When Somebody Does Not Pay You

The question that decides everything

Not who they are. Not what they said. How the money was meant to move.

There are two worlds here and they barely touch.

A marketplace. The app sat in the middle of the sale. It listed the thing and it handled the payment. There is a process, a window to use it, and a human somewhere who decides.

A direct payment. Cash, a transfer app, a bank transfer, a promise for later. Nobody was in the middle. There is no process because there is nobody to run one.

Work out which one you are in before you do anything else. Everything below depends on it.

If it was a marketplace

You have got a real path. Use it, and use it quickly, because these processes have time limits and they are shorter than you expect.

Open the dispute inside the app rather than arguing in messages. Then keep everything in there. The messages, the listing, the photos, the tracking. A person reading it later can only see what is in front of them.

One thing to sort out first. The account is very likely in an adult's name, because that is how these apps are built. Depop says the account holder carries the result of a dispute. So the adult is the one who has to open it and reply to it. Tell them the same day, not when it has gone wrong twice.

If it was a direct payment

This is the harder one, and here is the straight version.

There is no dispute process because nobody was in the middle. Zelle says it about itself in the words below: it does not offer purchase protection. Cash says nothing at all, because cash is not a company.

So your options are two messages and then a decision. That is genuinely it.

Some payment apps do split their transfers into paying a friend and paying for a thing, and the second kind can come with cover. If that is where you are, go and read your own app's wording on what it covers. Do not assume it works like the one your friend uses.

The honest answer for small amounts

You will probably not get it back.

Nobody writes that sentence, because it is not a satisfying thing to publish. But for twenty or forty dollars, with no marketplace and no record, there is no realistic route that costs less than the money.

What you do instead is take the lesson at the price it cost you, and make sure it is the last time. That is not a consolation prize. It is the only bit of this you actually control.

How not to be here again

1. Some money up front for anything sizeable. The cost of your materials, not half the price. They said yes, now what has the whole rule, including the one case where half is fair.
2. Keep strangers on the marketplace. The fee is buying you the referee. Somebody who wants you off the app is asking you to give that up.
3. Write down every job the day you do it. Date, name, what you did, what was agreed, what was paid.
4. Agree the number out loud before you start. Most non payment is really a disagreement about a number nobody said.
5. Say no the second time. Somebody who has already not paid you is not a customer with a problem. They are a person who does not pay.

One last thing

Being under 18 is not what went wrong here.

An adult with no record and no marketplace is in the same position you are. The thing that protects people is not their age. It is where the money moved and what they wrote down.

Both of those are yours to choose, on the next job, this week.