accepts returns, a Request a return button appears on your order inside the window. This is separate from buyer protection, which is unconditional: an item that never arrives, or arrives not as described, is covered whatever the return policy says.

For a change-of-mind return, the listing's stated policy says who pays — you see it before you buy, and "buyer pays" is the common default. A dispute is different: if we resolve a not-as-described claim with a return to the seller, the return arrangements are set as part of that resolution — a change-of-mind policy is never what decides a protection case.

On listings with offers enabled, you can propose a price instead of paying the asking price. The seller has 48 hours to accept, decline, or counter. If they accept, you get 24 hours to complete checkout at your offer price — but acceptance doesn't reserve the item, so it's yours only once you've actually paid. You can make up to 5 offers on any one listing.

Yes — any time before the seller hands the parcel to the carrier, from your order page, for a full refund. You don't need a reason and you don't have to wait out the seller. Once the package is scanned in, cancellation closes; from there it's the return policy or buyer protection, depending on what's wrong.

3 business days after payment by default. Sellers can state their own handling time on a listing — some offer next-business-day dispatch — and whatever they stated is the ship-by date shown on your order. If that date passes with nothing shipped, you can cancel for a full refund or open a dispute.

A label being created just means the seller printed it — the first real scan sometimes lags a drop-off by a day, and carriers occasionally miss intermediate scans entirely. If nothing has moved for a few days, message the seller for a status. Your order shows the seller's ship-by date; if that passes with no carrier scan, you can cancel for a full refund or open a dispute — the payment is still held either way.

First, check the usual suspects: other doors, a mail room, neighbors, household members. Carriers sometimes scan “delivered” a few hours (occasionally a day) before the truck actually arrives, so give it until the end of the next day. Still nothing? Message the seller, then open a dispute from your order page before the 14-day auto-release closes — that keeps the payment held while we investigate with the carrier. Orders of $750.00+ always ship with signature confirmation, so high-value deliveries aren't left on porches in the first place.

We issue the refund right away — a cancellation, a return, or a dispute resolved in your favor is sent back to your original payment method within 1–3 business days. Banks then take their own time to post it: refunds typically appear on your statement within 5–10 business days, depending on your card issuer.

State marketplace-facilitator laws require us to collect sales tax on orders shipped to states where we're registered — new or used, business seller or individual. The tax is calculated at checkout, shown as its own line, and goes to the state, not to the seller or to us. The full plain-English version is on our Sales Tax & 1099-K page.

Not yet — SiliconExchange is US-only at launch: US sellers, US buyers, US addresses. If we expand, it will be deliberate and announced, not quiet.

Local-pickup listings are paid for online like any order — never in cash — and the payment is held while you arrange a meetup through messages. The seller sets the pickup date on the order. At the exchange, the buyer inspects the item and, once satisfied, shares their 6-digit pickup code (shown on the buyer's order page) or taps Confirm Pickup — either releases the payment to the seller on the spot. If the pickup doesn't happen or the item isn't right, the buyer opens a dispute; otherwise payment releases automatically 3 days after the scheduled date. Meet somewhere public.

Listing items is free. When your item sells, we charge a seller fee of 7% + $0.40 on the first $3,750, then 3.5% on the amount above on the order total (item price + shipping) — no listing fees, no monthly subscriptions, no hidden charges, and no separate payment-processing fee. Founding sellers pay 5% + $0.40 on the first $3,750, then 3.5% above for 6 months, locked in when their first listing goes live. The full schedule lives at /fees.

Funds are released to your connected Stripe account when the buyer confirms delivery, or automatically 14 days after carrier-confirmed delivery (3 days after the scheduled date for local pickup) if no dispute has been opened. The transfer typically lands in your Stripe balance within 1–2 business days of release, and balances pay out to your bank weekly, every Monday.

On an ordinary sale, three deductions, all visible on your order page: the seller fee (see /fees), the cost of a shipping label if you bought one through the order page, and the shipping-protection premium if the listing elected it. Sales tax is never among them — tax is charged to the buyer on top and remitted by us, and your fee is computed without it. (Rare recovery cases — a carrier billing adjustment for a misdeclared package, or a chargeback after payout — are governed by the Terms §4.4–4.6; carrier adjustments always come with notice and a way to dispute them.)

Create an account, then connect a bank account through Stripe from your dashboard. Stripe verifies your identity, and once approved you can publish listings.

Federal know-your-customer rules require identity verification for anyone receiving payments — every US marketplace does this. Stripe (the payment processor behind Amazon and Shopify) collects your legal name, date of birth, address, and the last 4 of your SSN. It does not register you as a business, it doesn't affect your credit, and SiliconExchange never sees any of it.

Nothing you need to handle. A checkout that's started but never paid expires after about half an hour and the stock goes back on sale automatically. An accepted offer gives the buyer 24 hours to pay; if they don't, it lapses and your listing is simply available again. Fees are only ever charged on orders that actually pay.

You control offers per listing. When one arrives you have 48 hours to accept, decline, or counter — and you can set an auto-accept price so offers at or above your number close themselves. Acceptance doesn't charge the buyer or reserve stock; it gives them 24 hours to check out at the agreed price, and everything after that — held payment, shipping, protection — is identical to a full-price sale.

Message the buyer immediately — most people are fine with a day or two if you tell them before they have to ask. Your ship-by date (your stated handling time, or 3 business days by default) is shown on the order; once it passes, the buyer gains the right to cancel or open a dispute, and an order left unshipped for weeks is eventually refunded automatically. If you genuinely can't fulfill it, cancel the order yourself so the buyer is refunded promptly — repeated late shipments and cancellations are reviewed.

Yes — before shipping, you can cancel from the order page and the buyer receives a full refund automatically. It's the right move when something is genuinely wrong (item damaged in storage, listing error you can't honor). Cancellations are recorded on your account, so the better habit is keeping listings accurate and stock counts real.

Respond, inside the window. You have 48 hours from when the dispute opens (we send a reminder at 24 hours), and we don't decide while you can still answer. Say what you know, plainly, and point at your evidence — your proof-of-condition uploads and the purchase-time listing snapshot are the record the claim is judged against. A dispute handled honestly isn't a mark against you, whichever way it goes. The seller's side of the process is on Seller Protection.

Before you ship, you can attach photos, video, serial-number shots, and test results to the order itself — the Proof of condition section on your order page. The record freezes when you ship, which is exactly what makes it evidence: nothing can be added after the fact, by anyone. It's optional, it takes two minutes, and for high-value hardware it's the difference between your word and your proof. Photograph the packed box too — see the packing guides.

Mostly, yes — multi-quantity listings keep selling, so titles, descriptions, and photos stay editable. What locks while an order is in flight are the terms that buyer purchased under: price, quantity, and category until delivery, and condition, handling time, and return policy through delivery and any dispute. Every order also carries a snapshot of the listing at purchase, so a buyer's claim is always judged against what they actually saw — your later edits can't be used against you, and vice versa.

The short version of Terms §8: no stolen goods or altered serial numbers; nothing under a lien or unpaid financing; no counterfeits or hardware misrepresented as a different model or spec; no tampered manufacturer labels or authenticity markings; no engineering samples or unauthorized pre-release hardware; no standalone software keys, and no bundled licenses that can't legitimately transfer; nothing illegal, recalled, malware-carrying, or export-restricted. And list only hardware you physically have — a listing you can't actually ship becomes a cancelled order and a mark on your record. Spot something that breaks these rules? Use the Report this listing link on the listing page.

Sellers of binned CPUs can attach tested proof — SP scores, CPU Force scores, V/F data and stability test results — so overclockers know exactly what silicon quality they're buying.

Only high-volume sellers receive a 1099-K (for the 2026 tax year, the federal threshold is more than $20,000 in sales and more than 200 transactions; a few states set lower thresholds for their own copy). Receiving one doesn't mean you owe tax on that amount — it reports gross, not profit, and most people selling their own used parts sell at a loss. Sales tax, meanwhile, is entirely ours to handle: it never touches your payout and is never part of your fee. Details and disclaimers on the Sales Tax & 1099-K page.

Sellers ship items directly to buyers and set their own shipping price (or offer free shipping or local pickup). After a sale, sellers can buy a discounted carrier label right on the order page — priced to the buyer's address, with optional shipping protection and signature confirmation — and the cost is simply deducted from the payout, no card needed. Sellers can also use their own label instead.

Tracking is wired into every order. Labels bought on SiliconExchange track automatically, and tracking numbers sellers enter by hand are registered with the carrier too. The order updates itself as the package moves — marked shipped on the first carrier scan and delivered on the delivery scan — so buyers always see real carrier status, and delivery is confirmed by the carrier rather than on anyone's word.

Three rules cover most of it: anti-static bag first, two inches of padding on every side, and the shake test before you seal (if you can hear it move, it isn't done). Then photograph the item and the packed box, and attach the photos to the order as proof of condition. The full guides — GPUs, complete builds, CPUs, motherboards, drives, PSUs — are at /guides.

Optional protection against loss, damage, or theft in transit, elected by the seller on the listing. The premium is shown wherever you elect it — on the listing form and again when buying a label — and is simply deducted from the seller's payout. The coverage is provided by a third party through our shipping partner, and its own terms govern what is and isn't covered (see Terms §4.5).

Automatically on every order of $750.00 or more — that's platform policy, not a choice. Sellers can also require a signature on lower-value listings if they prefer. It protects both sides: no high-value package left on a porch, and a signed delivery record if anything is ever contested.

That's the single biggest scam signal there is — don't do it, and report them. Every protection we offer (held payments, disputes, refunds) exists only for payments made through checkout; anyone steering you to Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, wire, crypto, or “PayPal Friends & Family” is removing your safety net on purpose. The patterns to know are on our Trust & Safety page.

Listings: the Report this listing link on any listing page (no account needed). Anything else — suspicious messages, off-platform payment requests, an account that doesn't add up — goes through the contact form or straight to report@siliconexchange.io. Every report gets human review, and a false alarm costs nothing.

Check your account. Every real order, refund, and payment appears in your order history — if it isn't there, it didn't happen here, whatever the email says. We will never ask for your password, and we never take payment through a link in a message.