The refund claim window

This lesson prepares you to: State how long a buyer has to open a claim and what starts the clock.

The window

A buyer has 30 days from delivery to open a claim.

Not thirty days from the order. Thirty days from the moment the carrier recorded that the parcel arrived. A parcel that takes nine days in transit does not eat nine days of the buyer's window, and it does not extend your exposure either, because the clock could not start until the thing existed at the buyer's address.

The fallback, when nothing was delivered

If an order was never recorded as delivered, the window runs 30 days from the day the buyer paid instead. This is the case that matters most for a parcel that vanishes: the buyer is not locked out by the absence of the very delivery they are complaining about.

The rule is delivery first, purchase only as the fallback. If a delivery exists, the delivery date is the one that counts, full stop.

Why we changed this

Helm used to close the window at the earlier of thirty days from purchase or fourteen days from delivery, which produced a bad outcome that was nobody's fault. A parcel that took twenty days in transit gave the buyer ten days. A parcel that took thirty gave them nothing. The buyer was punished for a delay they did not cause and could not see.

One window, anchored to delivery, is the version that behaves the same way whether the carrier was fast or slow.

What this costs you as a seller, honestly

A longer window means a longer period where an order can still turn into a refund. We are not going to pretend otherwise. Two things soften it:

• Your money still releases on your tier's hold, not on the claim window. A standard tier seller is paid seven days after delivery even though the buyer has thirty. The claim window is not a hold.
• The window is a deadline, not a queue. It exists so that the buyer who was travelling, or ill, or who opened the box in week three is not shut out by the calendar.

What the buyer is covered for

The window is only the timing. It does not make everything refundable. A claim has to be one of these:

• The item never arrived, or arrived clearly damaged.
• The item is significantly different from the listing.
• The item is the wrong one, or is missing pieces.

A change of mind is not on that list. It can still end in a return, but it is a different thing with a different answer on who pays, which is lesson 6.3.