This policy is a part of our Terms & Condition. By using any of our Services, you agree to this policy and our Terms & Condition.
1. Selling Basics
Keeping in mind these basic requirements will set you up for success on Hmong Road.
a. What can be sold on Hmong Road
Hmong Road is a unique marketplace. Buyers come here to purchase items that they might not find anywhere else. Everything listed for sale on Hmong Road must be handmade, vintage, or a craft supply.
Handmade items are items that are made and/or designed by you, the seller. You may have shop members who help you run your business, as long as you, the seller, are making and/or designing your items.
If you sell handmade items, you agree that:
- All handmade items are made or designed by you.
- You accurately describe every person involved in the making of an item in your shop in your About section.
- You are using your own photographs or video content —not stock photos, artistic renderings, or photos used by other sellers or sites.
- Respond to any inquiries from us in a timely manner. We may ask you how your items are made, what workspace, tools, and equipment you use; and how you communicate and collaborate with the people who help you run your shop.
If you are selling personalized or made-to-order items in the Handmade category, you agree that:
- All listings are available for purchase at a set price.
- If you are using photographs of previous work with options for customization (like color choices) included in the listing, it is clear in your description that the photos shown are just examples.
Vintage items must be at least 20 years old.
Craft Supplies are tools, ingredients, or materials whose primary purpose is for use in the creation of an item or special occasion. Craft supplies may be handmade, commercial, or vintage. Party supplies may also be sold as craft supplies.
We encourage you to be transparent about how your craft supplies were made and where your materials come from. You can disclose whether your items have social or environmental attributes, such as organic or recycled. You can also select the location of manufacture.
b. What Can’t be Sold on Hmong Road
Even if they otherwise meet our marketplace criteria, prohibited items, services, and items that violate our intellectual property policies are not allowed to be sold on Hmong Road.
Keep in mind that members may flag listings that appear to violate our policies for Hmong Road’s review. Hmong Road may remove any listings that violate our policies. Note that listing fees are non-refundable. Hmong Road may also suspend or terminate your account for any violations. You’ll still be on the hook to pay any outstanding fees on your Hmong Road statement. You can find more information in our Fees & Payments Policy.
If you are raising money on behalf of a charity, you must obtain that charity’s consent.
c. Managing your Hmong Road Shop
Your shop represents you and your business to the Hmong Road community. It’s important that you, your items and your shop are honestly and accurately represented.
By selling on Hmong Road, you agree that you will:
- Provide honest, accurate information in your About section.
- Honor your Shop Policies.
- Ensure your shop content, such as any text, photos or videos used to represent yourself, your shop or your listings, abide by Hmong Road’s policies, including our Anti-Discrimination policy.
- Accurately represent your items in listings and listing photos.
- Respect the intellectual property of others. If you feel someone has violated your intellectual property rights, you can report it to Hmong Road.
- Not engage in fee avoidance.
- Not create duplicate shops or take any other action (such as manipulating clicks, carts or sales) for the purpose of shilling, manipulating search or circumventing Hmong Road’s policies.
- Not coordinate pricing with other sellers.
d. Seller Standards
By listing a product for sale on Hmong Road you understand and agree that you are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and regulations for the products you list for sale, including any required labels and warnings. Hmong Road assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, labeling, or content of your listings.
Meeting Service Level Standards
As a seller, you must provide great customer service and maintain trust with your buyers. These requirements are called our Seller Service Level Standards. Hmong Road may reach out to you if your shop fails to meet Hmong Road’s Seller Service Level Standards. Read more here.
By selling on Hmong Road, you agree to:
- Honor your shipping and processing times. Sellers are obligated to ship an item or otherwise complete a transaction with a buyer in a prompt manner, unless there is an exceptional circumstance. Please be aware that legal requirements for shipping times vary by country. Read more in our Shipping Policy.
- Respond to Messages in a timely manner.
- Honor the commitments you make in your shop policies.
- Resolve disagreements or disputes directly with the buyer. In the unlikely event that you can’t reach a resolution, Hmong Road can help through our case system. Read about your rights and responsibilities regarding cases
here. - If you are unable to complete an order, you must notify the buyer and cancel the order. Read about how to cancel an order in this Help article.
e. Selling Fees
Sellers may be charged for using some of Hmong Road’s services. There are fees associated with listing, selling, advertising, and certain other Hmong Road products and features. You can find information on fees in the Fees and Payments Policy.
2. Being a Member of the Hmong Road Community
At Hmong Road, everyone is expected to treat fellow members of the Hmong Road community with respect. As a seller, you have additional responsibilities to safeguard personal information and communicate promptly with buyers in order to provide a great customer experience.
a. Creating and Uploading Content
As a member of Hmong Road, you have the opportunity to create and upload a variety of content, like listings, Messages, text, photos, and videos. In order to keep our community safe and respectful, you agree that you will not upload content that is:
- Abusive, threatening, defamatory, harassing, or otherwise in violation of our Anti-Discrimination Policy;
- Obscene or vulgar;
- In violation of someone else’s privacy or intellectual property rights; or
- False, deceptive, or misleading.
Read more about how Hmong Road search works, what factors impact search ranking, and how you can help optimize your listings and shop here and in The Ultimate Guide to Hmong Road Search.
b. Privacy and Protecting Personal Information
You are responsible for protecting members’ personal information you receive or process, and you must comply with all relevant legal requirements. This includes applicable data protection and privacy laws that govern the ways in which you can use Hmong Road user information. These laws may require that you post and comply with your own privacy policy, which must be accessible to Hmong Road users with whom you interact. Your privacy policy must be compatible with this policy and Hmong Road’s Terms of Use.
In particular, when you sell using our Services (subject to this Policy) or use Hmong Road’s API (also subject to the Hmong Road API Terms of Use), you may receive and determine what to do with certain personal information, such as when communicating with users and entering into transactions with buyers. This means you process personal information (for example, buyer name, email address, and shipping address) and, to the extent you do so, under EU law, you are an independent controller of data relating to other users that you may have obtained through the Services.For more information on the General Data Protection Regulation, see more resources at https://gdpr-info.eu and http://gdprandyou.ie.
As a data controller (that is someone who decides what personal data is collected and the purpose you’ll use the data for) to the extent that you process user personal information outside of the Services, you may be required under applicable data protection and privacy laws to honor requests received from such users for data access, portability, correction, deletion, and objections to processing. Also, if you disclose personal information without the buyer’s proper consent, you are responsible for that unauthorized disclosure. This includes, for example, disclosures you make or unintentional data breaches. For example, you may receive a buyer’s email address or other information as a result of entering into a transaction with that buyer. This information may only be used for Hmong Road-related communications or for Hmong Road-facilitated transactions. You may not use this information for unsolicited commercial messages or unauthorized transactions. Without the buyer’s consent, and subject to other applicable Hmong Road policies and laws, you may not add any Hmong Road member to your email or physical mailing list, use that buyer’s identity for marketing, or obtain or retain any payment information. Please bear in mind that you’re responsible for knowing the standard of consent required in any given instance.
If Hmong Road and you are found to be joint data controllers of personal information, and if Hmong Road is sued, fined, or otherwise incurs expenses because of something that you did in your capacity as a joint data controller of buyer personal information, you agree to indemnify Hmong Road for the expenses it occurs in connection with your processing of buyer personal information.
For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.
c. Communication Standards
i. Messages
With Hmong Road Messages, you have the ability to communicate directly with your buyers or other Hmong Road members. Messages are a great way for buyers to ask you questions about an item or an order.
Messages may not be used for the following activities:
- Sending unsolicited advertising or promotions, requests for donations, or spam;
- Harassing or abusing another member or violating our Anti-Discrimination Policy;
- Contacting someone after they have explicitly asked you not to; or
- Interfering with a transaction or the business of another member.
Interference
Interference occurs when a member intentionally interferes with another member’s shop in order to drive away their business. Interference is strictly prohibited on Hmong Road. Examples of interference include:
- Contacting another member via Hmong Road Messages to warn them away from a particular member, shop, or item;
- Posting in public areas to demonstrate or discuss a dispute with another member;
- Purchasing from a seller for the sole purpose of leaving a negative review;
- Maliciously clicking on a competitor’s Promoted Listings ads in order to drain that member’s advertising budget, also known as “click fraud.”
- Creating or using an independent buyer account to maliciously upvote another shop’s negative reviews in order to position those reviews more prominently.
Harassment
Any use of Hmong Road Messages to harass other members is strictly prohibited. Similarly, Messages may not be used to support or glorify hatred or otherwise violate our Anti-Discrimination Policy. If you receive a Message that violates this policy, please let us know right away.
ii. Forums and Teams
Forums and Teams are public spaces provided by Hmong Road where sellers can connect, but there are communication standards that must be followed. More information can be found in the Hmong Road Community Policy.
iii. Communicating Cancellations
If you are unable to complete a transaction, you must notify the buyer via Hmong Road Messages and cancel the transaction. If the buyer already submitted payment, you must issue a full refund. You are encouraged to keep proof of any refunds in the event a dispute arises. All cancellations are subject to our Cancellation Policy.
Please be aware that in addition to this policy, each country has its own laws surrounding shipping, cancellations, returns, and exchanges. Please familiarize yourself with the laws of your own country and those of your buyers’ countries.
3. Feedback, Disputes and Your Success
a. Reviews
Reviews are a great way for you to build a reputation on Hmong Road. Buyers can leave a review, including a one to five star rating and a photograph of their purchase, within 100 days after their item’s estimated delivery date. If an estimated delivery date is not available, the review window opens after the order’s processing time and shipping time have elapsed. Buyers can
edit their review, including the photograph, any number of times during that 100 day period.
On the rare occasion you receive an unfavorable review, you can reach out to the buyer or, if the review is less than 3 stars, leave a response.
Reviews and your response to reviews may not:
- Contain private information;
- Contain obscene, racist, or harassing language or imagery;
- Violate our Anti-Discrimination Policy;
- Contain prohibited medical drug claims;
- Contain advertising or spam;
- Be about things outside the seller’s control, such as a shipping carrier, Hmong Road or a third party;
- Contain threats or extortion;
- Include shilling or otherwise falsely inflate a shop’s review score; or
- Undermine the integrity of the Reviews system.
b. Hmong Road’s Case System
The Case system is how order disputes are resolved at Hmong Road. We ask buyers to contact sellers directly and attempt to resolve any outstanding issues before opening a case on Hmong Road. For this reason, it is important that you fill out your shop policies and regularly respond to Messages from your buyers. However, sometimes a case may be necessary, and Hmong Road will work with you and the buyer to resolve it as quickly as possible.
Buyers may file a case for a non-delivery or a not-as-described item (for more information on how we define these terms, click here). You must respond to any open cases within three days or the time frame noted by Hmong Road in the case. Hmong Road may request your assistance in resolving a case opened against your shop. Hmong Road reserves the right to escalate a case early for circumstances such as seller inactivity, harassment, refusal of service, case manipulation, and undermining the integrity of the case system.
By using Hmong Road’s case system, you understand that Hmong Road may use your personal information for the purpose of resolving disputes with other members.
For more information on cases and when an order might qualify for a case, please see this Help article. If Hmong Road determines that an item is not as described, you will be required to refund the order, including original shipping and return shipping.
c. Your Seller Account and Hmong Road’s Terms
In order to keep Hmong Road safe and improve our Services, we may take actions that limit the visibility of your shop, listings or ads, or that impact your payment account. In the event a shop sees unusual order activity, or we otherwise believe that your actions or shop may result in buyer disputes, chargebacks, increased risk of fraud, counterfeiting, or other claims, Hmong Road may take actions such as limiting visibility of your account, or placing restrictions or reserves on your payments account, in accordance with our Terms of Service, including this Policy and our Hmong Road Payments Policy. When appropriate and permitted by law, Hmong Road will communicate information to the affected seller about the issue.
In the event a shop sees an unusual spike in orders, particularly in a high demand category, a shop may see an increase or decrease in its search ranking. Often, if a shop sees an increase in fulfilled orders and good reviews, this may result in higher visibility and search rank. However, sometimes a rapid increase in orders can reduce visibility.
Read more about how Hmong Road search works, and what factors impact search ranking, and how you can help optimize your listings and shop here and in The Ultimate Guide to Hmong Road Search.
In addition, we may limit the visibility of listings or ads in the interest of keeping Hmong Road safe, and improving our Services. For example, listings or ads may have decreased visibility because they include terms that represent a prohibited item or based on third party policies. These listings or ads may also be restricted from appearing in one or more features of the Hmong Road Services. While these listings or ads may have limited visibility, they are still discoverable in search.
If Hmong Road has reason to believe you, Your Content, or your use of the Services violate our Terms, including this Seller Policy, we may deactivate Your Content or suspend or terminate your account (and any accounts Hmong Road determines is related to your account) and your access to the Services. Sellers in the European Union can see more information here. Generally, Hmong Road will notify you that Your Content or account has been suspended or terminated, unless you’ve repeatedly violated our Terms or we have legal or regulatory reasons preventing us from notifying you.
d. Seller Protection
Hmong Road also provides limited protection to sellers who meet the requirements of our Seller Protection Program. Read more about Hmong Road’s Seller Protection Program here.
Last updated on August 16, 2021