How a refund claim moves

This lesson prepares you to: Walk a claim through every stage and know what you must do at each one.

Stage one, the buyer opens it

The claim is opened from the order. The moment it exists, the payout on that order freezes. The order's next payout attempt is pushed far out so the payout job stops selecting it. If the payout was due today, it does not go. A refund always beats a payout.

Stage two, your response window

How long you have depends on what kind of claim it is and how big the order was.

Kind	Order size	You have
Cancellation	Any	24 hours
Refund claim	100 dollars or less	2 business days
Refund claim	Over 100 dollars	4 business days

Bigger orders get you more time because they are more likely to need you to actually go and look at something.

What "business days" means here, precisely

Monday to Friday, with US federal holidays excluded: New Year's Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day and Christmas Day.

Stage three, an offer

A resolution can be proposed rather than imposed. When one is put to a buyer, the buyer has 48 hours to respond to it.

Stage four, the money moves

Here is the part nobody publishes. When a refund of any size goes through, the money is split like this.

• The buyer gets the refund amount plus the proportional sales tax. Always. Tax is never kept on refunded money.
• Helm returns its commission on the refunded portion, less an admin fee.
• The admin fee is 20% of the commission, capped at 5 dollars, and it is charged once per order, on the first refund only. Later partial refunds on the same order carry no admin fee at all.
• The card processing fee is not returned, because the card network does not return it to Helm either. It is retained on the first refund only.
• You are debited your share of the net, plus that retained processing fee, plus the admin fee.

A worked refund

Take the 40 dollar hoodie from track 5. The buyer paid 49 dollars 22, your net was 41 dollars 97, the commission was 2 dollars 40 and processing was 1 dollar 63. Now the whole order is refunded.

Line	Amount
The buyer receives, including tax	49 dollars 22
Helm's admin fee, 20% of 2 dollars 40	48 cents
Commission Helm returns	1 dollar 92
Processing Helm retains	1 dollar 63
Debited from you	44 dollars 08

So a fully refunded 46 dollar order costs you 2 dollars 11 more than never having made the sale: the card fee that nobody gets back, and the admin fee. Helm gave up 1 dollar 92 of the 2 dollars 40 it earned.

Partial refunds

Partials are allocated cumulatively rather than each one being rounded on its own. The practical effect is that a run of partial refunds that adds up to the whole order returns exactly the whole order, with no cent left stranded by rounding. You can refund 17 dollars, then 12, then the rest, and the arithmetic closes.

A refund can never exceed the order's pre-tax total. Tax is not part of the refundable base because tax is handled separately and returned proportionally on top.

What to actually do when a claim lands

1. Read what they said before you decide what happened. Most claims are one specific complaint, not a general attack.
2. Answer inside the window. Silence is the one response that never helps you.
3. Attach the evidence you already have. The listing photos, the packing photo, the tracking record.
4. If they are right, refund fast. A quick refund on a genuine fault costs you the card fee and buys you a review that says you sorted it out.