Refunds and cancellations

Draft, pending legal review. Everything described here is what the site does today.

Money paid through this site is held rather than handed straight over, which is what makes most of the below possible. Nothing here needs you to ask nicely.

Cancelling an order

Either side can cancel while an order is still coming — before you have collected it or it has arrived. Whoever cancels writes a short reason, which the other side sees.

A cancelled order is refunded in full. If you cancelled, or the farm turned it down before confirming, our 6% comes back to the farm as well — there was no sale, so we take nothing for it. The item goes back on sale and nothing is held against either of you for cancelling — we would far rather somebody said they could not make it than simply did not turn up. (Card processing is the one cost a refund cannot undo; what that means for the farm is below.)

The one exception is a deposit you paid on terms you agreed to — on a booking, or on an animal sold by weight. Those are further down.

If the farm declines

A farm can decline an order it cannot fill. That refunds in full, the same way, for the same reason.

If something is wrong with what arrived

Raise it from the order while the payment is still held. What happens then:

• The hold is frozen, so nothing is released while it is open.
• The farm is asked for their account and has 3 days to give one. Both sides can attach photographs.
• Somebody here reads both and decides. A decision for you refunds all or part of the payment — in full to you, whatever it costs anyone else.
• Withdrawing gives the farm the money and hands back the days that were left on the clock, in case you need to raise something else.

How long the money takes

Refunds are sent as soon as a decision is made, and land back on the card that paid — we cannot send it anywhere else. Your bank decides how quickly it appears, which is usually a few days and occasionally longer. We have no way to hurry that along.

When it is too late

Once the 10-day window closes and the payment has gone to the farm, the sale is final here. That is the deal accepted at checkout, and it is what lets a farm treat a completed order as actually completed.

If that has happened and something is genuinely wrong, message the farm — most will put it right. Failing that, tell us: we cannot move money that has already gone, but a farm that repeatedly leaves people stuck is a farm we want to know about.

Orders paid at collection

Nothing passes through us on these, so there is nothing for us to refund. Cancelling is still worth doing so the farm is not holding food for somebody who is not coming, and the item goes back on sale.

Deposits on a booking

When somebody quotes you for a job — farm sitting, butchering, hoof trimming — they may ask for a deposit when you accept. The quote says what happens to it if you cancel, and it is shown beside the button you accept with, so you know before you are held to it. It is one of three:

• returned to you, whenever you cancel before the work starts;
• returned if you cancel at least a set number of days before the start date, and theirs after that — the quote names the day;
• theirs to keep if you cancel.

If they cancel, the deposit comes back to you, whatever the quote said. Either of you can cancel a booking from the booking itself, with a reason, until the work is marked done. After that it cannot be cancelled: the deposit is payment for work done, and it is held for 10 days like any other payment, so you can still raise a problem with it.

Some sellers let you pay the deposit to them in person instead of by card. The quote says so, and you choose when you accept. We take nothing from a deposit paid in person and never hold it, so if the booking is cancelled, handing it back is between you and the seller — the terms above still say whose it is, but we cannot move cash.

The rest of a booking

The balance falls due when they mark the work done, and you pay it from the booking. Paid here, it is held for 10 days the same way.

If it is not paid, we remind you at three days and again at six. A week after it fell due, they can close the booking and keep the deposit, and the rest stops being owed. Nothing is recorded against you — no rating, no mark on your account. An unpaid balance is often a disagreement about the work, and we will not keep a record of only one side of it.

If you paid them in person instead — cash on the day, or however you agreed — they can record that, and you are emailed the moment they do. Nothing more is owed through the site, and we take nothing from money we never handled.

Animals sold by weight

A half or whole beef, a hog or a lamb is priced by what it weighs at the processor, so the final figure is not known when you reserve one. You pay a deposit to reserve it and the balance once it has been weighed; the listing shows an estimate up front.

The farm sets what happens to the deposit, on the listing, and you see it before you reserve: returned whenever you cancel; returned until the farm books the processing date, and theirs after that; or not refundable. If the farm cancels, the deposit comes back to you.

Once it is weighed you can pay the balance here or at collection. If you are paying here and it is not paid, we remind you at three days and again at six, and a week after it was weighed the farm can cancel the sale and keep the deposit — by then the animal has been cut to your order and cannot go back, and the farm is left to sell it to somebody else. If you are paying at collection, the same week and the same two reminders count from the collection time the farm sets instead — you cannot pay before they say when — and a new time starts it over.

The deposit is always less than the estimate, but an animal can weigh in light enough to come to less than the deposit. Then there is nothing more to pay, and the difference comes back to you: the farm refunds it, and if it has not within two weeks of the weighing — or by the time you collect, if that is sooner — we refund it ourselves. If a sale is cancelled after you paid the balance, the balance comes back to you whatever happens to the deposit.

What a refund costs the farm

None of this changes what you get back — a refund is a refund, in full or in the part that was decided. It is here because farms read this page too, and because the money does not vanish evenly.

Card processing is charged when the payment is taken, and the card network does not return it when the payment is refunded. We cannot give back a fee we never held. So a refunded order leaves the farm a little out of pocket — about 50¢ on a $7 order and around $14.80 on a $500 one, in the same proportion as any card payment anywhere.

That cost does not change with the size of the refund. The fee was charged for moving the money in the first place, and refunding part of an order does not un-move part of it, so returning one jar of a dozen costs a farm the same as returning all twelve.

It is the same whoever called the sale off. When a buyer cancels, our own 6% comes back to the farm (below); the card fee does not, because it was never ours to return.

Our own 6%

We give it back on a refund that was not the farm’s doing — a buyer changing their mind, or a farm turning an order down before confirming it. There was no sale, so we take nothing for it.

We keep it when an order the farm had confirmed does not get filled, or a dispute is decided against them. It works the same way as the card processing fee, which is not returned on a refund either: the payment was taken and held, and in a dispute a person reviewed both sides, before the sale fell through. When a farm commits to an order and does not fill it, that cost stays with the farm rather than passing to the buyer.

A deposit kept under the terms you accepted is a sale like any other: it goes to whoever you booked, or to the farm, less our 6%. On a balance settled in person we take nothing, because nothing passed through us.

Going to your bank instead

You can, and sometimes it is the right call. Worth knowing what it costs: a card reversal takes the money from the farm regardless of who was right, adds a fee they cannot recover, and freezes their payouts while it is decided — which can be weeks. Raising it here is faster, cheaper for the farm, and while the payment is held it is decided by a person who reads both sides.

See also the terms of service.