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Every marketplace purchase goes through escrow. It protects both sides: the buyer can raise a dispute if the strategy isn't as advertised, and the author isn't at the mercy of post-release chargebacks.
Timeline
| Day | State | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Funded | Buyer paid; funds sit in the escrow wallet |
| 0–14 | Review window | Buyer can raise a dispute at any time |
| 14 | Auto-release | If no dispute, funds release to author (minus 20% platform fee) |
A buyer can release early at any time — useful if the strategy clearly works and they want to reward the author. A buyer can dispute once per purchase; a dispute halts the auto-release clock.
Disputes
Open a dispute from the strategy page → Dispute this purchase. You'll be asked for:
- A short summary of the problem (markdown, ≤ 2,000 chars)
- Evidence — equity-curve screenshots, tx hashes, audit-log references from the Bots page
- What outcome you want: refund, partial refund, or fix by author
The author gets 72 hours to respond. Typical outcomes:
- Both agree — the agreed outcome applies and funds move accordingly.
- Disagreement — a TMIYC moderator (not the author's friend, not yours) reviews the audit log and decides within 5 business days. The decision is binding.
- Author ghosts — after 72 hours of silence from a responsive author, the buyer-preferred outcome applies by default.
We publish a dispute digest every quarter with anonymised numbers (counts, outcomes, avg resolution time). It lives at /help/dispute-digest once the first quarter is complete.
Chargebacks
If you paid by card and open a chargeback with your bank, we freeze the escrow immediately and await the bank's decision. Chargebacks take the purchase out of our standard dispute flow — we can't override a bank. If the chargeback resolves against the buyer, the card processor refunds the purchase and we release to the author minus fees.
Fees
Escrow itself is free. The only fee is the standard 20% platform fee on release; it's deducted before the author sees the money. Disputes don't add fees unless a buyer files three unsuccessful disputes in a rolling 90-day window, at which point their account is reviewed for abuse.