Resale Seller Policy

This Seller Policy sets out the rules for selling on the Rare Bindings marketplace. It is part of our Terms of Service, and our Terms and Privacy Policy also apply. If you break this policy, we may restrict or remove your account.

1. About Rare Bindings

Rare Bindings is a marketplace where independent private collectors resell collector books. It is operated by Rare Bindings Oy (Finnish Business ID 3657428-4), with its postal address at Marinkallio 8 A 24, 02320 Espoo, Finland ("we", "our", "us"). You can reach us at support@rarebindings.net.

We are not a party to the sale. A sale is a contract directly between you and the buyer, and we are not responsible for it to the fullest extent the law allows. We do not sell our own items and do not compete with sellers. Listings are shown newest first, and all sellers are treated equally; there is no paid ranking.

2. How payment works right now

We do not process payments and hold no funds. When a buyer places an order, this reserves the item and opens an order conversation. You and the buyer complete payment through your PayPal account: the buyer pays you, you confirm receipt, and the order moves to shipping. We never receive, hold, or release your money, and we charge you no fee.

• Because payment is direct, we cannot recover, reverse, or guarantee a payment, and we cannot mediate a payment dispute. That is between you, the buyer, and the buyer's payment provider.
• Buyers pay you through PayPal Goods and Services, which gives them PayPal's Buyer Protection. Do not ask buyers to send friends-and-family or gift payments, which strip that protection and cause disputes.
• To list an item you must save a PayPal account that accepts Goods and Services payments; that is where buyers pay you, and you cannot remove it while you have live listings.

3. Selling on Rare Bindings

• You sell as a private collector. To sell, you complete the private-collector certification and accept the current Seller Terms. This is your own declaration, and we do not verify or vouch for it. Whether you are in fact a trader is decided by your conduct (volume, regularity, buying to resell), not by the certification. If your activity makes you a trader, you must meet the consumer-protection duties that apply to traders, including the buyer's right to withdraw and the legal guarantee, and we may restrict or close your selling account, because we do not offer business-seller tools. We may ask you to confirm your status again if your selling volume suggests you are trading.
• Give an accurate ship-from location on your listings. A false location can lead to suspension.
• When you post a listing, you confirm that the item is in your possession and ready to ship at the listed price; is not listed twice; is available at the advertised price; and matches the edition and the condition grade you gave it (As New, Fine, Near Fine, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor, with dust jackets graded separately), with accurate notes, photos, and an included-and-missing list.
• You are responsible for any copyright or authenticity restrictions, and for accurate customs declarations on cross-border shipments.
• Do not use misleading urgency or discount claims. High-value listings (above $1,000 or the equivalent) may be held for review before they go live.

3.1 Payment and communication

• Payment runs through PayPal Goods and Services: you provide your PayPal account and the buyer pays you there. We do not process or hold the payment, but you must transact through the order and keep records on the Service.
• Do not ask for gift or friends-and-family payments, and do not add a surcharge or any percentage to the order total (except tax where the law requires it). Keep the order on the Service: "off the Service" means arranging, negotiating, or communicating about an order anywhere other than the order conversation (for example by email, Discord, social media, or phone), or completing a sale that started here without the buyer placing the order here. The buyer paying you through the PayPal details shown in the order, and a PayPal dispute, are part of the intended flow and are not off the Service. Moving an order off the Service to avoid our rules, our records, or any fees we introduce later is prohibited.
• Respond to buyer questions and order issues within 4 calendar days. If you do not respond to an open issue within 4 days, the order is flagged Seller Not Responding and you get a further 4 days; continued silence suspends your account until you respond. That suspension comes with a statement of reasons and a right to contest, like any other account action.
• Use the order messaging for all order communication, and keep it professional.

4. Shipping and orders

• You must own and hold the items you list. Listing items you do not hold, drop-shipping, or having a third party ship to your buyer is not allowed. You are the seller of record and are responsible for fulfilment, returns, refunds, and buyer communication.
• Until the buyer marks their payment as sent, either of you can cancel the order from the order page, which releases the item for sale again. Once the buyer has paid, you must honour the order.
• After the buyer's payment is confirmed, ship and mark the order Shipped, with tracking, within the handling time stated on your listing. Handling time can be extended by agreement recorded on the order.
• Your listing must state your handling time, and its notes should say whether you accept returns and on what terms. If you accept a return because the item was not as described, you pay the return shipping. Listing notes may not be used to get around our rules or the law.

4.1 The buyer's personal data

To ship an order we show you the buyer's name, delivery address, and the delivery phone number they gave at checkout. Once you have them, you are responsible for them under data-protection law (in the EU and UK, the GDPR), separately from us. You agree to:

• use them only to pack, address, ship, and resolve that order, and to meet your own legal obligations (for example, tax or customs records);
• not add the buyer to any mailing list, contact them for anything other than the order, sell or pass on their details, or combine them with other data about them;
• share them only with the carrier and the services you need to ship and track the parcel;
• keep them secure, and delete them once the order is complete, any issue is closed, and the buyer's protection and review windows have passed, except what you must keep by law;
• tell us at privacy@rarebindings.net without delay if the details are lost, exposed, or misused, so we can inform the buyer.

Keep order communication in the order conversation rather than by personal email or phone, so both of you have a record and neither has to hand over more contact details than the order needs.

5. If there is a problem with an order

Handle disputes under your listing's stated terms, the buyer's payment method, and the law. We cannot judge disputes about an item's condition or shipping, because we do not hold or inspect items and do not process the payment. Keep all communication on the order. If you and the buyer cannot resolve it, it can be escalated through the buyer's payment provider. Support after 60 days is limited.

6. Reviews

Buyers may leave one review of the seller per completed order, within 90 calendar days of completion. We do not offer seller-on-buyer reviews. You may report a review that breaks our guidelines by emailing support@rarebindings.net with a link to it, and we aim to handle removal requests within 14 days. Reviews of a book or edition are a separate feature.

7. Fees and taxes

Listing and selling are free for now. We charge no platform, commission, or transaction fee. You keep what the buyer pays you, minus PayPal's own Goods and Services fee, which PayPal deducts from you as the recipient, and any cross-border or currency-conversion fees PayPal applies. Price the fee in: you must transact through the order, never ask for gift or friends-and-family payments, and never add a surcharge to cover PayPal's fee. You are responsible for any taxes on your sales, which vary by your and the buyer's location. If we introduce platform-processed payments or a fee later, this section changes with notice, and the tax-reporting position below changes with it.

7.1 Seller identity and tax reporting (DAC7)

We are a small, fee-free marketplace, and most of our sellers sell a handful of books a year. Under DAC7 (Directive (EU) 2021/514, Annex V, as applied in Finland), an operator that connects sellers with buyers may have to collect sellers' identity and tax details and report them to the tax authority, while sellers who make fewer than 30 sales and under €2,000 in a year are excluded from that reporting. For now we do not ask for your tax identification details. If we conclude, or the tax authority tells us, that we must report, we will ask you for the details we need, give you notice, and tell you what we report. Either way, you remain responsible for your own tax obligations.

8. Account restriction and closure

If we act against your account, we will give you a statement of reasons at or before the action takes effect and tell you how to contest it. For termination we aim to give at least 30 days' notice, unless the law restricts notice or immediate action is warranted.

Prohibited practices include diverting an order off the Service to avoid our rules, records, or future fees; listing prohibited items (counterfeits, forgeries, ex-library or reprint copies passed off as originals, misidentified editions, items that break copyright, or items that do not match the catalogue entry); advertising off-platform sales or spamming; surcharging buyers for payment processing; using false addresses or a VPN to get around location rules; and accepting payment for items you cannot or will not ship. Vacation mode lets you pause your store when you cannot fulfil promptly.

You can close your account at any time; if you object to this policy, that is your remedy. A suspended seller can still sign in, but a selling ban hides your inventory.

9. Disputes with Rare Bindings

Disputes about your relationship with Rare Bindings are governed by our Terms of Service and the laws of Finland, heard in the courts of Helsinki, with no arbitration requirement.

10. Contact

support@rarebindings.net.