Refund & Dispute Policy

Escrow exists so that money stops moving the moment a deal goes wrong. On a marketplace order we hold the buyer's funds until the buyer approves delivery. In a deal room a human moderator verifies the payment and decides where it goes. Either way, nothing is released on a timer and nothing is released by the other party alone.

What escrow cannot do is undo a blockchain. A USDT transaction that has been broadcast is final. Everything below is written around that one hard limit — read section 6 if you read nothing else.

• When you place an order, the full price moves from your available wallet balance into a locked balance. It is no longer spendable by you, and it is not the seller’s money either.
• The seller marks the order delivered. That changes the order’s status and notifies you — it does not move any money.
• You review the delivery and press “Approve & release”. Only then does the locked amount leave your wallet: the seller is credited the price minus our platform fee, and both sides get a transaction record.
• There is no automatic release. An order sits in escrow indefinitely until you approve it or we resolve it for you — silence never counts as approval.

Approving is a one-way door. The confirmation dialog says so, and section 6 explains why we cannot walk it back afterwards.

We will be straight with you about how this works today: there is no self-service cancel or refund button on a marketplace order. If a delivery never arrives, arrives broken, or is not what the gig described, the route is to contact us.

• Message the seller first from the order. Most problems are a misunderstanding about scope and are settled between the two of you.
• If that fails, email support@dealsfixers.com with your order number (it looks like O123456) and what went wrong. An administrator reads the order, the gig description and your messages.
• If the claim holds up, we return the locked amount to your available wallet balance and close the order. You can then spend it on another order or withdraw it.
• If it does not, we say so and explain why. Where the outcome is genuinely mixed we may split it — a partial return to you and a partial release to the seller.

We are not going to promise a turnaround we cannot always hit. Expect a first reply within a couple of business days, and longer where we have to ask both sides for evidence.

A deal room walks through a fixed sequence of states: waiting for the second party, finding a moderator, awaiting funds, funds locked, delivered, then completed. A room can also end as cancelled or disputed.

• The buyer or the seller can cancel a room with a written reason at any point BEFORE a payment has been reported — that is, while it is waiting for a party, finding a moderator, or awaiting funds. Nothing has moved, no payment has reached us, so there is nothing to return and nothing to charge you. The reason is posted into the room as a system message, so the record of why it ended stays with both sides.
• Once the buyer has marked a payment as sent, neither party can cancel. The way out from there is a dispute, which a moderator decides and records. The moderator can still cancel a room where the buyer reported a payment that never actually arrived — they are the one who checks the chain.
• A room where nothing has happened for seven days, and where no payment was ever reported, is closed automatically. Everyone involved is reminded after three days first, and told again when it closes. Nothing has been charged, no money has moved, and either of you can open a new room straight away. A room where a payment HAS been reported, or that is in dispute, is never closed automatically — it is escalated to a moderator instead, because real money may already be on a blockchain and no automatic process decides what happens to that.
• A completed or already-cancelled room cannot be cancelled again.

Cancelling after you have sent payment is different. Deal-room payments are external USDT sent to our published address — they never touch the on-site wallet. Marking a room cancelled changes its status; it does not, by itself, move any coin. Returning your money is a second, manual step: we send a fresh USDT transaction to an address you give us. Give us the right address and the right network, because that transfer is as final as the first one.

• Either the buyer or the seller may open a dispute, but only once funds are locked or the seller has marked the deal delivered. Before that there is nothing in the middle to argue over — cancel instead.
• You pick what went wrong from a short list, write at least ten characters saying what happened, and may attach evidence. The room flips to “disputed”, your account of it is posted into the transcript, and a moderator is called — a dispute on a room holding confirmed money jumps ahead of everything else in that queue.
• If we are holding a confirmed payment, the buyer is asked for a refund address and network straight away, before anybody decides anything. Most disputes end in a refund and we would rather have somewhere to send it than ask for one at the end. Only the buyer can set that address, and they can correct it right up until the moment it is paid.
• The other party gets 48 hours to give their side, with their own evidence, and the deadline is shown to both of you. The moderator cannot decide before they answer or that window closes. If it closes in silence the moderator decides on what they have, and the record shows permanently that no answer was given.
• The dispute is decided by the moderator assigned to that room, or by an uninvolved administrator. A moderator who is a party to the deal is blocked from deciding it — they are a disputant, not the referee.
• There are three outcomes: refund the buyer — everything the buyer sent us, the platform fee included; pay the seller, which is only available if the payment was actually confirmed on-chain; or a split, an explicit amount to each of you that must add up to exactly what the buyer sent. The moderator must write a reason, which both of you keep for ever.
• A DECISION IS NOT A PAYMENT, and the room says so. Deal-room money is USDT that a human has to send, so the room does not close when the moderator rules. It stays open showing what each side is owed, where it is going and that it has not been sent yet — until the moderator has actually sent it and recorded the transaction id in the room. Only then does the room close, and that transaction id stays on it for ever for both of you to check on a block explorer.
• The evidence is the room itself — the messages, the timestamps and the files attached to it. Anything agreed in a private chat elsewhere is something we cannot see and cannot weigh.

Our decision is final as far as the funds we are holding are concerned. It is not a court judgment and it does not stop you pursuing the other party by any other means available to you.

Being precise about this is more useful than reassuring you:

• Any USDT transaction that has been broadcast — to us, to a counterparty, to a mistyped address, or on the wrong network. We have no ability to recall it and neither does anyone else. Check the address and the network before you send.
• A marketplace release you approved. Once the funds have been credited to the seller they are the seller’s balance and can be withdrawn.
• A withdrawal we have already sent. The transaction hash is recorded on the withdrawal and the coin is gone from our side.
• There are no chargebacks here. We take no card and no bank payment, so there is no payment network to appeal to. That cuts both ways: sellers cannot be defrauded by a reversed payment, and buyers must use escrow rather than paying anyone directly.

Anyone who asks you to pay them directly, outside escrow or outside the room, is removing the only protection you have. That is a rules breach on our side and, far more often than not, a scam — Safety lists the ones we see most.

• Marketplace platform fee — charged to the seller and taken only at the moment of release, out of the proceeds. An order that never completes is never charged a fee, and a buyer who is refunded gets the full amount that was locked, not the amount minus a fee.
• Deal-room fee — quoted and fixed when the room is created, and payable on a deal that completes. In a room created on or after 3 September 2026 the fee is added on top of the deal amount, so it is part of the single total the buyer sends and the seller is paid the full amount agreed. Rooms created before that date took the fee out of the seller’s payout instead, and keep those terms for their whole life.
• A deal room that does not complete — if a room is cancelled, or a dispute is resolved in the buyer’s favour, we do not keep a platform fee on it. What the buyer sent us goes back to the buyer, the fee included, less only the network fee for the return transfer.
• A dispute split between the two of you — we keep no platform fee on one of those either. The whole amount the buyer sent, the fee included, is what gets divided, exactly as the moderator’s written decision says.
• Network fees — the blockchain charges these, not us, and they cannot be refunded by anybody. On a returned deal-room payment the network fee for the return transfer comes out of the amount sent back.
• Withdrawal fee — deducted when a withdrawal is sent. If an administrator rejects a withdrawal, the entire requested amount, fee included, goes straight back to your available balance with a refund transaction to match.

The current tiers for orders, deal rooms and withdrawals are on the Fees page and in section 4 of the Terms of Service.

• A deposit is credited only after we confirm it on-chain. If we cannot match a transaction to your account, we will ask you for the sending address and hash rather than crediting it blindly.
• A withdrawal request holds the amount in your locked balance while an administrator reviews it. Approved, it is sent and the transaction hash is recorded. Rejected, the full amount is returned to your available balance with the reason attached.
• Only one withdrawal can be pending at a time, and the minimum is $50.

Escrow is not a free trial. Opening a dispute you know to be false, approving delivery and then demanding a refund, or running the same complaint across several accounts, is grounds for us to refuse a claim and to suspend the accounts involved — see the AML & KYC Policy and section 8 of the Terms of Service.

In a deal room, use the dispute control inside the room — it puts your reason on the record and pages the moderator. For a marketplace order, an unmatched deposit or anything else, email support@dealsfixers.com from the address on your account and include the order or room number.

If this policy changes, the “last updated” date above changes with it. See also the Privacy Policy for what we keep from a resolved dispute and for how long.