Buyer protection

When you check out, your payment is authorized through Stripe and the funds are held under platform control — not transferred to the seller. The seller does not see any portion of your payment until the inspection window closes without a claim, or until you accept the piece, whichever comes first.

The amount held is the ask plus any shipping or sales tax shown on your order. The platform fee is collected by Coat Rack from the seller’s payout, not added to the buyer’s total.

If the inspection window resolves in your favor — refund — your payment method is credited back through Stripe, typically within 5–10 days depending on your bank.

The inspection window opens when the carrier confirms the piece has been delivered to the address you provided at checkout. The window is 72 hours from the delivery timestamp.

During the window you can:

• Accept the piece — funds release to the seller and the order completes. You can do this any time during the window; you do not have to wait for the timer to run out.
• Open a claim — funds remain in escrow and the order pauses while we review. The window pauses with it.

If the window closes without a claim and without an explicit accept, the order auto-releases. This is documented and not a dark pattern: the inspection window is a protection, not a purgatory.

Open a claim from your order page during the inspection window. You will pick one of two claim types:

• Substitution. The piece you received is not the piece in the listing. A different piece arrived in the box, or the piece’s identifying details (serial, distinguishing marks visible in the listing photos) do not match what you received. We treat substitution as the most serious claim type.
• Not as described. The piece is the same piece in the listing, but it materially differs from the listing’s condition or description — undisclosed damage, undisclosed repair, wrong size as labeled, undisclosed authenticity flag the listing did not surface.

When you open a claim you upload receipt photos — the piece in good light, the angles the listing showed, any specific area that prompted the claim. Photos are timestamped on receipt and retained in line with our privacy policy.

You may also write a short description of what is wrong. The description is read by an operator and informs the resolution.

When a claim is opened, payout to the seller is paused. An operator picks up the claim, reviews the listing photos, the verification report, and the receipt photos you uploaded, and may ask you for additional information through email.

Our target review timeline is 24–72 hours from claim open to operator decision, depending on claim type and complexity. Substitution claims take longer because they may involve a fingerprint comparison against the listing.

The operator decision is one of two outcomes:

• Refund. Full or partial refund to your original payment method. Substitution claims that are confirmed result in a full refund and a return-shipping label. Not-as-described claims may result in a partial refund proportional to the discrepancy.
• Release. The operator concludes the listing accurately represented the piece. Funds release to the seller. You receive a written explanation; you may dispute the resolution by writing to claims@coatrack.app within 7 days.

Independent of the claim flow, you retain whatever rights are available to you under your payment method’s dispute rules and applicable law.

Pieces above $5,000 are subject to manual pre-listing review.

The cap is $5,000 per piece at MVP. Listings with declared values above the cap pause for an operator pre-listing review before going live and may carry additional inspection requirements. The cap is documented on /how-it-works/buyers-and-sellers for sellers and is exposed in checkout copy where it applies.

Buyer protection at Coat Rack is an inspection window plus an operator-driven adjudication process, paid out of platform escrow. It is not an insurance product. Coat Rack is not a licensed insurance carrier and does not underwrite financial risk on the transactions running through the Platform.

Two phrases you will not see us use, anywhere in the catalog or on a listing page:

• Authenticity guarantee — a financial commitment backed by an underwriter. We do not advertise one.
• Insured against substitution — a carrier-backed promise. We do not advertise one.

What you do get: a confidence score, a verification report, an inspection window, and an operator-driven claim flow. The architecture of the score is documented on /how-it-works/technicals.

Coat Rack collects a marketplace facilitation fee from each completed sale. This is a platform fee, not a tax. Sales tax, where Coat Rack is required to collect under marketplace facilitator law, is calculated at checkout and shown on your order. See /legal/terms for the full fee disclosure.

Sellers receive Stripe-issued 1099-K forms in line with federal and state thresholds; this is a seller-side obligation handled by Stripe and does not affect buyer protection.

Claims: claims@coatrack.app. General questions: hello@coatrack.app.

For data requests, see our privacy policy.