Refunds and returns
When money goes back
Cards ship member to member. Collectible Deck never takes possession of one, never inspects one, and is not the seller. That shapes everything below: the platform can decide when a seller gets paid, and it can send a buyer’s money back, but it cannot judge a card it has never seen. Nothing here has run yet — the marketplace is pre-launch.
The states an order can be in
An order is in exactly one of these. Carrier scans move it; a seller saying they posted it does not.
| Awaiting shipment | No carrier scan yet. No payout, no refund due. |
|---|---|
| Shipped | A carrier scan proves the card was mailed. It does not prove delivery, so it does not release a payout. |
| Delivered | A carrier delivery scan exists. The seller’s payout becomes eligible 48 hours later. |
| Never scanned | No carrier scan at all by the deadline. The buyer’s refund is due automatically. |
| Scanned, never delivered | The carrier scanned it but never delivered it by the deadline. The buyer’s refund is due automatically. |
| Dispute open | A dispute or refund request is open on the charge. A payout that has not yet been released is suppressed until it is resolved; one already released is not recovered. |
The deadline
Seven calendar days after the delivery date the order was given — the carrier’s estimate where there is one, otherwise the date the seller promised — measured to the end of that day. It is not seven days from payment: an order paid on the 1st and due on the 8th reaches its deadline on the 15th. If there is still no delivery scan by then, the order falls into one of the two refund states above and the refund is due without anyone asking for it.
End of day is calculated using the UTC offset recorded when the order was paid. If a daylight-saving change falls between payment and the deadline, the cut-off lands an hour either side of local midnight.
Two things stop that automatic refund, and both are worth knowing before they happen. A delivery scan that arrives after the deadline still counts as delivery: the order becomes delivered, the refund that had been due no longer is, and the seller’s payout becomes eligible 48 hours later. And an open dispute takes precedence over the deadline entirely — see below.
What happens automatically, and what does not
A refund becomes due on its own in exactly two situations: no carrier scan by the deadline, or a carrier scan with no delivery by the deadline. Those are the only two. They are decided from carrier facts and a clock, not from anyone’s account of events.
Delivery does not create a refund. Once a delivery scan exists the order is delivered, and the payout becomes eligible 48 hours after that scan. If something is wrong with a card that was delivered, the route is a dispute, not an automatic refund.
Opening a dispute
A dispute or refund request opened on the charge suppresses the seller’s payout while it is open, whatever the delivery state says. That is the mechanism that stops money moving on to the seller while a disagreement is live.
Two limits on it, stated plainly because they run against what you might assume. An open dispute replaces the automatic refund rather than adding to it. While a dispute is open the order sits in the dispute state and no refund is due on a clock, so opening one before the deadline sets aside the automatic refund you would otherwise have received on that date. Do not open a dispute to make a late delivery refund arrive sooner; it does the opposite.
And a dispute only holds a payout that has not gone out yet. Once the 48 hours after a delivery scan have elapsed and the payout has been released, there is no mechanism here that pulls it back. A dispute raised after that point is a matter between you, the seller and your card issuer.
A card that arrives and is not what the listing described — including a certificate number that does not match the grading company’s own record — is that kind of disagreement. Collectible Deck records the dispute and stops the payout, if the payout has not already been released. It does not inspect the card, grade it, or rule on who is right about it, because it has never had the card in its hands.
Returns
There is no platform return process, and it would be dishonest to describe one. Since the card went directly from the seller to the buyer, sending it back is something the two of them arrange between themselves. What the platform controls is the money, and only before it leaves: while a dispute is open a payout that has not yet been released does not go out, and a refund can be issued to the buyer.
Where the money actually sits
Sale proceeds are collected by the platform and land in the seller’s own payment account. What Collectible Deck controls is the timing of the payout to their bank, not custody of the funds. It is a marketplace protection, and nothing more than that.
Before anything ships
While an order is awaiting shipment there is no payout to stop: a payout only becomes eligible after a delivery scan. There is no cancellation step in the system today — an order sits in awaiting shipment until a carrier scan moves it or the deadline above arrives and makes a refund due. There is no way to make that date come sooner — and, per the section above, opening a dispute sets the automatic refund aside rather than accelerating it.