Dispute Resolution Policy

A dispute is a formal record that something went wrong with an order and the two parties could not agree. It is not the same as messaging the other person, and it is not the same as a support ticket about your account.

Raising one does two things immediately: it stops the seller's payment from being released, and it puts the order in front of our team. Everything else follows from those two facts.

Please try the other party first. Most problems are a misunderstanding and are settled in the order chat within a day. A dispute is the step for when that has not worked.

Either party can. Buyers raise most disputes, but a seller can raise one too — for example where a buyer claims an item never arrived and the tracking says otherwise, or where a returned item comes back damaged or incomplete.

You raise one from the order itself, using Report a problem. You will be asked to describe what went wrong. Give us enough to act on — the person reading it has none of your context.

One live dispute per order. If a dispute has already been raised on an order, add to it in the chat rather than starting another. Once a dispute is closed, a new one can be raised on the same order if something else goes wrong.

While a dispute is open, the seller is not paid and the payment stays with us. This is the practical reason to raise a dispute promptly rather than waiting.

• A dispute raised inside the 48-hour issue window holds the payment even if the window closes while we are still looking at it. Raising at hour 47 is as effective as raising at hour 1.
• A dispute raised after the payment has already been released to the seller can still be recorded and investigated, but we no longer hold the money and cannot compel its return.
• On a Cash on Delivery order the same applies: the cash you paid is remitted to us by the courier and held for the same window. See Section 5 of our Refund Policy.
• Raising a dispute before delivery — for example because a seller has not dispatched — is allowed, and simply means there is nothing to hold yet.

Closing a dispute releases that hold. If the outcome is a refund, the refund is processed under our Refund Policy; if it is not, the payment continues to the seller in the normal way.

When a member of our team takes on your dispute, they are added to the existing conversation between you and the other party — the chat attached to that order, not a separate thread. The history that explains the problem is already there, and we would rather read it than ask you both to retell it.

• A message is posted in the conversation naming the person who joined, at the moment they join. You are never given a silent observer.
• They can read the conversation and write in it, the same as you and the other party.
• It only ever happens on the conversation attached to the disputed order. Your other chats are untouched.
• They leave when the dispute is closed, and the conversation goes back to being private between you and the other party.

This is also described in Section 5.1 of our Privacy Policy.

Send it in the order chat, where both parties and our team can see it. Photographs are usually decisive: the item as it arrived, the packaging it arrived in, any label or seal, and anything the listing said that the item does not match.

• Keep the item and its packaging until the dispute is closed. Disposing of either generally makes a claim impossible to substantiate.
• We may ask for more evidence from either side. A party who does not respond within a reasonable time should expect the decision to be made without their input.
• Evidence sent privately to one of our staff outside the order chat may not be considered — send it where the record is.
• Editing, staging, or misrepresenting evidence is treated as abuse of this process (Section 11).

• Refund the buyer — the order total is returned under our Refund Policy.
• Partial refund — where the item is usable but not what was promised, and both keeping it and returning it are unreasonable outcomes.
• Release payment to the seller — where the order was as described and the complaint is not made out.
• No action — where the parties have settled it themselves, or there is nothing for us to decide.

A decision to refund does not move money by itself. Refunds are authorised separately and by a second member of our team, which is a deliberate control on payments out — not an extra delay we can waive on request. Refund timings are in Section 9 of our Refund Policy. On a Cash on Delivery order we cannot return cash into your hand, so a refund is paid as wallet credit or by bank transfer.

Our decision is binding as between you and OurBazaar for the purposes of the payment we hold. It does not extinguish any right you have to pursue the other party directly, or to take the matter to the relevant Pakistani consumer-protection authority.

Deciding where the money goes and deciding who was at fault are two separate questions, and we answer them separately. A refund is not automatically a finding against the seller.

• Seller at fault — the item was not as described, was not sent, or was packed so poorly that damage was predictable.
• Buyer at fault — the claim was not made out, the item was damaged after delivery, or the order was refused without good reason.
• Courier at fault — the parcel was lost or damaged in transit through no act of either party. See Section 9.
• Nobody at fault — a genuine accident or an honest misunderstanding. This is a real finding, not a way of avoiding a decision.
• Both partly at fault — where the outcome was avoidable on both sides.

We say this explicitly because the alternative is worse. A process that has to blame a buyer or a seller in every case produces findings that are not true, and a marketplace that records untrue findings ends up penalising people arbitrarily.

Where a dispute is decided against you, we may record it against your account. There are two levels, and the difference matters.

• A warning is recorded and visible to our team, but does not count toward any restriction. It is what a first, forgivable mistake gets.
• An offence is recorded and counts. Repeated offences may lead to restrictions on your account, up to suspension under Section 17 of our Terms of Use.

• You are notified when either is recorded, with the reason.
• At most one is recorded per party per dispute.
• Only a buyer or a seller can have one recorded. A finding of courier fault, no fault, or shared fault records nothing against either account.
• These findings are made by a person, not by an automated system.
• The history is kept, including anything we later reverse, so a decision can always be re-examined. Dispute records are retained as described in Section 10 of our Privacy Policy.

Parcels are lost and damaged in transit, and when that happens it is neither party's doing. We record the carrier so we can see which of our courier partners this keeps happening with, and we take that up with them.

A finding of courier fault records nothing against the buyer or the seller. The buyer is still made whole where the claim is made out — you are not left carrying a loss because the responsible party is a third party we chose.

If you think a decision or a finding is wrong, email support@ourbazaar.pk within 30 days, quoting the order number and what you think was missed. A different member of our team will review it.

Be aware of what a review can and cannot recover. We can always re-examine a fault finding and remove it from your record. We can only return money we still hold — once a payment has been released to the seller, a review may correct the record without being able to reverse the payment.

This process exists because most people are honest and occasionally unlucky. Using it otherwise is itself a breach of our Terms of Use.

• Raising disputes you know to be unfounded, or repeatedly raising them to delay payment to sellers
• Claiming an item was not received when it was, or not as described when it was
• Misrepresenting or staging evidence
• Pressuring the other party to withdraw a dispute, including by threatening a retaliatory review
• Using the dispute chat to abuse the other party or our staff

We record these as offences and may restrict or suspend the account. Where money has been obtained by a false claim, we may also recover it.

We are stating this plainly because a process that implies more than it can deliver is worse than one that is honest about its edges.

• We cannot return money we no longer hold. Once a payment has been released to a seller, our ability to put things right is limited to the record and to action against the account.
• We are not a court, and we are not the seller. Our decision settles what happens to the payment we hold; it does not decide your legal rights against the other party.
• We decide on the evidence in front of us, on the balance of probabilities. We cannot inspect the item ourselves.
• We cannot compel a seller to do anything beyond the payment we hold and the standing of their account.

We may update this policy as the process develops. Where a change materially affects your rights, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.

Questions about a dispute, or about this policy, go to support@ourbazaar.pk. Quote the order number — it is the fastest way for us to find everything.