BuyLow

Payments Terms of Use

How money moves through BuyLow: which providers take payment, what we store, when you can cancel, when a refund is issued, and what BuyLow does not handle.

Last updated 29 September 202611 sections

6 parts of this document need review before it is final

Everything else here describes how BuyLow works today, checked against the running product. The parts marked Needs review cover decisions that have not been made yet. The operating entity, governing law, liability limits, tax handling, a contact address. They are listed so you can see them, not filled in with plausible-sounding text that nobody has agreed to.

1.Scope

This document explains how payment works on BuyLow. It applies to paying for an order as a buyer, and to a seller's paid plan subscription. It is part of the User Agreement; if the two conflict on a payment point, this document is the specific one.

2.Accepted payment methods

You can pay with a card or a wallet through Stripe or PayPal. Those are the only two methods; there is no bank transfer, no cash on delivery, no local wallet and no cryptocurrency.

Payment is taken on the provider's own secure page. We never see or store your card number, expiry date or security code. Prices and charges are in US dollars; we do not convert currency, and your bank applies any conversion.

3.How an order is charged

  1. Your basket is checked again: prices, stock and the availability of any product are confirmed at this point, not when you added them.
  2. The basket is split into one order per store, so each seller only sees and fulfils their own part.
  3. Shipping is added per store, at that store's own rate per kilogram, applied to the greater of the actual weight and the volume-based weight of your items.
  4. A coupon you entered is applied to that store's items only. Each coupon has its own minimum order, use limit and per-customer limit.
  5. The total is charged in one payment covering all of the orders in the basket.
  6. When the provider confirms the payment, stock is reduced, the coupon is marked as used, your cart is cleared, and the order moves to paid. If the payment fails, nothing is charged, stock is not reduced, and the coupon use is released.

One payment, several stores

A single charge can cover items from more than one store. The order page then shows one order per store, each with its own status, and a refund of that order affects your total accordingly.

4.What we store about a payment

  • The provider, the provider's reference for the payment, its status, the amount and the currency.
  • Which order group the payment covers, and the totals of each order within it.
  • When the payment was created and last updated.

We do not store card numbers, expiry dates, security codes or bank details. We rely on the provider's confirmation, and a payment notification that is not correctly signed or verified is ignored.

5.Order status and your options

An order is awaiting payment, then paid, then processing, then shipped, then delivered. It can instead end as cancelled or payment failed. A seller moves it forward one stage at a time and cannot move it back.

You can cancel an order yourself while it is paid or processing, meaning before the seller has marked it as shipped. Use the cancel action on the order page. Once an order is shipped, the platform cannot cancel it for you.

6.Refunds

Cancelling an order issues a refund to the original payment method, for the full amount of that order, through the provider you paid with. The refund is taken before the order is marked cancelled: if the refund cannot be made, the order stays open and you are told, so the charge and the order never disagree.

  • The refund amount is the order total, including the shipping charged for that order.
  • Stock is returned to the seller, and the coupon use is released so it can be used again.
  • The time the money takes to appear depends on the provider and your bank. We do not control that.

Needs review

  • Partial refunds. The product supports a full refund of a cancelled order only; there is no partial refund and no refund initiated by a seller.
  • Refunds for a delivered order, and returns. A store publishes its own return policy, but BuyLow has no returns workflow, so a return is handled between you and that seller.
  • The maximum time we will allow a seller to process a return or refund request.

7.Disputes and chargebacks

BuyLow does not run a chargeback or dispute process. A chargeback is raised with Stripe or PayPal directly, and it is the provider who decides it. We do not receive notice of one through our systems, and we cannot reverse one.

Needs review

  • What BuyLow will do if it is notified of a chargeback, and whether the amount is held from a seller.
  • A commitment to a response time to a buyer whose order is disputed with the provider.
  • A clear instruction to buyers to raise a problem with the seller or with us first, instead of with their bank.

8.Fraud prevention

To keep payments safe we rely on a small number of controls, all of them visible to you:

  • Your email address must be verified before you can check out or open a store.
  • Sign-up, sign-in and password-reset requests are rate-limited, and a repeated failure to enter the right verification code stops further attempts.
  • Card details never reach us, so there is no card data in our systems to steal.
  • Payment notifications are verified with the provider before an order is marked as paid, and a notification for a payment that is already complete is ignored rather than applied twice.
  • Administrators can suspend an account or a store, and hide a product, at any time.

Needs review

  • What happens to orders already paid for when an account or store is suspended mid-order.
  • Whether a manual review step is required for a first order or an unusually large one.

9.Currency and taxes

Everything on BuyLow is priced and charged in US dollars. No other currency is accepted.

BuyLow does not calculate, collect or remit sales tax, VAT, GST or any other tax. The price you see is the price you pay, plus the shipping the store charges.

Needs review

  • Who is responsible for remitting sales tax or VAT on a transaction, and what obligations fall on a seller under each relevant regime.
  • Whether tax will be calculated at checkout in future, and how a tax-exclusive price should be displayed until then.

10.Seller plans and recurring payments

A seller's plan limits how many products can be active at once. The free plan allows 10. Paid plans exist in the system, but their prices have not been published, so no subscription can be charged today, and the button to subscribe is not offered.

When a plan is charged, it will be billed by the same providers, through a hosted page, on a recurring basis, and you can cancel so that it does not renew at the end of the period you have already paid for. A missed payment puts the store into a past-due state; a cancelled subscription returns the store to the free plan's limits.

Needs review

  • The price and billing period of each paid plan, and whether tax applies to the subscription.
  • What happens to a store's listings and limits if a subscription is cancelled or expires, and whether data is archived or kept.
  • The refund policy for a subscription, and whether a plan can be downgraded mid-period.

11.Changes and contact

We may change this document. The date at the top shows the version you are reading, and a material change is announced by email to the address on your account before it takes effect.

A payment problem, a refund you have not seen, or a question about a charge should go to the support address once it is published.

Needs review

  • The support address for payment problems and the postal address for formal notices.
  • The time within which a refund is expected to be initiated, and the time within which a billing error must be reported.