Buyer and Seller Guide

How a sale works from start to finish. Jump to sellers or buyers. The full rules are on the Protection page.

For sellers

1. Get set up

Choose your @name, verify your ID with Stripe, and connect payouts with Stripe. You cannot publish a listing until Stripe approves your payouts.

2. List an item

  • Everything is filmed live with your phone camera. There are no uploads from your gallery.
  • Take 3 to 5 photos.
  • Your store has one front door video, up to 10 seconds. Your first product needs it. It plays as the ad on the home page, and it belongs to the product it shows, so it cannot be moved to another product. When that product sells or is taken down, your next new listing needs a fresh video.
  • Your agent writes a title, description and price from your photos. You check and change them, then set a private minimum price, shipping or local pickup, and Buy Now.
  • Your first listings as a new seller may be reviewed by our team before they go live.

3. Get offers and sales

Buyers, or their AI agents, can pay your asking price right away with Buy Now, or make an offer. Your minimum price stays private. Once a price is agreed, the buyer has 15 minutes to pay. The item sells to whoever pays first.

4. Ship or hand off

  • Shipping: ship within 2 days of payment, then enter the carrier and tracking number.
  • Local pickup: hand the item to the buyer within 3 days of payment, then tap "I handed off the item".
  • We email you 24 hours before your deadline. If you miss it, the buyer is refunded in full and the listing comes off sale.

5. Get paid

The buyer has 3 days to check the item. For tracked shipments, the 3 days start when the carrier confirms delivery. For hand-offs, they start when you tap "I handed off the item". If the buyer confirms, you are paid right away. If the buyer does nothing, you are paid automatically when the 3 days end.

Vintage Garage Sale keeps 10% of the sale price, on the item price only. You keep the rest, plus the shipping the buyer paid. The money goes to your connected Stripe account.

If the carrier reports a package as returned or a delivery problem, the payment is not released automatically and our team reviews the order. If a tracked package is not delivered 14 days after shipping, our team reviews it too.

6. If a buyer reports a problem

The payment is frozen. Our team reviews the deal thread and either pays you (the item price minus the fee, plus shipping) or refunds the buyer in full. A problem report counts on your seller record.

7. Manage your listings

  • Hide a listing and unhide it later. Hidden listings disappear from the site but are kept.
  • Turn on vacation mode with a return date. Your listings stay visible but greyed out, and no new offers come in. Orders already paid must still ship.
  • Photos and video cannot be removed after a listing is published.
  • If a refund took an item off sale, you can put it back on sale yourself, unless our team removed it or an order on it is still open.

Start selling

For buyers

1. Find something

Browse, search, and visit seller pages. If you are signed in, you can save a search and get an email when a matching item goes live. You can also ask a seller to show an item live on camera. Live looks are not recorded.

2. Buy or make an offer

Pay the asking price right away with Buy Now, or make an offer. Your own AI agent can search and make offers for you, and you approve every offer before it is sent. Prices are in US dollars.

3. Pay

When a price is agreed, you get a Pay Now link that is good for 15 minutes. You pay by card on a secure Stripe page. Vintage Garage Sale holds your payment, and the seller is not paid yet. The item sells to whoever pays first. If someone else pays first, you are refunded in full automatically.

4. Wait for your item

The seller has 2 days to ship, or 3 days to hand off a local pickup. If they miss the deadline, you are refunded in full automatically. For shipped items you can follow the tracking, and we email you when the carrier confirms delivery.

5. Check it and release payment

You have 3 days to check that the item matches the listing. If it does, release the payment to the seller. If you do nothing, the seller is paid automatically when the 3 days end. We email you when there are less than 24 hours left.

6. Report a problem

If the item is not as described, report a problem on your order before the payment is released. The payment is frozen while our team reviews the deal thread. They either refund you in full or pay the seller. A refund can take a few days to appear on your card.

Read the full rules in Vintage Garage Sale Protection and the Terms. Back to Vintage Garage Sale