The situations we usually see
Buyers come to us after paying for something that never shipped, arrived counterfeit, or was nothing like the listing, often after being persuaded to send the payment as a personal transfer rather than a purchase, which quietly removes the protections that would otherwise apply. Sellers come after a chargeback lands weeks after delivery, or after an account limitation holds a balance they were counting on. A third group has had the account itself taken over and watched transfers leave. Each of these is handled differently, both by the platform and by anyone looking at it afterward, so the first task is naming which one you are in.
Export the record before access narrows
Accounts get limited, closed, or locked with very little warning, and the history goes with them. Download the full transaction history and the complete message threads rather than screenshots of a few of them. Save the listing or invoice, shipping and tracking documents, delivery confirmation, any communication that moved off the platform onto text or a messaging app, and every case or dispute number with the date and wording of each decision. If the other side has a profile, capture it now. Keep the device and the phone number associated with the account unchanged until this is done.
The platform process is not the whole picture
An internal dispute, a chargeback through your card issuer, and a claim through your bank are separate processes with separate standards, and a platform decision does not resolve the underlying disagreement between you and the other party. Whether pursuing that disagreement is realistic often depends on something unglamorous. It comes down to whether the counterparty can be identified at all, and where they are. Distance and anonymity decide more of these matters than the merits do. In a first conversation we look at how the payment was funded, what the messages actually show about what was promised, what the platform has already decided, and whether there is a route worth the cost of taking it.
