How Disputes Actually Get Decided on Seekventory

Ask anyone who's sold a watch or a grail pair of sneakers on a general marketplace: the dispute process is usually a black box. You upload evidence into a void and a decision arrives weeks later with no reasoning. We designed the Seekventory case process to be the opposite — every decision is made against evidence that was recorded before the deal closed.

The evidence is captured before anything goes wrong

The key idea: the strongest evidence in a dispute is the evidence that existed before the dispute. When a seller makes an offer, they attach photos of the actual item, a condition description, and shipping terms. When the buyer accepts, those terms are frozen into an immutable record. Tracking events are logged automatically. So when a case opens, the question isn't he-said-she-said — it's "does the delivered item match the recorded offer?"

The sequence when a case opens

• The buyer opens a case with a category (not as described, damaged, not received, and so on) and evidence: photos, notes, comparisons to the offer photos.
• The seller's payout freezes immediately — funds stay held while the case is open.
• The seller has a stated response window to accept, offer a partial refund, or contest with their own evidence (packing photos, tracking, condition records).
• Clear-cut cases settle automatically against the recorded terms. Contested cases go to a staff review queue with the full audit trail attached.
• Either side gets one appeal within 7 days — but appeals require new evidence, so a case can't be relitigated forever.

Returns with the same rigor

When a case resolves as a return, the return itself is tracked: the buyer ships with tracking, delivery is confirmed, and the refund releases on inspection — so sellers can't claim an item never came back, and buyers can't return a swapped item undetected. The same evidence loop protects the return leg that protected the outbound one.

The full rules — deadlines, evidence standards, and exclusions — are published in the Protection Program terms, and the terms you accepted at checkout are stored on your order permanently.