Privacy Policy

Information you provide when you create an account

To create an account you provide an email address, a password, and a display name. Authentication is handled by Supabase, our authentication provider. We do not store your password ourselves.

Age requirement and children's privacy

BuyIt Exchange is intended for adults age 18 and older. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use BuyIt Exchange to participate in marketplace transactions.

We do not knowingly allow children under 18 to create accounts or intentionally collect personal information from them through the service.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, or that we have collected personal information from a child through an account that should not have been created, we may restrict or close the account and take reasonable steps to delete or otherwise handle the information as appropriate.

If you believe a person under 18 has created an account or provided personal information through BuyIt Exchange, please contact us at support@buyitexchange.com.

Profile information

Your profile holds a display name, city, and state.

Your display name may be shown publicly as part of your member profile and marketplace activity. Your public member profile may also show membership information and published ratings or reviews.

Your city and state are not displayed on your public member profile. City and state may be displayed with a public Buying Request or other marketplace feature where location is relevant, as described in this Privacy Policy.

Your ZIP code and any geographic coordinates derived from it are not publicly displayed.

Items you save privately in My Items to Sell

If you use My Items to Sell, we store information about items you may be willing to sell. This may include the item's title, description, category, condition, brand, model, fulfillment preference, city and state, current status, and dates related to when the item was added or updated.

Items saved in My Items to Sell are private. Other members cannot browse your saved-item inventory, and the item record itself is not shown to a buyer merely because we identify a possible match.

We use this information to operate the private matching feature and to notify you when an open Buying Request may be a potential match.

Private item photos

Photos you add to an item in My Items to Sell are stored privately and are available only to you through protected, short-lived access links.

Private item photos are not automatically shared with a buyer when a possible match is identified. If you decide to respond to a Buying Request, photos you separately submit with your offer may be shown to the buyer who posted that request.

ZIP code and location used for matching

We ask for a ZIP code when you create certain Buying Requests or save items in My Items to Sell.

We use the ZIP code to validate the general location, determine or suggest a city and state, and derive an approximate geographic point that allows our systems to estimate distance between a Buying Request and a potentially matching item.

We do not collect your device location or street address for this matching process. Your ZIP code and the geographic coordinates derived from it are not displayed to other members. Other members see only the general city and state information made available through the applicable marketplace feature.

Automated matching

BuyIt Exchange automatically compares certain information from open Buying Requests with sellers' private saved items to identify possible matches.

When a possible match is identified, we may keep an internal record of the request, the seller's item, when the match was identified or communicated, and whether the seller responded, dismissed, or otherwise acted on the match.

Buyers are not told that a private saved item matched their Buying Request. Nothing from the seller's private item record is shared with the buyer unless the seller chooses to respond through the offer process.

Matching is used to help connect potential buyers and sellers. We do not disclose our internal matching scores, ranking information, or other proprietary matching criteria.

Buying requests

The content of an open buying request — including its title, description, category, budget, and city and state — is visible to anyone, including visitors who are not signed in. The ZIP code you enter and any internally derived geographic coordinates are not publicly displayed.

Seller offers and offer photos

Seller offers and offer photos are not public. An offer and its photos are visible only to the seller who submitted the offer and the buyer who posted the buying request.

Offer photos are stored in a private storage bucket and are displayed using short-lived signed URLs.

Negotiation and commitment history

We store the history of offers, counters, commitments, cancellations, and declines for each deal. This history is visible to the participants in that deal.

Questions and messages about an offer

If you use BuyIt Exchange's private Q&A or messaging tools, we store the message together with information needed to associate it with the applicable offer or transaction. This includes the message text, the account that sent it, the sender's role in the transaction, and the time it was sent.

Messages are not public. They are generally visible only to the buyer and seller involved in the applicable offer or transaction.

Before a message is sent, our systems may automatically check it for contact information or other attempts to move communication outside the permitted BuyIt Exchange process. If contact information is detected, the message may be blocked and you may be asked to revise it. A blocked message is not stored as a sent message.

Authorized BuyIt Exchange personnel may access or review messages when reasonably necessary to provide support, investigate suspected fraud or abuse, address safety concerns, handle disputes, enforce our Terms of Use, protect the marketplace, or comply with applicable law or valid legal requests.

We do not represent that every message is routinely or continuously monitored.

Messages may remain part of the transaction record after an offer, commitment, cancellation, or completed transaction so that we can support users, investigate fraud or abuse, address disputes, maintain appropriate records, and comply with legal obligations.

Match Fee payments

When a seller pays the Match Fee, we store the payment status, the amount, and the Stripe Checkout session and payment identifiers associated with that commitment. Stripe processes the seller's Match Fee payment; we do not receive or store your full card number or your card security code (CVC/CVV).

Stripe processes only the seller's BuyIt Exchange Match Fee. BuyIt Exchange does not process payment for the item itself.

Account and transaction emails

We use your email address to send account, security, and transaction-related communications needed to operate BuyIt Exchange.

These communications may include:

• account confirmation and password-reset emails;
• notifications about new seller offers;
• negotiation updates and actions that require your attention;
• commitment and Match Fee updates;
• private item-match notifications;
• notifications that a new private Q&A message is available;
• review-related notifications; and
• other important service or transaction notices.

Transaction emails may include information needed to identify the relevant Buying Request, offer, item, transaction, deadline, or next step, along with a link back to BuyIt Exchange.

Private Q&A message text is not included in Q&A notification emails. Those emails notify the recipient that a message is available and direct the recipient back to BuyIt Exchange to view it.

We do not use essential account or transaction emails as a substitute for marketing consent.

How we use this information

We use the information above to operate the service: to show buying requests, deliver seller offers to the right buyer, run the limited negotiation and commitment flow, calculate and collect the seller's Match Fee, release contact information at the correct point, respond to support messages and reports, match sellers' private saved items with open Buying Requests and notify sellers of possible matches, provide transaction-related communication tools, send account, security, and transaction-related notifications, prevent attempts to share contact information before contact release, provide support, investigate fraud, abuse, safety concerns, or Terms of Use violations, handle disputes, and comply with legal obligations.

Who can see your information

Public: your display name, public member-profile information, and the content of your open buying requests (including city and state, but not your ZIP code or derived coordinates). Published ratings and reviews are also public.

Participant-only: seller offers, offer photos, negotiation and commitment history, private Q&A or messages about an offer or transaction, and Match Fee payment status.

Owner-only / internal: as applicable, this includes items saved in My Items to Sell, private item photos, ZIP codes used for matching, geographic coordinates derived from ZIP codes, profile city and state, and internal private-match records and matching details. These are not made public merely because a potential match is identified.

Private information includes your saved contact email address, phone number, and preferred contact method until the service's contact-release requirements are met.

When contact information is released

Contact details you have saved are released to the other party in a deal only after both parties commit and the seller's Match Fee payment is confirmed. Before that point they are not visible to the other party.

Release happens so the buyer and seller can communicate directly to arrange delivery, pickup, and final payment. BuyIt Exchange does not process payment for the actual item.

Public profiles, ratings, and reviews

A public member profile may display your display name, the month and year your account was created, the number of published reviews you have received, an average rating once you have at least three published reviews, and counts of the reviews you received as a buyer and as a seller. It may also display published review ratings, published review comments, whether each reviewer acted as the buyer or the seller, review publication dates, and the “Verified transaction” designation.

The public member-profile data does not include your email address, telephone number, preferred contact method, city or state, home or street address, payment information, internal request, offer, commitment, or payment identifiers, or any hidden moderation notes or reasons.

Reviews are not anonymous: the reviewer's display name is shown with the published review. Never place private information in a review comment.

A review cannot be edited by the member after it is submitted, and a published review may remain visible unless it is hidden through moderation. Hiding a review removes it from public review lists, counts, and averages, and hidden reviews may be retained internally for enforcement, fraud prevention, dispute handling, recordkeeping, security, and legal obligations, consistent with the retention and disclosure practices described in this policy.

Cookies and browser storage

BuyIt Exchange uses a small amount of browser storage to operate the service and remember certain preferences.

When you sign in, your authentication session is stored in your browser so that you can remain signed in and your session can be securely refreshed. This storage is necessary for authenticated features to work.

We may also store limited interface or session preferences in your browser, such as whether a panel is expanded or collapsed or temporary browse and distance-filter settings.

BuyIt Exchange does not currently use advertising cookies, tracking cookies, cross-site trackers, or similar browser technologies for behavioral advertising.

Analytics, advertising, and sale of information

BuyIt Exchange does not currently use website analytics services, advertising pixels, retargeting tools, fingerprinting, or behavioral tracking technologies.

We do not use your activity on BuyIt Exchange to create targeted advertising profiles.

We do not sell your personal information or share it with advertisers, advertising networks, or data brokers for targeted advertising.

If our practices change in the future, we will update this Privacy Policy as appropriate.

Technical information processed by service providers

BuyIt Exchange does not intentionally collect your IP address, browser type, device information, or detailed page-view history through our own application code.

However, companies that provide hosting, authentication, database, payment, email, security, and similar infrastructure may automatically process or log routine technical information when you use the service. This may include an IP address, browser or device information, dates and times of requests, sign-in events, and similar technical data.

These providers may use that information for purposes such as security, reliability, fraud prevention, troubleshooting, abuse prevention, and operation of their services. Some technical records may be retained by those providers according to their own practices and legal obligations.

Service providers

We use service providers to help operate BuyIt Exchange. These providers receive or process information only as reasonably necessary to perform their services for us.

Current categories include:

Supabase — database hosting, authentication, and private file storage;

Stripe — processing seller Match Fee payments;

email-delivery providers — sending account, security, and transaction-related emails; and

hosting and content-delivery providers — serving the BuyIt Exchange website and application.

These providers may process information under their own privacy and security practices. We do not authorize them to use BuyIt Exchange information for unrelated advertising or data-broker purposes.

Error and diagnostic information

When something goes wrong, the application may generate error and diagnostic information about the failure so we can identify and fix problems.

How long we keep information

We keep information for as long as reasonably necessary to operate BuyIt Exchange, provide support, maintain transaction records, protect the marketplace, investigate fraud or abuse, resolve disputes, comply with legal obligations, and enforce our Terms of Use.

Some information may remain in our records after a Buying Request, offer, private match, message thread, commitment, review, or transaction is no longer active. This may include transaction history, messages, match records, payment-related records, moderation records, reviews, and other information needed for support, safety, fraud prevention, recordkeeping, or legal compliance.

We do not promise that every type of information is deleted immediately when a transaction ends or when an account becomes inactive.

We may retain certain information for a longer period when reasonably necessary to comply with law, respond to legal requests, prevent fraud, protect users or BuyIt Exchange, enforce agreements, resolve disputes, or maintain appropriate business and financial records.

Account deletion

You may request deletion of your BuyIt Exchange account by contacting us at support@buyitexchange.com. We will delete or de-identify personal information that we no longer reasonably need, subject to applicable law and legitimate recordkeeping needs.

Some information may be retained after account deletion where reasonably necessary for legal compliance, fraud prevention, security, payment and financial records, dispute handling, marketplace enforcement, or other legitimate business purposes. Information that must be retained will no longer be used for purposes inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

Privacy questions and requests

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy or how BuyIt Exchange handles your information, or if you want to make a privacy-related request, please contact us at support@buyitexchange.com.

Depending on where you live, applicable law may give you certain rights regarding your personal information. We will review privacy requests and respond as required by applicable law.

We may need to verify that a request comes from you before taking action, particularly when the request involves access to, correction of, or deletion of account information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as BuyIt Exchange changes, our practices evolve, or legal requirements change.

When we make an update, we will revise the Effective Date shown at the top of this policy.

If a change materially affects how we collect, use, or share personal information, we may provide additional notice through BuyIt Exchange, by email, or by another reasonable method when appropriate.

Your continued use of BuyIt Exchange after an updated Privacy Policy becomes effective is subject to the updated policy, except where applicable law requires additional notice, consent, or other action.