Terms of Service

Philmarket is a marketplace for philatelic items (stamps, covers and related material). The service is provided by Philmarket Oy (business ID 3636423-6), Finland. You accept these terms when you create your account. To use the service you need an up-to-date web browser with JavaScript and cookies enabled, and an email address.

Working day. In these terms, a working day means Monday to Friday, except public holidays in Finland (New Year's Day, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, May Day, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, Midsummer Day, All Saints' Day, Independence Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and Midsummer Eve and Christmas Eve, unless a provision says otherwise.

You must be at least 18 years old to use the service.

You are responsible for keeping the information in your account correct and up to date.

You may not share your login credentials with others.

We reserve the right to suspend accounts that abuse the service.

If your account has been closed under §10(k), you cannot publish listings from a new seller account until you have provided the missing information. The bar ends in any event six years after the closure. To prevent such a registration we compare new seller accounts against the information about you that we and our payment provider already hold.

You may hold one account with us as a private individual and one as a trader, but not several accounts in the same capacity. If you need another arrangement, ask us for an exception. If you discover that you hold more than one account in the same capacity, you can tell us and ask to have it put right.

If the information in your account matches an account we have closed under §10, we may pause trading on your account while a person reviews the matter. The pause lasts at most 5 working days and ends by itself when that time has run. During the pause you cannot enter into new commitments, but you can complete the commitments you already have.

The contract of sale is concluded directly between the seller and the buyer. Philmarket provides the platform and is not a party to the contract. Philmarket has no authority to conclude, negotiate, amend or terminate the contract on the seller's behalf, and on the seller's behalf sends only the messages set out in §5 (§14). What makes that contract binding, and what a bid commits you to, is set out in the model terms of sale — the seller adopts them by publishing the listing, the buyer by bidding, buying, making an offer or accepting a purchase request or a targeted offer.

This section describes only when a sale is treated as concluded on Philmarket:

Auction. When the auction closes and the highest bid is at or above any reserve price. If the highest bid is below the reserve the sale does not proceed, and the seller may instead send that bidder a purchase request (§4).

Fixed price. When the buyer completes the buy-now step.

Offer. When the seller accepts the buyer's offer.

Purchase request. When the buyer accepts a request the seller sent after an auction that did not meet its reserve.

Offer to another bidder. When a bidder accepts an offer the seller sent after the sale to the winner did not go ahead (§4).

Targeted offer. When a buyer accepts a targeted offer the seller sent to buyers who are watching the listing or have it in their basket. Where there is only one item, the sale is concluded with whoever accepts first.

Basket. When the buyer orders the lines they have chosen from one seller in their basket. The buyer is then bound to the prices of the items, and the seller adds shipping from their published shipping options. Shipping is never more than if the items had been bought separately.

Before you are bound. Before a bid is placed it is shown to you to check, and you can cancel. As the highest bidder you can lower your maximum bid, but not below the current price. In the basket you can remove lines before you order. Our confirmation that a bid or an order has been received is not in itself a contract. The contract is concluded at the moment stated above. The contract is stored: you find it in the order confirmation and under your orders, together with the version of the model terms of sale it was concluded on. Contracts can be concluded in Swedish, English, Danish, Finnish, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Polish. Philmarket does not follow any code of conduct.

From that moment the platform treats the item as sold: the seller is expected to deliver (§6) and the buyer to pay (§7), and §10 sets out what we may do if either does not. A consumer's statutory right of withdrawal is separate and applies only where §7 says it does.

There is an amount limit. Unless we have granted an exception for the listing, no item may be sold for more than €9,900, and between the same buyer and the same seller no more than €9,900 may be traded over a rolling twelve-month period. The limit is measured on the whole amount the buyer pays — the item and the shipping — and a purchase of exactly €9,900 fits within it. Purchases that were cancelled or refunded do not count towards it.

An exception is requested while the listing is a draft. If you need to sell something more expensive, request an exception before you publish the listing. Exceptions are granted for items that clearly fall outside the EU rules on cultural goods, which in practice requires the item to be less than 100 years old, and you state the item’s age and what you base that on. We answer within three days. If the third day falls on a weekend or a public holiday, we answer on the next working day. If we grant the exception, neither limit applies to that purchase — neither the item’s price nor the buyer’s twelve-month total with you. If we refuse it, the limit applies and the item may be sold up to it.

A bid is an offer. You bid by entering the most you are willing to pay. We then bid on your behalf, using the smallest step needed to keep you as the highest bidder, and never more than your maximum. Your maximum is not shown to the seller or to other bidders, except when the seller offers the item to the next bidder after the sale to the winner did not go ahead.

Towards Philmarket, you may not take a bid back — except when the seller has corrected the listing after your bid. If the seller adds a correction after you have bid, you may withdraw that bid within 24 hours of the correction (model terms of sale §4). While you are the highest bidder you may lower your maximum, but never below the current price, and not once another bidder has overtaken you. §10 sets out what we may do if you break this. Whether the bid also binds you towards the seller is a question for the contract of sale, and the model terms of sale answer it (§3).

Bid steps. The minimum next bid rises with the current price, from €0.15 below €2 to €25 from €1,000 upwards. The step that applies is shown before you confirm.

Bids up to the limit. You can bid up to the highest amount that fits within the limit in §3, shipping included. A bid that would take the price above the limit cannot be placed. Where we have granted an exception for the listing, no such limit applies to the bids.

The last two minutes. If a bid is placed in the final 2 minutes, the auction is extended by 2 minutes so that others can respond. This happens at most 5 times per auction.

Reserve price. A seller may set a reserve. Whether a listing has one, and whether it has been met, is shown; the amount is not. No sale arises below the reserve. After an auction that did not meet its reserve, the seller may offer the item to the highest bidder at a price between that bid and the reserve, and the offer expires after seven days.

When the sale to the winner does not go ahead. The sale to the winner does not go ahead when the winner did not pay and the order was cancelled, or when the winner withdrew from the purchase under their right of withdrawal. Only in those two cases may the seller offer the item to the bidder with the next highest bid, at the maximum that bidder entered, and if they decline, to the one after. It goes no further than that. The offer can be sent only once the seller has the item and can deliver it: when the purchase has been withdrawn from, the refund has been made and the seller has confirmed that the return has arrived, or when the item was never sent. It is a new offer: your earlier bid does not bind you to it, and you are free to accept it or not. Before you accept, you are told what you are committing to. The offer expires after four days.

Duration and relisting. Auctions run for between 1 and 14 days. An unsold auction may be relisted automatically at most 2 times.

You may not bid on your own listing, nor arrange for anyone else to bid in order to raise the price or create an appearance of demand. This applies across every account you control. See §9.

The seller warrants that the items are owned and may be sold freely.

Descriptions, condition assessments and images must be accurate and not misleading.

Where the free-text description and the listing's structured fields disagree, the structured fields are what was agreed. They carry the same value in every language and are shown to each buyer in their own, while free text reaches most buyers only through machine translation. This never operates against the buyer: where the free text says something *less* favourable to the seller — a fault the fields do not record, or a narrower claim — that statement stands, and the seller may not rely on this paragraph to withdraw it.

Forgeries, reference material and repaired or otherwise manipulated items may be sold, but only if the seller discloses this. The disclosure is made through the integrity fields on the listing, which Philmarket displays to buyers in their own language; the seller is responsible for ticking what applies. For forgeries and reference material the disclosure is also made in the listing title. Such material must be permanently marked, for example with ›FALSCH‹, ›FAUX‹, ›FORGERY‹ or ›FAKSIMILE‹, and the listing must show an image of the back. Forgeries and imitations of stamps that are still valid for postage in any country may not be sold, nor may imitations that can be confused with German stamps bearing the inscription ›Deutschland‹. Offering forged or imitated material as genuine, or concealing that an item is repaired or manipulated, is prohibited.

Listing stolen goods or copyright-protected material without permission is prohibited.

Your images and text — what we may do with them. You keep the copyright in everything you upload. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free right to use the images and text you publish in a listing, and only to (1) show the listing on Philmarket and in the feeds and notifications the service builds on it, (2) market Philmarket — including in advertisements with search engines and social networks, which requires that we may pass the image on to that advertising service for that purpose alone, and (3) improve and evaluate our tools, including the automated condition assessment — which means the image is processed by the service provider that performs the assessment on our behalf.

The right lasts while the listing is up and thereafter for as long as those purposes require. If you remove the listing or close your account, the right under (1) and (2) ends, but a campaign that has already started may run its course, for at most 90 days. Using a particular item in marketing for longer requires a separate agreement with you. How long we keep a listing's images and text after a sale is set out in the privacy policy.

We do not use images in marketing of the platform in which a person can be identified, unless the person is part of the collectible's own motif — and otherwise only with specific consent.

You confirm that you have the right to what you upload. If an image is someone else's — an auction house, a catalogue, an expert certificate — you need their permission before you publish it.

The seller is responsible for shipping and packaging after a completed sale.

At registration the seller declares whether they sell as a trader or a private individual. This is shown to buyers and determines which consumer rights (e.g. the right of withdrawal) apply to the purchase. The declaration must be accurate. If your account is registered for a company, or your VAT number has been confirmed in the EU VAT register (VIES), you do not change the declaration to private individual yourself. You ask for the change, and we review it and decide within 14 days of your request being registered. Until we have decided, the declaration remains that of a trader. The decision is made by a person at Philmarket, and you receive it with the reasons by e-mail. You may ask for a refusal to be reviewed in the same way as under §10. If you sell as a private individual and make at least 30 sales, or sell for more than €2,000, in a calendar year, we ask you at most once a year how you sell. Your answer does not change your status by itself. The number of sales never decides on its own whether you are a trader.

If you sell as a trader, you provide a business name, a geographic address, a telephone number and a contact e-mail address. These are details the law requires you to give the buyer before the purchase, and we publish them on your listing so the buyer has them in time. If any of them is missing, your listings are paused under §10 (r). If you sell as a private individual, no address is published.

What Philmarket answers for towards you. Philmarket is responsible for the order button and the information the platform shows immediately before an order. If a buyer does not have to pay because these do not meet the law, Philmarket compensates you for the purchase price. If the information on the right of withdrawal that Philmarket has worded and shown is defective, Philmarket indemnifies you against the consequences, including the withdrawal period being extended (Article 10 of Directive 2011/83/EU), refunds and returns that follow from it, and your being unable to claim compensation for diminished value.

What Philmarket charges the seller. The only fee is the account fee for the seller's tier. Reserve prices and promotion are optional purchases the seller adds. The optional purchases – reserve price credits, a sponsored placement and the storefront design as a separate add-on – can be bought only while you have the right to sell (§5 p. 16), your listings are not paused because you have given a country outside the EU (§10 (o)) and our payment provider has your address. Philmarket takes no share of the sale proceeds. The payment service's fees on the seller's own sales are borne by the seller and are deducted from the seller's own connected account. These fees differ from one payment method to another. We may offer campaigns and individually agreed discounts on the fees; their conditions and how long they apply are stated in the offer, and when a discount ends the regular fee for your tier applies.

The free month. A new seller with a verified phone number gets the first month of a monthly subscription free, once. You are not a new seller if you hold, or have held, another seller account with us that has had a subscription, whether as a private seller or as a trader. We check that you are a new seller (see the privacy policy). If it turns out before you take out the subscription that you are not a new seller, you are offered the subscription without the free month. If it turns out once the subscription has started, you may choose to pay for the period, to end the subscription at no cost, or to ask for a person to review the matter; while the review is under way the time limit stands still. If you choose nothing within seven days, the subscription ends at no cost, and you can take out a new one against payment at any time. That check is made within seven days of the subscription starting; after that the free month stands. Where the free month is refused before you take out the subscription, you can also ask for a person to review the decision.

Selling requires an active subscription. You can publish listings and receive purchases for as long as you have an active subscription, or a right to sell that we have given you and not withdrawn. If the subscription ends — because you cancelled it, withdrew from it or ended a renewed period early, or because the payment did not go through — your listings are paused: they are hidden and cannot be bought, and offers and targeted offers on them cannot be accepted while they are paused. Purchase requests you have sent that have not yet been accepted are withdrawn. An auction with a bid still standing is not paused but ends as usual. Sales already concluded are completed. Paid orders are paid out under §8, and what you already owe — a delivery, a complaint, a chargeback or a dispute — remains. If you take out a new subscription within 90 days, the listings are shown again, and an auction continues with the time it had left when it was paused. After 90 days, listings that are still paused are taken down, and they do not then come back by themselves if you later take out a new subscription. The storefront design as a separate add-on follows the subscription. If you take out the add-on, it starts the same day. It is charged every month on the day of the month on which the subscription renews, also if you have an annual subscription, and on the last day of a shorter month. The first charge is taken on the day you take out the add-on and covers only the days until the next such day. If the amount is less than €0.50, we do not charge for those days. If you have a right to sell that we have given you without a subscription, the add-on runs in whole months from the day you take it out. If you cancel the subscription, the add-on is cancelled to the same day. If your right to sell ends, the add-on is not renewed: it runs to the end of the period you have already paid for and ends then. It only comes back by itself if you get the right back before that period has run out. If the subscription rests under §10 (o), the add-on rests with it, without being charged. If you withdraw from the subscription under your right of withdrawal (§7), the add-on is withdrawn with it, and we refund both in proportion to the time remaining. If a payment for the add-on does not go through, including when we try again, the add-on ends. It does not come back by itself, but you can take it out again, and the subscription is not affected. Your account remains. How and when we tell you is set out in §10(l).

You sell from the EU. To sell with us you must live in or, if you sell as a trader, be established in a member state of the EU, and ship what you sell from such a state. This means the EU VAT area; the Åland Islands, the Canary Islands and other territories outside it do not count. If you move, you state your new country on your account before you sell anything more. Before you publish a listing or buy an optional purchase, our payment provider must have your address. If it does not, you cannot publish new listings or buy optional purchases until it does; listings already published are not affected. What happens when you no longer meet this requirement is set out in §10(o).

The seller is solely responsible for calculating, declaring and paying any tax (e.g. VAT and income tax) attributable to the sale, as well as any customs and import duties. Philmarket acts as a marketplace operator and does not assume this responsibility on the seller's behalf — no part of the sale proceeds is Philmarket's turnover. Philmarket is responsible for, and accounts for, the VAT on what Philmarket itself invoices the seller: the account fee and the optional purchases the seller makes. Where law requires Philmarket to report a seller's income data to a tax authority (e.g. DAC7), this is a separate undertaking and does not relieve the seller of their own tax responsibility.

The seller must, at our request, provide the information Finnish law requires us to collect for reporting to the Finnish Tax Administration, and keep it up to date. If it is not provided, the steps in §10(k) apply: two reminders, a stop on new sales and, finally, closure of the account for trading and a bar on registering a new seller account. The check before your first listing. Before your first listing is published, we also compare your names with the EU sanctions lists and the register of freezing decisions, and if one of them resembles someone on the lists, we review the match first (§8). Until that is done, the listing cannot be published.

The seller issues their own invoices. You are responsible for issuing an invoice and a credit note where the law requires one, and for the VAT on your sale, for example the choice of the standard rate, the margin scheme or an exemption from VAT. Philmarket does not issue invoices or credit notes in your name. Philmarket sends the buyer the order confirmation and makes a purchase confirmation with the details of the sale available on the order page on the seller's behalf, and you ask it to do so by listing something for sale. What else we do on the seller's behalf, with the payment and with the information to the buyer, is set out in §8 and §15. The purchase confirmation is not an invoice. You are responsible for the details you provide being correct. You must tell us without delay if your VAT number, your VAT status or your country of establishment changes. VAT you owe. If you sell as a trader and a tax authority makes a claim against Philmarket for VAT you owe on a sale, with any penalty and interest, you indemnify Philmarket. This does not apply where the claim arises because the purchase confirmation did not reproduce your details correctly.

Stamps and postcards listed with a start price of €200 or more must include a photo of both the front and the back before the listing can be published.

We publish how often you cancel or do not dispatch. Where you have concluded at least 20 orders in the last 12 months and more than 5% of them have been cancelled at your request or refunded because nothing was dispatched, that share is shown on your public profile as ›orders the seller cancelled or did not dispatch‹. Cancellations requested by the buyer are not counted, and the reason given is not taken into account. The profile also shows when the share is displayed: at 20 orders or more in 12 months and a share above 5%. You can always see your own share and how far you are from that point, and it does not affect where your listings appear.

The seller is responsible for keeping a listing within the limit in §3, unless we have granted an exception for it. If you need to sell an item above the limit, request an exception while the listing is a draft. We answer within three days. If the third day falls on a weekend or a public holiday, we answer on the next working day.

Temporarily reduced prices. You can temporarily reduce the price of your fixed-price listings, one at a time or across your whole catalogue at once. A reduction always has an end date, no earlier than the next working day and no more than one calendar month ahead; it ends at the end of that day, Finnish time, and the price then returns by itself. You can also remove the reduction earlier. Buyers see when the reduction started and when it ends. The price is shown as reduced, with the earlier price struck through, only if the listing has 30 days of price history and the new price is lower than the lowest price during those 30 days; otherwise only the new price is shown. A reduction across your whole catalogue applies to the listings that existed when it started. Each listing can have a reduced price for at most two months in total per calendar year, and a new reduction on the same listing can start no earlier than 30 days after the previous one ended. Reductions across your whole catalogue can run for at most three months in total per calendar year; a listing that would go beyond its own limits is then skipped. The limits apply to every seller, so that a reduced price with us is always a genuine, time-limited offer.

Material from 1933–1945. If a listing contains stamps, covers or other material from 1933–1945 bearing a Nazi symbol, you tick this in the listing and confirm that the symbol cannot be recognised in the listing's images (§9). The confirmation covers the images present when you give it; if you add or replace an image, you give it again. If the listing has an expert certificate, we show only who issued it and its number; we show the image of the certificate only to the buyer, once the payment has been received and for as long as the purchase stands. We carry out spot checks. If the symbol can be recognised, we take the listing back to a draft until it is hidden, and tell you why; a single take-down does not affect your account (§10 (q)).

The seller must dispatch. Once payment is secured — or, for an offline payment, once the seller has confirmed it — the seller must dispatch the item within 5 business days, unless the listing states a longer handling time. A trader may not state a handling time longer than 26 business days where the item is sent within the EEA, 21 business days where it is sent to the rest of Europe and 6 business days where it is sent to the rest of the world, so that the payout fits within the outer limit in §8. Dispatch must be recorded on the platform. Where the goods you buy from one seller reach €200 or more in total — item prices before any discount and excluding delivery, added together across your purchases and winning bids from that seller — a tracked service must be used and the tracking number provided. Below that amount, if you use a tracked service, the tracking number must be provided.

Statutory backstop. Where the seller is a trader and the buyer a consumer, delivery must in any event be made without undue delay and no later than 30 days from conclusion of the contract (Dir. 2011/83/EU Art. 18), unless the buyer and the seller have agreed a delivery date under §5 of the model terms of sale and it is stated in the order confirmation. If the seller does not deliver within that period, the buyer may set an additional reasonable period and, if that also passes, terminate the contract and receive a full refund.

If the seller does not dispatch. The buyer may report non-delivery once the dispatch deadline has passed. Where the payout to the seller has not yet been made, we cancel the sale and refund the buyer in full. Failure to deliver is a ground for restriction under §10. We do not decide who is at fault in the sale itself — we return the buyer's own money and record what happened.

An offline payment carries no such protection. We hold no funds and cannot refund you. See §8.

The buyer pays via Stripe within the time limit stated after a completed bid.

For purchases shipped from a country other than your own, customs, import or other authority fees may apply on delivery, in addition to the purchase price. Such fees are determined and collected by the destination country's authorities or the carrier, not by Philmarket, and the buyer is responsible for them.

Purchases from a trader: when the seller is a trader and the buyer is a consumer, the buyer has a 14-day right of withdrawal for distance contracts (Dir. 2011/83/EU). The right applies both to fixed-price sales and to online auctions — a pure online auction is not a "public auction" within the meaning of the law (Art. 2(13) and Recital 24), so the auction exemption does not apply. The right is exercised via the withdrawal function in the order (two steps) or with the model withdrawal form; the buyer receives a confirmation on a durable medium. If you buy as a business — with a business account, as a trader or with a VAT number — you have no statutory right of withdrawal.

Return postage when the seller bears the return. If, under the purchase, the seller bears the cost of sending the item back and the buyer withdraws, the seller chooses within two working days, counted in the seller's country, how the postage for that transaction is paid: (a) through the refund — the buyer sends the item, and the postage shown on the receipt is added to the buyer's refund, up to the delivery fee the buyer paid for the order. This route exists only where the amount fits within the refund, which it does when the buyer withdraws from part of an order but not when the whole order is withdrawn. If the postage costs more than that, the buyer claims the rest from the seller as set out below. (b) With a shipping label — the seller sends the buyer a shipping label no later than two working days after choosing. If the seller does not choose in time, (a) applies where it exists and (b) otherwise. If no label arrives in time, the buyer may send the item back themselves and claim the cost shown on the receipt from the seller. A label that arrives late counts as long as the buyer has not yet sent the item. When the buyer sends the item themselves, the seller decides, when choosing the route, whether the shipment must be tracked. If the seller has not decided, the buyer sends it tracked if the items sent back together cost at least €50, and otherwise an ordinary letter is enough. The buyer's 14-day period for sending the item back runs from the day the label arrived, or from the day the deadline for it passed. The seller pays the buyer's claim directly to the buyer, in the way the buyer has given, and marks it as paid, and the buyer confirms that the money has arrived. If the claim is still unpaid 14 days after the buyer made it, we take it up as a case, and it counts under §10 (s). The buyer's right to get back what was paid for the item and the delivery is not affected.

Purchases from a private individual: for purchases between private individuals (consumer to consumer) there is no statutory right of withdrawal. The seller's status is shown in the buyer's view before the purchase.

Voluntary returns from private sellers. A private seller may choose to accept returns. If they do, the listing says so before the purchase: how many days after the item is marked as sent you may ask for a return, and who pays the return postage. The promise is part of the purchase. If you ask in time and send the item back, you get the item's price back once the seller confirms it has arrived, or once you have shown that it was sent and the seller has not objected within two working days. Postage to you is not refunded. This is not a right of withdrawal; the seller stands behind their own promise.

Reserve-price credits. Sellers buy reserve credits to attach a reserve price to an auction beyond the number their tier includes. A credit is a right to a future use, so buying one performs nothing and there is no loss of the right at purchase. A private individual selling as such (consumer) has a 14-day right of withdrawal running from the purchase (Art. 9(2)(a)). If you withdraw within the period you pay only for the credits actually attached to an auction, at the price paid per credit; the rest is refunded no later than 14 days from the day we are informed (Art. 13(1)/14(3)). A credit that returns because its auction did not sell counts as unused. Sellers acting as traders have no right of withdrawal on such purchases.

Reserve-price credits do not expire. A reserve-price credit you have bought lasts until you use it, and it is not forfeited. You can hold at most 100 reserve-price credits at once; a purchase that would take your holding above 100 cannot be made, and the limit never takes away credits you already have. A credit that comes back because its auction did not sell counts as unused.

Nothing in this affects your right to withdraw from the purchase (above) or your right to a refund when these terms change (§17).

Philmarket's own services: when you buy a paid tier subscription or an add-on (e.g. the storefront) directly from Philmarket, a private individual (consumer) has a 14-day right of withdrawal. If you withdraw within the period after the service began at your request, you pay a proportionate amount for the time used and the rest is refunded as soon as possible, and in any case no later than 14 days from the day we are informed of your decision to withdraw (Art. 13(1)/14(3)); the subscription then ends. Traders have no right of withdrawal on such purchases. Creating an account is free and there is nothing to withdraw.

Ending a renewed period early. Separately from the statutory right above and from ordinary cancellation below, you may end a renewed subscription period within 14 calendar days of the renewal and get back the part you have not used, counted from the day you ask. Weekends and public holidays are included and do not extend the period — this is our own commitment, not a statutory deadline. It may be used once every twelve months per subscription type, and it is open to traders as well as consumers. For consumers the statutory right above governs a new subscription; this covers the renewals. Because it is a commitment we make rather than one the law imposes, we may change it for the future under §17, and towards business users with at least the notice the P2B Regulation requires.

Cancelling a subscription. Beyond the right of withdrawal above, you may cancel an ongoing subscription at any time; it then runs to the end of the period you have paid for, and no further charges are made afterwards. No refund is given for the period already paid. What happens to your listings once the subscription has ended is set out in §5.

Termination for good cause. If something serious has made it unreasonable for you to continue the contract to the end of the period — for example if the service does not work as we promised — you may terminate it for good cause and state the reason. We review the reason and tell you our decision within five working days. If we accept it, the contract ends from the time you gave, or from when your termination reached us, and you get back what you paid for the time after that. If we do not, the contract still ends at the end of the period you have paid for, and you receive a reasoned decision that you can take further under §16.

The payout to the seller is delayed and made under the rules in §8: after the buyer's waiting period or withdrawal period, but no later than 75 days from the payment, even if the withdrawal period has not then ended. The buyer's right of withdrawal is not affected by that.

The buyer must pay. For each listing the seller chooses how long the buyer has to pay: 3, 7 or 14 calendar days after the invoice is issued. Three days can only be chosen when card payment on Philmarket is the only way to pay. If the seller offers payment outside the platform, the period is at least 7 days. The payment period is shown in the confirmation before you bid or buy. If it ends on a day that is not a banking day in Finland, the end moves to the next banking day.

Reminders, additional period and cancellation. While the payment period runs we send a reminder about an unpaid invoice. If the invoice has not been paid when the payment period ends, you receive a notice with an additional period of 3 calendar days, and the order is cancelled only if the invoice is still unpaid when the additional period has ended. A payment that arrives after the cancellation is refunded to you automatically and in full. The seller may propose a longer payment period, to no later than 90 days after the invoice was issued. Such an extension applies only once the buyer has accepted it; if the buyer does not answer, the original period stands. The buyer may end an extension they have accepted at any time; the original period then applies again, and if it has already passed the additional period begins. A cancelled order releases the item and the seller may relist it.

Repeated non-payment. A cancellation counts for §10 (n) only if the payment period was at least 7 days and you received the reminder and the additional period. Three or more such cancellations within twelve months are a ground for restriction under §10 (n).

A limit on your purchases. Unless we have granted an exception for the listing, no item can be sold for more than €9,900, and within a twelve-month period you can buy for at most €9,900 from one and the same seller (§3). When you reach the limit the purchase cannot be completed. You can buy from another seller, or wait until the oldest purchases are more than twelve months old. A purchase for which we have granted an exception does not count towards the total.

Not to Russia. When you buy, you confirm that the item is not to be taken to or used in Russia.

A price shown in a currency other than the euro is indicative and converted at the European Central Bank's reference rate. The purchase is made and paid in euro.

Where a seller is not VAT-registered, a purchase confirmation is issued instead of an invoice. What is said here about the invoice then applies to the purchase confirmation.

Delayed payout: we wait before paying the money out to the seller. Payments are handled by the payment service Stripe and land in the seller's own connected account. This applies to every purchase paid that way, from a trader or from a private individual; the exception is offline payment (below). We do not pay them out to the seller immediately but wait as set out below, longer if a case is open, but no more than 75 days from the payment. If the buyer is entitled to a refund during that time, it is paid from the seller's funds. Philmarket does not hold the buyer's money and gives no guarantee. Your purchase and your rights are against the seller. The delayed payout is our own service and not a guarantee for the item.

No payout before the item is sent. Whoever the seller is, we pay nothing out until the seller has marked the item as sent or the buyer has confirmed on the order that it has arrived. If neither has happened seven days after the dispatch deadline in §6, the order is cancelled and the buyer gets the full amount back automatically, without having to report anything. This always happens before the outer limit of 75 days below. Where a card-network dispute is open, that dispute decides the refund instead. The buyer can also report that the item has not been sent as soon as the deadline has passed.

Purchases from a trader: where the buyer is a consumer, we delay the payout throughout the buyer's withdrawal period (14 days from receipt of the item; where receipt is not confirmed the period runs from a presumed receipt, and it can then extend beyond 28 days from payment). If the buyer confirms on the order that the item has arrived, the period runs from that day. The outer limit of 75 days from the payment applies in every case. The right of withdrawal and the right to claim for defects arise by law and apply against the seller regardless of the delayed payout. If the buyer withdraws within the period, the refund is paid from the seller's funds as set out below. Payout to the seller occurs only after the withdrawal period has expired.

Purchases from a private individual: The payout is delayed here too. Once the seller has marked the item as sent, we delay the payout until 14 days after the item was sent, with or without a tracking number. If the buyer confirms on the order that the item has arrived, we pay the seller straight away and the waiting period for the order ends, unless a case is open or the payout is delayed as set out below. Consumer protection rules, including the right of withdrawal, do not apply between private individuals. What we do then consists of our delaying the payout to the seller and of the rules in these terms that we apply automatically, for example that the buyer gets the full amount back if the seller has not sent the item within the period in §6 and the buyer reports it. We do not, however, decide disputes between buyer and seller, for example about the condition of the item. The same waiting period applies where the buyer buys as a business from a trader, since the right of withdrawal does not then apply.

Offline payment (below the amount limit, the seller is paid directly): no delayed payout. If the seller is a trader, the consumer's statutory rights (including the right of withdrawal) still apply — they are then settled directly with the seller.

The payment service's fees are borne by the seller. The payment service deducts its fees for the seller's sales from the seller's own connected account. The payment service does not refund its fee when a purchase is refunded, in whole or in part, for example when the buyer withdraws. The fee then remains your cost, and the buyer still gets the full amount back. Philmarket takes no share of the transaction value (§5).

Payout in your account's currency. If your connected account holds a currency other than the euro, for example because you live in Sweden or Denmark, we pay out in the account's currency. The payment service converts the amount when the buyer's payment arrives, at the payment service's rate on that day, and the payment service's fee for the conversion is deducted from your connected account in the same way as its other fees. If anything is refunded to the buyer, the buyer gets the amount back in euro, and it is deducted from your connected account in the account's currency at the rate on the day the refund is made. If the rate has changed since the payment, the amount deducted may therefore be larger or smaller than the amount you received.

If a dispute arises, we delay the payout — we do not hold your money. Your funds sit in your own connected account; what we control is when a payout is initiated, and that is what a delay affects. A delay is placed only on a buyer's complaint made within the complaint window, on an objectively established indication of fraud, where the seller's account has been suspended on ground (a), (b), (c), (f), (i) or (j) of §10, while we check whether you are the same person or company as someone on the EU sanctions lists or in the register of freezing decisions of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation; we complete the check within five working days of the match arising or of your providing the information we asked for, and if we cannot complete it within that time, for example because we are waiting for an answer from an authority, we tell you why and when we expect to be done; the delay lasts only as long as the check requires, or while a reset of your second sign-in step is pending (at most seven days), for five days after you change your payout account — not when you add your first — and for seven days if the change comes within seven days of such a reset. It is never discretionary.

It is bounded, and the bound is published. Thirty days where the matter concerns delivery or conformity. Sixty days for fraud or a suspension on one of those grounds, anti-money-laundering review, or an open card-network dispute, where the timetable is not ours to shorten. If the matter is not carried forward within the period, the funds are paid out to the seller, provided the item has been sent. The period governs only when we pay out. The buyer's statutory rights against the seller, including for defects in the goods, are not affected by it and do not end when it runs out. Where the buyer has withdrawn from the purchase, the following applies instead. The buyer is refunded once the seller has confirmed that the goods have come back, or once two working days in the seller's country have passed since the buyer showed, by a tracking number or a receipt, that the goods were sent. The seller may object that the evidence is false, but an objection does not stop the refund: we do not decide the dispute between buyer and seller. Where there is neither evidence nor confirmation once 30 days have passed after the last day for the return, the funds are paid out to the seller. Where the buyer has stated that the goods were sent without tracking, the days run from the later of that day and the stated date of sending. If the outer limit below is reached first, the funds are paid out then. The buyer's right to a refund from the seller continues after that: if the buyer later shows that the goods were sent, or the seller confirms receipt, we carry out the refund from the seller's balance to the extent it suffices.

A complaint delays the whole order. If the buyer complains about one item in a combined order, the payout for the whole order is delayed, not only for the line complained about, but never your account balance. We may change this so that only the line complained about is delayed.

A delay never blocks a refund. You can refund the buyer in full or in part at any time during it, out of the same funds. If you are a trader you have your own statutory refund deadlines, and we will not be the reason you miss one — we remind you in good time while the money is still available to you.

If we overrun, we pay for it. Where a delay runs past the period above, or turns out to have had no proper basis, we owe you default interest under the Finnish Interest Act (633/1982) — the reference rate plus eight percentage points if you sell as a trader (§4 a), otherwise plus seven (§4) — for the time past the period, or, where the delay had no proper basis, for the whole time it lasted. A time limit without a consequence is not a time limit.

There is an outer limit, and it applies whatever the reason. A payout is never deferred more than 75 days from the date the payment was completed, counted across the whole matter rather than per individual delay. If the matter is not closed when that day is reached, the funds are paid out to the seller if the item has been sent, and after that we do not defer any payout on account of it. We never pay out for an item that has not been sent: the order is refunded as set out above, or decided by an open card-network dispute. Paying out is not us deciding the dispute between buyer and seller — we simply stop delaying the payout. Where the matter concerns a withdrawal, we still carry out the refund from the seller's balance, to the extent it suffices, if the buyer then shows that the goods were sent back or the seller confirms receipt.

One exception, and it is outside our control. Where an authority's decision or mandatory law prevents the payout from being made, that takes precedence over the time limit above. We record which authority and which decision, and inform the seller — except where the law forbids us to. This also applies where such a match has not been resolved when the outer limit is reached, for example because information we asked for has not been provided: the law then prohibits us from paying out, and we do so only once the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland has answered our enquiry or the match has been resolved. If the law prevents the item from being sent to the recipient the buyer has given, for example because the recipient resembles someone on the EU sanctions lists and the match has been confirmed, we cancel that order alone at no cost to the buyer: a paid order is refunded in full, no payout is made for it, and the same recipient cannot be given in a new order. Other orders and the buyer's account are not affected.

The limit can only be shortened, never extended by us. We cannot defer a payout beyond the 75 days on our own, at our own discretion, or because an investigation is taking time.

No set-off. Delayed funds are not applied against anything else you may owe us without your agreement or an enforceable judgment.

Negative balance with the payment service. Your balance with the payment service can become negative, for example when a purchase is refunded and the payment service's fee remains. The payment service then offsets the amount against the amounts that later come into your account, so your next payout is lower. The payment service may also debit the amount from your bank account. This follows from your agreement with the payment service and cannot be opted out of. While the balance is negative, no payout can be made. It is not a set-off of any claim Philmarket has against you. We show the offset on the order and tell you when the balance becomes negative.

You can have it reviewed. Ask us under §10, which covers how we review a decision and what we tell you about it. Independent bodies are open to you under §16 regardless of what we decide.

Information to Stripe. You authorise us to share information about your connected account and your use of the service with Stripe where Stripe's terms or the law require it — for example on suspected fraud or where you are on the EU sanctions lists (§8, §10 (c)).

If the law prevents a refund. If rules on sanctions or on the freezing of assets prevent a refund to you from being made from the seller's funds, we make it as soon as it is permitted, and we apply without delay for the permission needed; you can also apply yourself. The time limits of the delayed payout do not run in the meantime but start to run again when we have told you that the obstacle has ended, and your rights against the seller remain. Do not send the item back until we have told you that you may, because a return can be prohibited in the same way. Look after it carefully in the meantime and protect it against damage and loss. You may not sell, pledge, give away or otherwise dispose of the item. You are not liable for damage or loss that you have not caused through negligence. Your right to withdraw from or terminate the purchase is not affected. If you have withdrawn from the purchase and have handled the item more than is necessary to examine it, you are, however, liable for the reduction in its value. We may ask you to hand the item over to the Enforcement Authority of Finland or to another custodian that the authority designates. Once you have handed it over, you are no longer responsible for the item. If storing or handing over the item costs you anything, contact us. What this point says also applies between the buyer and the seller, and each of them may rely on it against the other.

It is prohibited to list:

Items offered fraudulently — e.g. a forgery presented as genuine, or a repaired/manipulated item where this is concealed. (Forgeries and repaired items may be sold when disclosed as set out in §5, but not forgeries or imitations of stamps that are still valid for postage — see §5.)

Stolen goods.

Items subject to sanctions under the EU sanctions framework.

Illegal items of any kind.

Items that reveal the religion, ethnic origin, political opinions or health of a person who may still be alive, for example mail from a camp, a congregation or a hospital. Field post and censored mail are covered only if their content reveals something of that kind.

Listings in whose images a Nazi symbol – the swastika, the eagle with a swastika or a portrait of Adolf Hitler – can be recognised. The law in Germany, among others, prohibits displaying such symbols publicly, including in a listing. The item itself may be sold when the symbol is hidden in the images (§5).

A listing that breaks the list above is taken down. Taking it down concerns that listing only. We tell you which point it broke, why, and how you can ask for the decision to be reviewed. Whether your account is also affected is decided under §10 alone, on its own grounds and in its own steps.

It is also prohibited to:

bid on your own listing, or arrange for another person or account to bid, in order to raise the price or create an appearance of demand;

direct a buyer or seller off the platform in order to complete a sale that began here, however the payment is made. A sale concluded here but settled outside the platform (§8) is a different thing: it counts towards your cap, and you report it to us;

use another person's account, share your login credentials, or operate additional accounts to evade a restriction;

manipulate reviews, whether by trading feedback or by submitting reviews for transactions that did not take place.

Registered turnover and your cap. Your tier carries a cap on registered turnover for the contract year, counted from the day the subscription began, stated together with the tier's price. Registered turnover is the price of the goods you sell through the service, less any discount you have given and excluding shipping — that is, what the sale actually brings you. A sale counts from the moment the sale is concluded, and is counted back off if the purchase does not go through: on cancellation, withdrawal or refund. A sale concluded here but settled outside the platform (§8) counts in the same way, and because the payment does not pass through us, you must report such a sale to us. When the cap is reached, a purchase already under way may be completed; after that you may either pause your selling for the rest of the contract year — your listings remain but cannot be bought — or move up to a tier with a higher cap. Moving up does not start a new contract term; you pay the difference for the time remaining. You may choose a lower tier at any time. It applies from the next renewal, and nothing is refunded for the period you have already paid. Until the renewal you may take the choice back, and while the choice stands you cannot move up a tier. The cap resets when the contract year renews.

The grounds are these and no others. A closed list limits our own discretion, which is the point of it. We may restrict, suspend or terminate an account only on a ground below, and each is written so that it can be tested against objective information:

(a) forged, repaired or manipulated material offered as genuine or without clear disclosure; (b) goods that are stolen or whose provenance is unlawful; (c) items that are prohibited or subject to sanctions, or your being on the EU sanctions lists; (d) descriptions or condition assessments that were misleading, on three or more occasions within twelve months; (e) failure to deliver a paid order, on three or more occasions within twelve months; (f) fraud, or a pattern of payment reversals we have shown to be unfounded; (g) identity or KYC verification that remains incomplete after two written requests; (h) threats, harassment or discriminatory abuse directed at a person, as evidenced in messages or listings; (i) an order from a court or a competent authority; (j) credible evidence that the account has been accessed by someone other than its holder; (k) the information about sellers that Finnish law requires us to collect for reporting to the Finnish Tax Administration has not been provided after our request and two reminders, and at least 60 days have passed since the request; (l) you no longer have an active subscription or a right to sell that we have given you (§5); (m) you circumvent, or act in a way designed to circumvent, a limit or a restriction in these terms; (n) failure to pay an issued invoice, where the order was cancelled under §7 after a payment period of at least 7 days, on three or more occasions within twelve months; (o) you no longer meet the requirement in §5 to live or be established in an EU member state and to ship what you sell from there; (p) a match with the EU sanctions lists or the register of freezing decisions of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation is being checked (§8); (q) Nazi symbols that under §5 p. 25 must be hidden but can be recognised in your listing images, on three or more occasions within twelve months; (r) you sell as a trader and lack any of the details you must provide under §5 and that we publish on your listing: business name, geographic address, telephone number and a contact e-mail address that you have confirmed; (s) failure to pay return postage that you must pay directly to a buyer who has withdrawn from a purchase under §7, where the claim is still unpaid 14 days after the buyer made it, on three or more occasions within twelve months.

We act in steps, and we start at the lowest one that fits. Warning → restriction of the specific function concerned → suspension of the account → termination. We escalate only where a further ground arises, or where the same ground recurs, within twelve months of a warning. A single ground does not entitle us to terminate — except ground (k), which follows from law and whose steps are instead those described under "Information the law requires" below, and the cases without notice set out at the end of this paragraph. Grounds (l), (o) and (r) have their own steps and never lead to the account being suspended or terminated. Ground (p) pauses new transactions and payouts only while the check is under way, and does not in itself lead to suspension or termination. A suspension of the whole account lasts no more than 30 days while we investigate. If we do not lift it within that time, we decide on termination instead, with 30 days' notice or without notice under the next sentence. On ground (b), (c) or (i) we may terminate the contract without notice if a decision of a court or authority requires it, if you are on the EU sanctions lists, or if the breach is so serious that we cannot reasonably be expected to continue the contract. You will still receive the reasons on a durable medium without delay.

Information the law requires. Ground (k) follows from EU Directive (EU) 2021/514 (DAC7) and from the Finnish act implementing it: section 15 of the Act on the Obligation of Digital Platform Operators to Provide Information for Tax Purposes (1267/2022). When the information is collected depends on your tier. Above Start, you provide it before your first listing is published; without it the listing cannot be published, so ground (k) does not arise. We check your tax identification number against the European Commission's service. If the service states that the number does not have the format used by the issuing state, we defer your first publication and ask you to check the number. This does not apply to a Finnish personal identity code whose check character is correct; we review such a number manually instead, and you can publish in the meantime. You can ask us to review the number manually against other evidence. That manual check is not a review under Review below: it concerns the number, not a decision about your account. We start it within five working days of your request, and you get an answer within one month. After a refusal you can ask for a new check, and if you correct the number it is checked afresh. A number we have already accepted is never blocked by a later answer from the service; we review it manually. An answer about the number's format does not in itself lead to the steps under ground (k). In every case we report the information we hold, including the number you gave, to the Finnish Tax Administration. On Start, we request the information when you publish your first listing, and the steps that follow are fixed in advance and the same for everyone. We remind you once you have made 15 sales or sold €1,000, and a second time once you have made 29 sales or sold €1,900 — whichever comes first. A sale counts from the moment the buyer requests an invoice, whether or not it is then completed. If the reporting year changes while this is under way, the steps continue and sales and amounts are counted afresh for the new year. From the second reminder you can no longer start new sales: you cannot list, accept bids or receive new purchases. Auctions that already have bids, and purchase requests and targeted offers already under way, are completed. Once both reminders have been sent and at least 60 days have passed since the request, we close the account for trading, following a decision by a person. If you provide the information before then, the steps end and what you could not do becomes possible again.

Without a subscription. Ground (l) is not a sanction but the consequence of the subscription having ended, and its steps are fixed in advance and the same for everyone: your listings are paused when the subscription ends, and those still paused after 90 days are taken down. The account is not suspended or terminated on this ground. The decision is made automatically. We tell you before the pause takes effect: when you cancel the subscription, and when a payment for it has not gone through. If you end it yourself with immediate effect — by withdrawing from it or ending a renewed period early — you are told when you do so. If we withdraw a right to sell that we have given you, we tell you and give you a reasonable opportunity to respond before it takes effect. When the listings are paused, you are told how many they are. The pause is lifted when you take out a new subscription. If you believe it is wrong, for example because your subscription has not ended, review applies as set out below.

Outside the EU. Ground (o) is not a sanction but the consequence of no longer meeting the requirement in §5, and its steps are fixed in advance and the same for everyone. When you state a country outside the EU on your account, your listings are paused at once, and you cannot publish new ones or send purchase requests or targeted offers. You are told this before you save the change. The same applies when the address our payment provider has checked lies in an area outside the EU VAT area, for example on the Åland Islands or the Canary Islands. The decision is made automatically, and you are told how many listings were paused. Sales already concluded are completed: you ship the item from the EU and are paid under §8 to your connected account, and what you already owe remains. If you sell as a private individual and an auction has bids when the pause begins, it runs to its end and the sale is completed. You still ship the item from the EU (§5). If you sell as a trader, the auction is instead ended without a winner, and the bidders are told. Which rule applies turns on whether, under §5, you have declared that you sell as a trader or as a private individual. If an item you sold before the pause, or in an auction that was allowed to run to its end, cannot be shipped from the EU, the buyer may terminate the contract and receive a full refund. You can still buy. During the pause your subscription rests and you are not charged; charging resumes by itself when the pause is lifted. If you have an annual subscription, you can end it at once during the pause and get back the whole months you have not used, whether you sell as a trader or as a private individual. If you again state a country in the EU, and it matches the information our payment provider holds about you, the pause is lifted and your listings are shown again; a paused auction continues with the time it had left. If you are still paused after 90 days, the listings are taken down and the subscription ends; for an annual subscription you then get back the whole months you have not used. The account is not suspended or terminated on this ground. If you believe the pause is wrong, review applies as set out below.

Details the buyer must have. Ground (r) is not a sanction but the consequence of a listing not being able to be shown without the details the law requires the buyer to get before the purchase (§5), and its steps are fixed in advance and the same for everyone. If a detail is missing, your listings are paused: they are hidden and cannot be bought, and you cannot publish new ones. If you change your details so that one is missing, you are told before you save the change. The decision is made automatically, and you are told how many listings were paused and which details are missing. Sales already concluded, and auctions that have bids, are completed as usual. When the details are in place, the pause is lifted and your listings are shown again; a paused auction continues with the time it had left. A new contact e-mail address counts only once you have confirmed it. If you are still paused after 90 days, the listings are taken down. The account is not suspended or terminated on this ground. If you believe the pause is wrong, review applies as set out below.

Circumvention. Ground (m) includes (i) holding or using more than one account in the same capacity (§2), or using someone else's account, and (ii) directing a counterparty away from the platform to complete a purchase that began here, or assisting in that. We prohibit this because the delayed payout, reporting to the Finnish Tax Administration and fraud checks depend on the sale being completed here. The assessment is made on objective information, for example the payment instrument, delivery and billing details, account use, and information about how listings and messages have been used (not the content of messages). Before we restrict your account on this ground we give you an opportunity to explain the circumstances, unless that is plainly unnecessary.

Closed for trading, not for obligations. Orders paid before trading stopped are paid out as usual, except in cases of fraud or crime (see below). What you already owe — a delivery, a complaint, a chargeback or a dispute — survives the closure, and the account remains for as long as that requires. You may not register a new seller account; see §2.

Fraud or crime. If an account is suspended on ground (a), (b), (c), (f), (i) or (j), you may only do what protects your counterparty or is your statutory right: withdraw from a purchase, make a complaint, respond to a dispute, cancel a purchase by agreement, receive a refund, export your data and delete your account. You cannot pay, request or issue invoices, mark an item as sent, or write in an order's conversation. Your unpaid purchases are then cancelled at once, so that the seller can sell the item again or, after an auction, offer it to the next bidder under §4. Payouts for orders paid before the suspension are delayed as §8 provides for fraud, so that buyers have time to complain and we have time to report to our payment provider; they are then paid out as §8 provides. On ground (h) you cannot write in an order's conversation.

You are told first. We give notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond before a restriction takes effect. We act without prior notice only where the delay would itself cause harm — suspected fraud in progress, unlawful content, a security incident, or an order that requires immediate action — and in those cases the statement of reasons follows immediately after. The automatic steps for grounds (l), (o) and (r) are not a sanction, and for them the rules on notice and lifting in their own paragraphs above apply instead.

A restriction never takes your money. No ground on this list causes you to lose funds you have earned but not yet been paid, or credits you have bought but not used. Where an account is suspended or terminated, sums already earned are paid out under §8 and unused credits are refunded, subject only to amounts genuinely in dispute under §8 and to what we are required to withhold by law.

This list changes only as these terms change. We may not add a ground, or widen one, through a policy page, a help-centre article or a guideline. Any change goes through the procedure in §17, including its notice period and your right to end the agreement before it takes effect.

Statement of reasons. On a restriction, and on a decision about your payout in particular — that it is frozen, or that a person decides it is to wait — we give you, on a durable medium (email), at the moment the measure takes effect and not only if you challenge it: what the measure is and how long it may last, the specific facts we relied on, whether it was reached by automated means, the clause we relied on, what will end it, and how to challenge it. This is Article 17 of the Digital Services Act, whose point (b) covers "suspension, termination or other restriction of monetary payments", and, where you sell as a trader, Article 4 of the P2B Regulation. A statement about a payout always says one thing more: that the delay does not block a refund, and that any refund deadline of your own is unaffected. The payout times that §8 sets for everyone, such as waiting until 14 days after the item was sent, are not such a decision and carry no separate statement of reasons; they are set out in §8.

Review. You may ask for any such decision to be reviewed in the form that the notice of the decision links to. You can also upload documents there. If you cannot use the form, you may instead contact support@philmarket.eu, but do not send identity documents, account details or decisions from authorities as email attachments. Send us whatever you want considered — the review is carried out on that material, which the original decision did not have. You get a written, reasoned answer within 14 days of your request being registered, from someone able to reverse or vary the decision.

We will not promise you a different reviewer. We do not undertake that someone other than the person who made the decision will carry out the review, and we say so rather than describe a separation of duties we could not keep. What makes the review worth something instead is that it is not carried out on the same material: it is decided on what you send us, which the original decision did not have. And what ends a measure is stated in the notice of it, and for grounds (l), (o) and (r) also in advance above. The review tests the decision against that, so the outcome does not turn on who is reading.

None of this is your only route. If you are a consumer you may go to the Finnish consumer disputes body, Consumer Disputes Board (Kuluttajariitalautakunta), or your national European Consumer Centre, and if you are a trader to mediation under the P2B Regulation — independently of our review and whatever it concludes. The courts remain open in either case (§16).

For sellers who are traders (business users), the following also applies, in accordance with EU Regulation 2019/1150 on fair terms for business users (P2B):

Ranking — the main parameters. The order of search results is set entirely by the sort the buyer selects: newest published (the default), ending soonest, or price ascending or descending. There is no relevance score, no personalisation and no machine-learned ordering, so the same search with the same sort returns the same order for every buyer. The main parameter is therefore the selected sort criterion, and the reason for its relative importance is that the buyer chooses it — we do not weight one listing against another. Neither your plan, your ratings, your sales history, nor whether you are a trader or a private individual affects that order. The full description is published at /ranking.

Ranking — paid promotion. You can buy a front-page highlight for a listing. It is shown only in a separately labelled "Sponsored" carousel, and it never moves a listing within search results. No payment to Philmarket, of any kind, changes the order described above.

No differentiated treatment in ranking and search. Philmarket sells no items of its own and does not compete with sellers. No seller is favoured in ranking or search results. Differences between subscription tiers concern listing volume and features (see §5) — not visibility in search.

Access to data. As a seller you have access to your own sales and financial data and can export it (CSV and SIE) from your seller panel. You receive the buyer details required to fulfil the order. You do not have access to other sellers' data, and Philmarket does not sell your data on.

Closure for missing information. If you have declared that you sell as a trader (§5) and your account is to be closed under §10(k), you receive notice with the reasons on a durable medium (email) together with the second reminder, and the account is closed no earlier than 30 days after that. We rely on the status you have declared.

Changes to the terms. Material changes are notified at least 30 days in advance (see §17). During the notice period you have the right to terminate the agreement before the changes take effect.

Complaints. Philmarket is a small enterprise and is therefore exempt from the requirement for a formal internal complaint-handling system (Art. 11) and named mediators (Art. 12) under P2B. Complaints are nevertheless received and handled in good faith via support@philmarket.eu.

Separately from the ranking above, sellers may buy a clearly labelled ("Sponsrad") slot that features a listing in the front-page carousel for a limited time, and Philmarket sells clearly labelled ("Annons") advertising space. Such paid promotion and advertising appear only in separate, marked areas and do not affect the organic search ranking or a listing's visibility in search results.

Buying advertising. Advertising is a business-to-business service: it is sold only to business accounts — a company account, or a private individual who has declared that they act as a trader. It is not sold to consumers, and the right of withdrawal in §7 therefore does not apply to it.

Advertising — eligibility and review. A campaign must have a substantive connection to philately or an adjacent collecting field. You declare your segment and state that connection when applying. Every campaign is reviewed by Philmarket before it can be paid for; nothing is charged for a campaign that is not approved, and a rejection is given with its reason. An approval must be paid within 14 days or it lapses.

Advertising — term and price. Advertising is bought for a fixed term of 2, 4 or 8 weeks at the price shown when ordering. The term runs from the day the ad is published — not from the day you apply or are approved — so time spent in review is not charged for.

Advertising — takedown and refunds. Philmarket may pause or remove a live ad, but only on one of the grounds below — including when it does so after a notice or on an order from a court or authority.

The grounds on which an ad is refused or removed. We refuse an application or remove a live ad only on one or more of the grounds below. Within a ground the assessment is ours — we do not have to publish an ad that we consider falls under any of them. We cannot add a ground, or widen one, through a help page or a newsletter: the list changes only as these terms change, with the notice §17 sets out.

(a) No substantive connection to philately or an adjacent collecting field. The ad, or what it links to, does not match the business and the connection you declared when you applied.

(b) The goods or service may not be offered here. The ad concerns something a seller could not lawfully list on Philmarket — forged or repaired material presented as genuine, stolen goods, sanctioned or otherwise illegal items (§9).

(c) Claims that do not hold. The ad states something untrue, misleading or unsubstantiated, or leaves out something the reader needs in order to understand the offer.

(d) Another's marks or identity. The ad uses someone else's trade mark, name or sign without right, or gives the impression of coming from someone else — another seller, an organisation, or Philmarket itself.

(e) Children. The ad is aimed at or exploits children, or depicts children inappropriately.

(f) Illegal or offensive content. Hate, harassment, sexual or violent content, or content that is otherwise illegal.

(g) Misleading design. The ad is made to be mistaken for editorial content or for an ordinary listing in the catalogue, or uses fake system dialogs, fake close buttons or hidden links.

(h) The ad is not the one that was approved. The image, headline or link target is not what the approval was based on.

(i) The ad is used to collect information about our visitors for someone else. The link must go to your own offer, not to an advertising, measurement or redirect service. The destination page may not use services that profile visitors on behalf of third parties. You are responsible for it not doing so, and for it not starting to later — we review the link target when the campaign is approved, but we do not monitor your page after that. Nor may you place any measurement on Philmarket's pages — no pixel, no tag, no measurement script, no click tracking beyond our own aggregate counter — and you cannot ask us to add one.

(j) A decision by a court or competent authority.

What we tell you when we refuse or remove. You receive the decision in writing on a durable medium (e-mail), and it states which ground we applied, which circumstances we based the decision on, and how to ask for a review. For a live ad it also states what the measure is and from when it applies. The decision is always taken by a person. An automated pre-check may come before it. You can ask for a review by replying to the decision or writing to support@philmarket.eu; include what you want us to take into account, and the review is decided on that basis.

Refunds when an ad is stopped. If a live ad is taken down, we refund the part of the price that corresponds to the remaining term — except when the takedown is due to the ad or to you. It is due to the ad when the ad falls under any of grounds (a)–(i) above, including when we took it down after a notice we found to be well-founded. If the takedown is due to a decision by a court or competent authority, ground (j), or to our having changed these terms, we refund. The same applies when an ad is stopped because your account is suspended under §10: we refund, except when the suspension rests on any of grounds (a)–(h), (k), (m), (n), (o), (q), (r) or (s) in §10, or on ground (l) for a reason other than our having changed these terms. If the suspension rests on §10 (j), the term stands still instead: if the account is restored to you, the ad is shown for the days that remain, and otherwise we refund. If a suspension is lifted on review, the ad is shown for the days that remained when it was stopped. If the ad leads to one of your listings on Philmarket, it is not shown while that listing cannot be seen, and what happens to the term depends on why. If the listing has been sold, you took it down yourself, or it was taken down or paused for a reason that is due to you, the term runs on, with no extension and no refund. If the listing is paused under §10 (l), (o) or (r), the term stands still during the pause, and the ad is shown for the days that remain when the pause is lifted. If a pause under (l) is due to our having changed these terms, what is said below about a lasting stop applies instead. If the listing was stopped for a reason that is not due to you, the term stands still for as long as the stop lasts. If the stop is lifted — on review, when a check under §10 (p) is closed, when an account used by someone else is restored to you, or because the error was ours — the ad is shown for the days that remain. If the stop is lasting, because it rests on a decision by a court or competent authority or on our having changed these terms, you can choose within 14 days to move the ad to another of your listings or to your shop, and it is then shown there for the days that remain. If you do not choose within 14 days, we refund the remaining term. The remaining term is counted in whole days from when the ad is stopped, and a day that has begun counts as remaining. Once we have refunded, the ad is not restarted.

Your material — what we may do with it. You keep the rights to the material you give us for a campaign, such as text, images and logo. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free right to use it to review, design and show the ad on Philmarket for the campaign's term, and for nothing else.

You confirm that you hold the rights to the material and that the ad and what it promotes are lawful and accurate, and you indemnify Philmarket against any claim brought against us because they are not.

Ads we design for you. Once the ad has been published you may use the creative we made freely. The right is a licence without limit in time, purpose or territory, and you may transfer and sublicense it. A draft that is not published gives no right. The right covers what we created; material from others, such as typefaces, image libraries or your own, follows its own terms. On request you receive a copy of the creative as an image file (JPG or PNG).

We keep the right to show ads we designed for you, including your material in them, as examples of our work.

Advertising — our users are not profiled. Ads are shown by placement and schedule only, never according to who is viewing. Philmarket sets no cookies or tracking pixels for advertising and keeps only aggregate impression and click counts. When a visitor clicks an ad, no referrer is sent, so the destination is not told that the visitor came from Philmarket. As an advertiser you may not introduce, or require Philmarket to introduce, any tracking on Philmarket's pages. What an ad and its destination page may contain is set out in the grounds above. Our page on advertising criteria describes how to apply and what we look at; it is not part of these terms.

What AI-assisted Stamp Analysis is. Philmarket offers AI-assisted Stamp Analysis — a seller's aid that reads visible condition markers from a listing's photographs (Claude Vision) and suggests values on the platform's own scale, together with the model version. The seller reviews the output and adopts it as part of their own description; it is advisory, not Philmarket's own verdict. In accordance with the EU AI Act (Art. 50) we disclose that AI is used, and we keep the assessment on record.

What it is not. It does not authenticate. It does not value. It does not reliably detect repair, regumming or other manipulation. It does not replace an expert certificate, and it does not examine the item — only the photographs supplied. Its output is a probabilistic reading of an image, and it can be wrong about any individual characteristic.

When you buy a tier that includes AI-assisted Stamp Analysis as a consumer. The analysis is then part of a paid digital service supplied by us to you, and it must correspond to the description above. Because an automated reading of photographs does not reach the accuracy that could otherwise objectively be expected of a "condition assessment", we tell you so specifically before you order the tier and ask you to accept that particular deviation separately from anything else you agree to (Dir. (EU) 2019/770 Art. 8(5)). Without that specific notice and separate acceptance the deviation does not bind you, and your statutory conformity rights apply in full. We do not ask you to waive them, and a term purporting to do so would in any event be ineffective (Art. 22).

A seller's published assessment is the seller's statement. Where a seller runs an assessment and chooses to publish it on a listing, it becomes part of their description of the item and the seller answers for it (§5). Philmarket is not a party to that sale (§14).

Other tools. The perforation gauge, the centering-assessment tool and bulk listing creation are aids. They do not replace your own judgement or verification. Where you use them as part of a service you have paid us for, the same conformity rules apply as above; our liability is dealt with in §14, which is the only place in these terms that limits it.

Philmarket operates a marketplace and is not a party to the contract of sale between buyer and seller. We are not liable for the condition, authenticity, description or delivery of items listed by users. This section concerns our own liability, for our own services and for the operation of the marketplace.

We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence; for damage to life, body or health; under mandatory product liability law; where we have fraudulently concealed a defect; and where we have given a guarantee. This applies equally where the damage was caused by someone we engaged.

In cases of simple negligence we are liable only for breach of an obligation whose fulfilment is essential to the proper performance of this agreement and on which you may reasonably rely, and that liability is limited to the damage typically foreseeable at the time of contracting. Where a claim concerns a marketplace transaction, the value of that transaction is ordinarily a good guide to what was typically foreseeable — it is a guide to the measure, not a ceiling on it.

There is no monetary cap on our liability to you.

Nothing above affects rights you have under mandatory law that cannot be limited or excluded, including your rights against the seller.

If you are a trader. In cases of simple negligence our liability to you is limited to the greater of the value of the transaction concerned and the amount you paid us for the service concerned in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. The limit also applies to errors in the calculations, invoices, credit notes and refunds the service produces for you, but not to what we answer for under §5, »What Philmarket answers for towards you«. The paragraph on unlimited liability applies unchanged.

Philmarket operates the marketplace; sellers sell. This section sets out how the obligations arising from a purchase are divided between us, as online marketplaces are required to do by Dir. 2011/83/EU Art. 6a(1)(d). This section does not affect the rights you have by law against the seller or against us.

The seller is the other party to your purchase. They are responsible for the item's description and condition, for delivery, and — where they are a trader — for your statutory rights as a consumer, including the right of withdrawal, the legal guarantee of conformity, and any commercial guarantee they offer.

Philmarket is responsible for operating the service, for holding and releasing payments as described in §8, for the information we display about a seller's status, and for our own services (subscriptions, credits, promotion and advertising), where we are the seller.

Refunds when you withdraw from a purchase or are otherwise entitled to a refund: it is the seller who pays you back. Philmarket calculates the amount and carries out the refund from the seller's funds under §8.

Where we present information on a seller's behalf, including the pre-contractual right-of-withdrawal information shown before you pay, we are responsible for that information being correct and available in the language the service was presented to you in. Your rights against the seller are not affected, and we are in addition responsible for that information being correct.

Whether a seller is a trader or a private individual is stated on the basis of the seller's own declaration, which they must keep accurate (§5). Where the seller is a private individual, EU consumer protection rules do not apply to your purchase — this is shown before you buy.

The laws of Finland apply. This does not deprive you, as a consumer, of the protection afforded to you by provisions that cannot be derogated from by agreement under the law of the country in which you have your habitual residence.

Consumers — court. You may bring proceedings in the courts of your own country of residence, and we may bring proceedings against you only there.

Consumers — out of court. Philmarket Oy is established in Finland and is subject to the Finnish consumer disputes body, Consumer Disputes Board (Kuluttajariitalautakunta), at kuluttajariita.fi. Please contact us first; if we cannot resolve the matter you may refer it there. If you live in another EU or EEA country, your national European Consumer Centre (ECC-Net) will help you bring a cross-border complaint against us, and can tell you whether a body in your own country will also take the case. The Board works in Finnish and Swedish. A complaint and its attachments have to be in one of those two languages to be considered, so bringing one from another country can mean paying for a translation. Your national European Consumer Centre will raise the matter with us on your behalf free of charge — that is what the network exists for.

Other users. Disputes are heard by the competent Finnish court.

We may change them only for a reason on this list. (a) a change in law, in a binding decision of a court or an authority, or in supervisory practice that applies to us; (b) a function we add, retire or rebuild; (c) a change in what a payment, shipping, identification or hosting provider requires of us; (d) a change in our fees, or in how they are taxed; (e) the correction of an error or an ambiguity, where the correction does not move the balance of the agreement; (f) a security or fraud measure that cannot wait. A change made for any other reason binds you only if you accept it.

Thirty days, for everyone. We notify material changes by email at least 30 days before they take effect. The P2B Regulation requires 15 days for traders and consumer law requires a reasonable period; we use 30 days for every user rather than run two clocks. If you sell as a trader, we notify you of every change, material or not, at least 15 days before it takes effect. Where a change requires you as a trader to make technical or commercial adjustments, for example to start issuing invoices through a national system, we notify it at least 60 days before it takes effect. Listing something during that time does not mean you waive the notice period. The exceptions are those the P2B Regulation allows (art. 3(4)): a change that law or a regulatory decision requires so quickly that the period cannot be kept, and a change that must be made at once to meet an unforeseen and imminent danger from fraud, malicious software, spam, a data breach or another cybersecurity risk.

You do not have to accept. You may end the agreement at any time during the notice period, and the ending takes effect before the changes do. If you neither accept nor end it, your account enters a wind-down when the changes take effect.

What a wind-down is. You may do everything that discharges an obligation you already have, or ends it by agreement with the other party, and nothing that creates a new one. You may dispatch goods, pay for what you bought, request and issue invoices, exercise a right of withdrawal, request, answer or withdraw a request to cancel a purchase by agreement with the other party, raise and answer a dispute, receive and answer a complaint, receive payouts, export your data, and delete your account. You may not list, bid, make or accept offers, or start a new purchase.

A period you have paid for is not cut short, and credits you have not used are paid back. If you have paid for a subscription period, either you keep full use of the service until it ends, or the wind-down begins at once and we refund the unused part automatically, in proportion to the time left. The choice is yours; if you tell us nothing, you keep full use. Credits are settled separately, because they are not measured in time. When your account enters the wind-down, we automatically refund every credit you have not used, in money and at the price you paid per credit in the purchase it came from. After that, credits no longer shelter the account from the wind-down. We do not keep money for services we are no longer going to perform.

A wind-down has an end date. It lasts at most 90 days from the day the changes take effect, after which the agreement ends.

What still works after the agreement ends. For at least twelve months — longer where accounting law requires us to keep the records — you can export your data, receive money you have earned, and bring or answer a dispute about a contract concluded before the agreement ended. Ending the agreement does not end an obligation either of us already had.

These terms are available in Swedish, English, Danish, Finnish, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Polish, the languages in which the service is offered. The English version is the reference version from which the others are prepared.

If you are a consumer, the version in the language in which the service was presented to you when you accepted these terms applies to you, and where a translation differs from the English version you may rely on whichever is more favourable to you. Where the service is not available in your language, it is provided in English.

Philmarket Oy · company details at /about

Reaching us as a user of the service. Our single point of contact is support@philmarket.eu or the form at /contact. You choose which one; both arrive in the same place and a person reads and answers. No route to us is answered only by an automated system. If you use the form we email you a copy of what you wrote, so you keep the exchange as it was sent. For a data protection request the copy contains the subject and the dates but not the message itself, because it may contain details that should not travel by email.

Reaching us as an authority. Our single point of contact for Member State authorities, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services is compliance@philmarket.eu.

Languages. Both points of contact work in Swedish and English. Swedish is an official language of Finland, where Philmarket Oy is established.

This section is Articles 11 and 12 of the Digital Services Act. The exemption for small enterprises in Article 19 covers Section 3 of that Regulation and so reaches neither of them.

Anyone may report. You do not need an account. Use the form at /notice — tell us where the content is and why you believe it is illegal. We confirm every report on receipt and give you a reference.

What happens next. We assess reports without undue delay. Where you gave us contact details we tell you what we decided. That decision does not prevent you from taking the matter to an out-of-court dispute body or to a court.

How we moderate. A decision to remove or restrict content because of what it contains is made by a person. We use automated checks to help find content that may break these terms — the plausibility checks on condition assessments, for example — but an automated check never removes content on its own. The exception is personal data, which is hidden automatically when it is written: email addresses, phone numbers and account numbers (IBAN) in messages, listing additions, forum posts, appraisal questions and appraisal estimates, and in the last three other personal data too, names for example. The filter does not catch everything — a number written out in words, for example, can slip through — and something not being hidden does not make it allowed to direct a counterparty away from the platform (§10 (m)). Pausing listings when a subscription ends (§5) and deleting content when a retention period runs out are not such decisions.

If we restrict something you published, we tell you why on a durable medium, and you may contest it by replying to that notice.

Reviews. Only the buyer and the seller in a completed purchase can review each other, once each and only about that purchase. The buyer rates the seller; the seller confirms the deal with a thumbs up or down. A review can be left once the payment has been released to the seller, and no later than 60 days after the purchase was concluded. Reviews are double-blind: yours is shown only once the other party has left theirs or 14 days have passed, whichever comes first.

We do not check reviews before they appear. Every review is published automatically, positive or negative, and we never remove a review because it is negative. If you believe a review is unlawful, you can report it here in the same way as any other content. If we remove it, the person who wrote it is told why. The seller may reply once to a review about them. The reply is shown with the review, is not checked in advance, and can be reported in the same way as the review.

A review is not a ruling. Publishing a review does not mean we have taken a position on what it says. Where a purchase was closed under our rules while the dispute between you remains — for example where the buyer withdrew from the purchase but neither did the seller confirm that the item came back nor did the buyer show that it was sent, so that the payment went to the seller under §8 — the review shows that Philmarket has not decided who is right. We do not decide the dispute (§8).

What we can restrict, and on what grounds. We restrict, suspend or terminate an account only on a ground in §10 — those grounds and no others. Individual content that is illegal or breaks these terms we remove after a notice shows that to be the case; for illegal content, Articles 6 and 16 of the Digital Services Act require it. That is not in itself a measure against your account. If a listing shows personal data about someone who appears on the item and that person asks us to hide it, we take the listing down until the data is hidden. The seller is told why and can ask for a review.

Complaints about us. Philmarket is a small enterprise, so the internal complaint-handling system in Art. 20 of the Digital Services Act does not apply to us. We take complaints at support@philmarket.eu and answer them regardless.