Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and Honest Phones LLC, a Iowa limited liability company (“Honest Phones”, “we”, “us”). They cover your access to and use of the Honest Phones website and services (the “Service”). Our Privacy Policy, Prohibited & Restricted Items Policy, Returns & Refunds Policy and Copyright / DMCA Policy are part of these Terms by reference.

By creating an account, listing a device, placing a bid, placing an order, or otherwise using the Service, you accept these Terms. When you create an account you are asked to affirmatively agree to them; we record the version you accepted and when. If we materially change these Terms we will ask you to accept the new version before you list, bid or buy again. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Section 15 contains a binding arbitration agreement and a waiver of class actions and jury trials. It affects how disputes between you and us are resolved, and you may opt out of arbitration within 30 days. Please read it.

• You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract. The Service is intended for repair shops, refurbishers, resellers and other businesses and individuals dealing in mobile devices.
• You are responsible for everything that happens under your account and for keeping your credentials secure. Notify us immediately of any unauthorized use. One person or business, one account, unless we agree otherwise in writing.
• The information you give us must be accurate and kept current. We may refuse, suspend, or terminate an account, and remove any listing, at our discretion — including where we reasonably suspect fraud, misrepresentation, or a violation of these Terms.

Honest Phones is a venue that lets third-party sellers list devices and buyers purchase them, with payment held in escrow until the buyer accepts. We are not a party to the sale between a buyer and a seller.

• We do not own, take title to, inspect in person, store, ship, or manufacture the devices listed. The seller is the seller of record.
• We do not operate a wallet and you have no stored balance with us. Card payments, the escrow hold, transfers and refunds are processed and custodied by Stripe, our payment processor, under Stripe’s terms. You may be required to accept Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement to transact.
• We provide tools — structured condition disclosure, an IMEI lost/stolen and blacklist screen (with a fuller carrier/GSMA check on higher-value devices), escrow, and a dispute process. The screen is a strong signal, not a guarantee: a “clean” result means the device was not found on the checked lists at the time of the check. A device’s actual condition, legality, and description remain the seller’s responsibility, and the decision to buy is the buyer’s.
• We do not guarantee that any listing will sell, that any device will be available, or that a listing will appear in any particular position in search or browse results.

What “escrow” means here. We use “escrow,” “held in escrow,” and similar words descriptively, to mean that a buyer’s payment is held by our payment processor and is not released to the seller until the conditions in these Terms are met. Using those words does not mean Honest Phones takes or holds custody of your money, maintains a trust account or a licensed escrow account, or acts as an escrow agent, bank, or money transmitter. The handling, holding, and movement of funds are performed by Stripe under Stripe’s own agreements and regulatory status, not ours.

These apply when you list or sell a device. They are in addition to the general terms above.

Approval and payouts. You must be an approved seller and complete Stripe Connect onboarding (which may include identity verification) before listing. Payouts are made to your connected Stripe account after the buyer accepts or the inspection window lapses, subject to any payout hold we apply to newer sellers. If your connected account cannot receive transfers, your payout waits until you resolve that with Stripe.

Accurate, structured disclosure is binding. Condition is recorded as structured fields, not prose, and the displayed grade is derived from those fields. You warrant that every disclosed field is true and complete to the best of your knowledge at the time of listing. Deliberately understating damage, faults, locks, or water exposure — or entering a grade the fields do not support — is a material breach and grounds for removal, dispute resolution against you, suspension, reversal of payment, and liability for resulting losses.

Ownership and legality. For every device you list, you represent and warrant that:

• you own it or are authorized to sell it, and it is not stolen, lost, fraudulently obtained, or subject to any lien, security interest, unpaid financing or installment balance, investigation, or third-party claim;
• its IMEI/serial is genuine and unaltered, and you will not attempt to list, or circumvent our screening for, a blacklisted device;
• it is genuine (not counterfeit) and any non-original parts are disclosed; carrier lock and activation lock (iCloud/Google) status are disclosed truthfully;
• you have removed all personal data and disabled activation locks where you represent the device as ready to use, and the sale complies with all laws that apply to you and to the device.

Shipping. You — not Honest Phones — ship the device. Tracking is required on every order; signature confirmation is required above the threshold shown at checkout. You must mark the order shipped with tracking within 3 business days of payment; if you do not, the order is automatically cancelled, the buyer is refunded in full, and the listing is freed. Ship to the address provided, package appropriately, and do not ship a device that differs from what was disclosed. We make no delivery-time promise beyond that deadline, because sellers ship, not us.

Chargebacks and amounts you owe us. If a buyer reverses a payment through their bank or card issuer after you have been paid, or if a payment to you is later found to have been made in error or obtained by fraud or misrepresentation, you are responsible for the amount. We may recover it by deducting it from your current or future payouts, by setting it off against any amount we owe you, or by billing you directly, and you authorize us and Stripe to do so. We may also place a hold on payouts while a chargeback or an investigation is open.

No off-platform circumvention. You may not use the Service to divert a transaction off-platform to avoid fees, escrow, or disclosure, and you may not solicit buyers to do so.

These apply when you place an order.

• Payment and escrow. At checkout you pay the item price plus the buyer-side fee and payment processing, each shown as a separate line. Your payment is held in escrow and is not released to the seller while the device is in transit.
• Shipping protection. If the seller does not mark the order shipped within 3 business days of your payment, your payment is automatically refunded in full. If a device never arrives, open a “not received” dispute before the window closes.
• Inspection window. Once you confirm delivery you have 72 hours to check the device against its disclosure and either accept it or open a dispute. If you do neither, the order auto-accepts and the seller is paid. If a seller ships but you never confirm delivery, we record delivery a set number of days after shipment and you get a longer window — 7 days — because you may not have the device in hand yet. You keep the dispute option throughout either window.
• Sold as described, not as new. Devices are used and are frequently damaged, locked, or parts-only. You are buying the device as-is against its structured disclosure — that disclosure, not any manufacturer warranty, is the specification. Unless a seller expressly states otherwise in writing, devices are sold without any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, to the extent such a disclaimer is permitted by the law that applies to that sale. No Honest Phones warranty applies. You are responsible for confirming a device suits your purpose (for example, an activation-locked device is sold for parts) and for legal use in your jurisdiction.
• No buyer’s-remorse returns. The inspection window and dispute process are the remedy for a device that does not match its disclosure. They are not a trial period. See the Returns & Refunds Policy.
• Good-faith disputes. Open a dispute only for a genuine, described discrepancy, with evidence. Abusing the dispute or inspection process — including to obtain a device for free — is a breach of these Terms.

Some listings are sold by auction. Auctions exist here because the value of a damaged device is genuinely uncertain, and they run on these rules.

• A bid is a binding offer to buy. When you place a bid you commit to purchasing the device at that price if you win. Bids cannot be retracted. Place them deliberately.
• Minimum increments. Each bid must beat the current high bid by at least the increment shown, which is tiered by price. The first bid must meet the seller’s starting bid.
• Reserve prices. A seller may set a hidden reserve. If bidding ends below it, the auction closes without a sale and no one is obliged to anything. Meeting or exceeding the reserve completes the sale to the high bidder.
• Paying for a win. When you win, an order is created and you must pay within 3 days. If you do not, the order is cancelled, the device is freed for relisting, and repeated non-payment is grounds for suspension.
• No shill bidding or manipulation. You may not bid on your own listing, or arrange for anyone else to bid on it, to inflate the price or trigger a reserve. Sellers may not use a second account for this purpose. This is fraud, and it is grounds for immediate termination and forfeiture of proceeds.
• Ending and cancellation. Auctions close at the stated end time. We may cancel an auction or void a bid where a listing violates these Terms, where a device fails our screening, or where a technical fault produced an obviously erroneous bid.
• After a win, escrow, shipping, the inspection window and disputes work exactly as they do for a fixed-price sale.

• Buyer fee: 3% of the item price, with a minimum of $0.75. Seller fee: 3% of the item price, with a minimum of $0.75. The minimums only ever apply where the percentage would fall below them — on an item over roughly $25 they never engage — so the combined fee is never less than $1.50 and never more than 6% above that point.
• Payment processing is passed through to the buyer as a separate line at checkout rather than absorbed. The exact amount is shown before you pay.
• Changes. We may change our fees. A change takes effect only for transactions started after we publish it, and we will give notice through the Service or by email before it applies.
• Taxes. Sellers are responsible for determining, collecting where required, and remitting their own taxes on their sales, and for their own income-tax reporting. Where we are required to act as a marketplace facilitator for sales tax in a jurisdiction, we will collect and remit that tax and say so at checkout. Stripe may issue you a Form 1099-K where thresholds are met; that is between you and Stripe.

• Payments, the escrow hold, transfers to sellers, and refunds are handled by Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card number.
• Full refunds. Where an order is refunded in full — because the seller missed the ship deadline, or a dispute is resolved in the buyer’s favour — the buyer is refunded everything they paid, including the buyer-side fee and the processing line, to the original payment method.
• Split resolutions. Where a dispute is resolved as a split, the agreed amount is refunded to the buyer out of the seller’s share, and platform fees are retained.
• Initiating a bank or card chargeback instead of using the dispute process, on a transaction you are not entitled to reverse, is a breach of these Terms and may result in suspension and recovery of amounts owed. Where you have a genuine claim, the dispute process is faster and does not put your account at risk.

When a buyer and seller disagree about whether a device matched its disclosure, the dispute runs through our process: the buyer opens it with a reason and evidence, the seller has an opportunity to respond, and if it is not resolved between them we make a resolution decision — refund the buyer, release to the seller, or split.

The governing principle: a seller who accurately completed the structured disclosure is protected; a seller who omitted or misstated a disclosed field is not. Our resolution is a good-faith administrative decision about the release of escrowed funds under these Terms. It is not a court judgment, we are not acting as an arbitrator or adjudicator between you, and it does not limit any legal rights either party has against the other outside the platform.

Returns and return shipping. A resolution in the buyer’s favour on a device that arrived may require the buyer to return the device before the refund is released. Because a required return means the device was not as the seller disclosed, the seller bears return shipping and provides the return label at their own cost. The buyer must ship the device back — the same device, complete and in the condition received — with tracking, within the window shown; a buyer who does not return it in time forfeits the return and escrow releases to the seller. Full mechanics are in the Returns & Refunds Policy.

Release between users. Because the sale is between the buyer and the seller and Honest Phones is only the venue, you release Honest Phones and its officers, members, employees and agents from any claim, demand, or damages of every kind — known or unknown, suspected or unsuspected, disclosed or undisclosed — arising out of or in any way connected with a dispute, transaction, or interaction with another user, including the condition, legality, or delivery of a device and anything a buyer or seller does or fails to do. Our role is limited to administering escrow and the dispute process as described here.

If you are a California resident, you expressly waive California Civil Code §1542, which says: “A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release, and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.” If the law of your home state gives you a similar protection, you waive it to the same extent. This release does not waive any right that cannot lawfully be waived.

You must comply with our Prohibited & Restricted Items Policy, which is part of these Terms. In addition, you may not use the Service to break the law, infringe others’ rights, transmit malware, scrape or overload the Service, evade our fraud and IMEI controls, create listings you cannot fulfil, manipulate ratings or bids, or harass another user. We screen IMEIs against a blacklist before publishing; that screen is a risk control, not a guarantee of a device’s legal status or provenance.

• You keep ownership of the photos, text, and other content you submit (“User Content”). You grant Honest Phones a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, display, reproduce, and distribute it for operating, marketing, and improving the Service. You represent you have the rights to grant this and that your User Content is accurate and lawful. The license survives for content attached to a completed transaction, since we must retain those records.
• The Service itself — software, design, the grading system, logos and marks — is owned by Honest Phones or its licensors and may not be copied or used except as the Service allows.
• If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, our Copyright / DMCA Policy explains how to send a takedown notice and how to counter-notify.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant any device, any seller’s or buyer’s conduct, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Because devices are sold by third parties, Honest Phones does not warrant the condition, legality, provenance, or functionality of any device, and the structured disclosure is the seller’s representation, not ours.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Honest Phones and its officers, members, employees and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or relating to the Service or a transaction, even if advised of the possibility.

Our total liability to you for all claims relating to the Service or a given transaction will not exceed the greater of (a) the total fees Honest Phones earned from you on the transaction giving rise to the claim, or (b) US $100. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations; where that is the case, this section applies to the maximum extent allowed.

You will indemnify and hold harmless Honest Phones and its officers, members, employees and agents from any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your use of the Service, your User Content, a device you list or sell, your violation of these Terms or of any law, or your infringement of any third party’s rights.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Iowa, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Step one — talk to us first. Before either of us starts an arbitration or a lawsuit, the complaining party must send a written description of the claim and the relief sought — to contact@honestphones.com and the notice address in section 23 if you are the one claiming, or to your account email if we are. We each agree to try in good faith to resolve it for 60 days from that notice. This step is a precondition to filing, and it pauses any limitation period.

Step two — binding individual arbitration. If we cannot resolve it informally, any dispute between you and Honest Phones relating to the Service or these Terms will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect (available at https://www.adr.org), before a single arbitrator. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section. The arbitration will be held in Polk County, Iowa, or by telephone, video, or documents-only submission at your election. Payment of filing and arbitrator fees is governed by the AAA rules, including their provisions allocating most of those costs to the business in consumer cases; if the arbitrator finds your claim non-frivolous, we will not seek our attorneys’ fees from you. The arbitrator may award any relief a court could award to you individually, and the award may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Carve-outs. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead, and either party may ask a court for injunctive relief to stop misuse of the Service or infringement of intellectual property. Nothing here prevents you from reporting a matter to a government agency.

Class and jury waiver. You and Honest Phones waive any right to a jury trial and any right to bring or participate in a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. The arbitrator may not preside over any form of representative proceeding. If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or a request for public injunctive relief, that claim alone is severed and heard in a court of competent jurisdiction in Polk County, Iowa, while every other claim stays in arbitration.

Coordinated filings. If 25 or more similar claims are filed against us by or with the coordination of the same counsel, the claims will be administered in staged batches of no more than 50, each before one arbitrator, with the limitation period tolled for claims awaiting their batch. This keeps the process usable for everyone rather than turning filing fees into the remedy.

Your right to opt out of arbitration — 30 days. You may reject this arbitration agreement by emailing contact@honestphones.com with the subject “Arbitration Opt-Out”, stating your name and the email on your account, within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out costs you nothing, affects nothing else in these Terms, and we will not treat it as a reason to close your account. If you opt out, disputes go to the courts of Polk County, Iowa, and the jury and class waivers above still apply to the extent the law allows.

Nothing in this section waives a right that cannot lawfully be waived. Where mandatory consumer-protection law of your home jurisdiction gives you a non-waivable forum or remedy, that law controls to that extent.

By using the Service you consent to receive communications from us electronically — on the Service and by email — and you agree that electronic agreements, notices, disclosures, and other records satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing. Your affirmative acceptance of these Terms (which we record with its version and a timestamp) is your electronic signature to them. You may withdraw consent to electronic communications only by closing your account, since the Service cannot be operated on paper. Transactional messages about your orders are part of the Service and are not marketing.

The Service depends on third parties — notably Stripe for payments, escrow, payouts, and identity verification, and our IMEI-screening, email and infrastructure providers. Your use of those features is also subject to the third party’s own terms (for example, Stripe’s Services Agreement and Connected Account Agreement), and we are not responsible for a third party’s acts, omissions, or availability. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience and are not endorsements.

Ratings and reviews must reflect a genuine transaction and your honest experience. Do not post false, manipulated, retaliatory, or incentivized reviews, and do not review your own listings. We may remove content that violates these Terms. Any suggestions or feedback you give us about the Service may be used without obligation or compensation to you.

You represent that you are not located in, or a resident of, a country or region subject to comprehensive sanctions, and that you are not on any government restricted-party list, and you agree to comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions laws in your use of the Service.

You may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without notice, for a violation of these Terms or to protect the Service, buyers, sellers, or third parties. Termination does not cancel orders already in escrow: those run to completion, or are refunded, under these Terms. Obligations that by their nature should survive — including outstanding payments, amounts you owe us, disclosures, disputes, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and section 15 — survive termination.

We may update these Terms. When we make a material change we will update the version and effective date and ask you to accept the new version before you next list, bid or buy. We keep a record of each version you accepted and when. Changes are not retroactive: a dispute about a completed order is governed by the version in force when the order was placed.

• These Terms, with the Privacy Policy, Prohibited Items Policy, Returns & Refunds Policy and Copyright / DMCA Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Honest Phones about the Service and supersede any prior agreement about it.
• If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• You and Honest Phones are independent contractors. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship, and there are no third-party beneficiaries.
• We give you legal notices through the Service or by email to the address on your account; you send us notices to the address in section 23. It is your responsibility to keep your email current.
• We are not liable for failures or delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

Questions about these Terms: contact@honestphones.com. Formal legal notice must be sent in writing to:

Copyright notifications go to our designated agent under the Copyright / DMCA Policy instead.