Buyer protection & policies

How an order works

You buy from a maker's shop with a card. Payments run through Stripe, so your full card number is handled by Stripe and never touches Tacklerow. The seller packs and ships your order and adds a tracking number. Tracking is required on every shipped order, so you can see where your bait is from the moment it leaves the shop.

You need to be signed in to buy. We do not offer guest checkout, because if an order goes sideways we need a real account on both sides to sort it out fairly. Tacklerow is US only at launch, and we do not ship internationally yet.

When the seller gets paid

A seller's payout is held for a short window after your order is delivered. The hold is three days, and the clock starts when tracking confirms the package arrived, not when it ships. If nothing is wrong, the payout releases on its own and you never have to do a thing. The hold exists so you have a real window to open the box, look it over, and speak up before the money moves.

Reporting a problem

Every delivered order has a "Report an issue" button. Use it and you open a thread that flags the order for both you and the seller. While the marketplace is young, a founder reads every report and works the resolution by hand, usually a refund and a message, so you are talking to a person who can actually fix it, not a ticket queue.

What we refund

We cover the failures that are on the order, not on the fish:

• Your order never arrived. Tracking shows it lost or stuck and the seller cannot get it to you.
• It arrived damaged in transit.
• It is materially different from the photos and the description. Wrong item, wrong size, missing pieces, not the bait that was listed.

What we do not refund

Custom bait is hand-made and a little subjective, so a few things sit outside protection:

• It did not catch fish. No bait can promise that.
• You changed your mind, or the color reads different in your hand than on your screen, and the item matches what was listed.
• Normal wear, hook rash, or paint chips after you have fished it.

When a maker pours and paints by hand, small variation between one bait and the next is the craft, not a defect. We look at whether the item matches what was listed, not whether it is identical to the photo down to the last fleck.

What sellers pay

Buyers pay the listed price plus shipping, and nothing else. There is no buyer fee. Sellers pay a platform fee that is taken out of their payout, and that fee already covers card processing, so it is the only cut. The standard rate is eight percent. Our first twenty-five Founding Sellers keep a three percent rate for the life of their shop. The exact amount on any order is shown to the seller at checkout.

Questions

If something is not covered here or you are not sure where your order stands, email support@tacklerow.com and a person will get back to you. You can also read our terms of service and privacy policy.