Selling guidelines

Somebody orders through Noques so that the thing they bought is waiting when they arrive, or arrives as described. Everything below follows from that one sentence. If a guideline here ever conflicts with keeping that promise, keep the promise and tell us the guideline is wrong.

Nothing on this page is a legal term. It is what your application is reviewed against and what a report about your store is measured against.

A listing is the only thing a customer sees before they pay. It has to match what they will receive.

• Photograph the actual item. Your own photograph of your own product, lit well enough to see it. Not a stock image, not a competitor’s photograph, and not a picture of a different size or colour from the one being sold.
• Describe it properly. What it is, what is in it, and what size or quantity the price buys. If you sell food, fill in ingredients and allergens — somebody with a nut allergy is relying on that field, and an omission there is not a typo.
• Price it the same as you would in person. Building the commission into your price is fine and expected. Listing at a multiple of your counter price is not.
• Nothing under R2. That is the smallest amount the card processor will take, so a basket below it cannot be paid for at all. Sell a smaller item as part of a bundle.

The worst outcome on this marketplace is a customer who has paid, travelled, and arrived for something you do not have. Two controls prevent it, and both are yours:

• Stock count. Every product and variant carries one. When it reaches zero the item stops being orderable — so a count you have not updated is the only way to oversell.
• The active switch. Turning a product off removes it from your storefront immediately, without deleting it or losing its history. Use it for the day you have run out of an ingredient, or the week you are not trading.

You can also set a low-stock threshold per item, so you are warned before you hit zero rather than after.

An order reaches you already paid for, and moves through four states:

1. Received — it is yours. The customer’s money has cleared and your share is already recorded against your wallet.
2. Preparing — you have started. From this point the customer can no longer cancel, which is exactly why you should not mark it early.
3. Ready — it is packed and waiting. This is the notification the customer is walking towards.
4. Collected — handed over. Mark it at the counter, not at the end of the day; it is what closes the order for the customer as well as for you.

A basket spanning several vendors is split so that each vendor sees and moves only their own part. You are never waiting on another shop, and another shop’s delay is never attributed to you.

If you cannot fulfil something, cancel that part promptly rather than leaving it received. A cancellation with hours of notice is a minor annoyance; one discovered at the counter is the customer’s whole trip.

Commission is 10% of a sale on the standard rate, taken when the order is split rather than billed to you later. There is no monthly fee, no listing fee and nothing to pay in a month you do not sell. Registered charities and vendors in the beta pay less — the rates are on the pricing page, which reads them from the same place the checkout does.

Your share accumulates in a wallet the platform holds, and you request a payout from it. It is not swept to your bank automatically, so nothing moves without you asking for it.

A refund can never exceed what was actually paid on that order, less anything already refunded. That ceiling protects you as much as the customer.

Four things. Each is either fraud or a direct harm to a customer, and each is decided by a person looking at the orders behind it rather than by an automatic flag.

• Fake orders. Ordering from yourself, or arranging for somebody to, in order to move up a ranking, inflate a review count or earn cashback. The money moves in a circle and the commission is real, so this costs you as well.
• Taking an order off the platform. Asking a customer to cancel and pay you in cash instead. They lose the payment record and every protection attached to it, which is the part that matters more than the commission.
• Misrepresenting what you sell. A photograph of a different product, a described weight you do not supply, or an allergen left out.
• Prohibited goods. Anything you cannot lawfully sell in South Africa, anything counterfeit, and anything requiring a licence you do not hold.

Short of removal, the usual response to a problem is somebody contacting you about it. Most reports are a misunderstanding or a bad day, and we would rather ask.

If a customer has treated you badly, another vendor is copying your listings, or something in the dashboard is not doing what this page says it does, use the contact form. Include the order number if there is one. A person reads it.