Terms of Service

About these terms

EstateMate is operated by Viissue, Inc., a Michigan corporation (“Viissue,” “we,” or “us”). EstateMate includes the EstateMate.org website, where estate sales are listed and items can be bought online for pickup, and the app sellers use to catalog, price, tag and sell items at a sale (the “Services”).

These terms apply to everyone who uses the Services. Some parts apply only to sellers (the estate-sale companies and people running a sale) and some only to shoppers. By creating an account, listing a sale, or buying an item, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you use the Services for a business, you agree for that business.

EstateMate is a marketplace and set of tools. The seller, not Viissue, sells each item. We don’t own, inspect, store or ship the items.

Sellers

Your account

You must be at least 18 to create an account. Give us accurate details and keep them up to date. Keep your password safe and turn on two-step sign-in if you can. You are responsible for what happens under your account, including by anyone you add to it. Tell us right away through Support if you think someone else has used it. The same account also signs you in to the app.

Plans, sale credits and refunds

What you pay depends on your plan, shown when you sign up and on your account’s billing page. A plan can include a price per sale, paid as a sale credit that is used when you create a sale, and a fee on each online sale. A sale you delete within a day of making it, before any item is added, gives its credit back. A plan billed monthly or yearly renews until you cancel. Refunds of what you pay us, including the 14-day refund on a first purchase and refunds of unused sale credits, follow our refund policy. We’ll give at least 30 days’ notice by email before a price or fee goes up; it doesn’t change what you’ve already paid for.

Listings and accurate descriptions

You, or the business you act for, are the seller of every item. You must have the right to sell it, and you must describe, photograph and price it honestly, including known damage or defects. A published sale shows its address, dates and hours to the public; only list a property you are allowed to open to shoppers. A published sale’s address can only be changed by asking us.

AI prices and descriptions are estimates

EstateMate uses AI and market data, such as current listings on eBay, to suggest names, descriptions, categories and prices from your photos. These are estimates to help you work faster, not appraisals. They can be wrong. You decide the final description and price, and you are responsible for them.

Online orders, holds and pickup

When a shopper buys an item online, it is held for them and you must keep it for them. The shopper pays your business directly, through your own Stripe account, and picks the item up at your sale with the code we email them, inside the pickup window you set for the sale (never shorter than our minimum). If the shopper doesn’t collect it in time, you may keep the payment and offer the item again. If the item is sold in person first, the shopper is refunded in full from your Stripe account, and we return our fee.

Refunds, disputes and chargebacks

You are the seller of record (the merchant) for every sale you make through EstateMate, online and at the sale. Refunds, disputes and chargebacks on your sales are yours, and are handled in your own Stripe account under your agreement with Stripe, including any amount Stripe takes back from you and the card processing fee Stripe keeps on a refund. You may refund an order at any time, from the app or from your Stripe Dashboard; when you refund an online order in full from the app, we return our fee on it. You answer disputes in your Stripe Dashboard; the pickup record in the app can help.

Fees

Unless your plan says otherwise, the fee on an online sale is 4% of the item’s price, capped at $20 per item. It is collected by Stripe from the shopper’s payment to you, as an application fee. Stripe charges you its own card processing fees directly, under your agreement with Stripe. There is no EstateMate fee on cash sales, and none on card payments you take at the sale unless your plan says otherwise.

Taxes and the law

You are responsible for collecting and paying any sales tax and other taxes on your sales, for permits and licences your sale needs, and for following the laws that apply to particular goods. Viissue does not collect or remit sales tax for you.

Your photos and content

You keep ownership of the photos, descriptions and other content you add. You give Viissue a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, copy, crop, resize, analyze and display that content to run the Services, including showing your sale and its items on EstateMate.org and in search results and links that point to it, and to promote EstateMate with your public listings. The licence for a listing ends when it is taken off the site, except for copies we must keep, such as order records. Only upload content you have the right to use. Don’t include people in photos without their permission, or personal papers, IDs or other private information of the family or estate.

Reports and take-downs

Anyone can report a sale on EstateMate.org. We review reports and may hide a photo, remove an item or listing, take a sale off the site, turn off online payments, or suspend selling when we reasonably believe it breaks these terms, the law, or our payment processor’s rules, or puts shoppers or Viissue at risk. Photos are checked automatically, and one that looks inappropriate is kept off the site. A sale we take down stays in your account and can still be run in the app; it returns to the site only after we clear it. Where we can, we’ll tell you why. If you think we got it wrong, contact Support.

Shoppers

You can browse sales without an account. When you buy an item online, you are buying it from the seller, not from Viissue. The seller is the merchant: your payment goes to the seller’s own Stripe account. Estate-sale items are sold as is: check the photos and description before you buy, and look the item over at pickup.

Pay through the checkout; your card statement shows the seller’s business name. Pick the item up at the sale with your pickup code inside the pickup window shown at checkout. If it isn’t collected in time, the seller may keep the payment. Refunds and disputes are handled by the seller, except that you are refunded in full automatically if the item sold in person first. The full rules are in our pickup and refund policy.

Behave safely and respectfully at sales and follow the seller’s rules for the property. The seller is responsible for the sale itself, including the property, its hours and what happens there.

If you see something on EstateMate.org that shouldn’t be there, use Report this listing on the sale.

Prohibited items

These can’t be sold online or paid for by card through EstateMate. Many are allowed by law at an in-person sale for cash; where they are, selling them is the seller’s responsibility, including any licences, age checks or transfer paperwork the law requires. EstateMate checks items as they are cataloged. An item that looks prohibited is marked cash only, is never shown on EstateMate.org, and can’t be paid for by card. If an item is marked by mistake, the seller can correct its photo or description and ask EstateMate to check it again. The check is a safeguard, not a guarantee.

Some can’t be sold through EstateMate at all, not even for cash: prescription medicine, illegal drugs and cannabis, live explosives and military ordnance, and counterfeit goods. EstateMate keeps them in the inventory as a record but won’t price them, ring them up or list them. Alcohol is treated the same way unless the seller tells us they hold a licence to sell it; then it’s cash only, and the licence is the seller’s responsibility.

• Firearms and ammunition: including antique guns, gun parts and magazines, and suppressors.
• Realistic toy or replica guns: including BB, pellet and airsoft guns that could pass for a real firearm.
• Weapons: swords, machetes, bayonets, stun guns, pepper spray, brass knuckles, switchblades and similar.
• Fireworks and explosives: including gunpowder, military ordnance and radioactive material.
• Alcohol: bottles or cans with contents; empty bottles and barware are fine.
• Prescription medicine and devices: medicine, syringes, and prescription devices such as CPAP machines and oxygen equipment.
• Tobacco and vapes: cigarettes, cigars, loose or chewing tobacco, e-cigarettes and e-liquid.
• Cannabis and drug items: cannabis, CBD and THC products, and drug paraphernalia.
• Adult material: pornographic magazines, videos and images, and sex toys.
• Bullion and loose stones: gold and silver bars, rounds and investment coins, and loose gemstones; ordinary jewelry is fine.
• Gift and prepaid cards: and anything else that holds stored money.
• Ivory and protected wildlife: real ivory, tusks, scrimshaw, rhino horn, real tortoiseshell, and protected birds or species.
• Counterfeit goods: knock-off designer goods and bootleg or pirated media.

Also prohibited: anything illegal where the seller or the buyer is, and everything on Stripe’s Prohibited and Restricted Businesses list, which applies to every card and online payment and which Stripe may change.

Payments

Card and online payments are processed by Stripe, on the seller’s own Stripe account. To take them, a seller sets up a Stripe account through EstateMate, or connects a Stripe account they already have, and agrees to the Stripe Services Agreement, which includes Stripe’s identity checks. That account is the seller’s, with Stripe; the seller can sign in to it at Stripe at any time. The seller authorizes Viissue to share information about them and their sales with Stripe, to create charges, refunds and card readers on their Stripe account for their sales, and to collect EstateMate’s fees from those charges as application fees, as these terms describe. Stripe pays the seller’s bank account on its schedule. At the sale, card payments can be taken by tapping a card on the seller’s phone, by typing it in, or by the shopper scanning a QR code to pay on their own phone. EstateMate never sees full card numbers.

Plans, sale credits and other purchases from EstateMate are processed by Stripe, with Viissue as the merchant.

Acceptable use

Don’t use the Services to break the law, mislead or defraud anyone, post content that is hateful, harassing, sexual or that you don’t have the right to use, or collect other people’s information. Don’t interfere with or try to break into the Services, scrape them in bulk, or get around their limits or checks.

Our property

The Services, the EstateMate name and logo, and the software behind them belong to Viissue. You may use them only as these terms allow.

Ending your account

You can delete your account from the app at any time. It is frozen for 30 days, during which it can be restored, and then permanently deleted, apart from records we must keep, such as payment and tax records. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Money owed to you or by you when an account ends is settled as these terms describe.

No warranties

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind. We don’t promise that the Services will always be available or error free, that AI suggestions are accurate, or anything about the items sellers offer.

Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Viissue is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, sales or data. We are not responsible for the items, their condition, their description or price, or what happens at a sale. Our total liability for any claim about the Services is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim and $100.

Your responsibility to us

If someone makes a claim against Viissue because of your listings, your sale, your content or your breach of these terms or the law, you will cover our reasonable costs and losses from that claim.

Disputes and governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes will be heard in the state or federal courts in Michigan, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring them there. Disputes between a shopper and a seller are between them; we may help, but we don’t have to.

Changes

We may update these terms. We’ll change the date above, and for a change that matters to sellers we’ll email them before it applies. Using the Services after a change means you accept it.

Contact

Questions? Contact us, or if you sell with EstateMate, use Support. By mail: Viissue, Inc., 2222 W Grand River Ave Ste A, Okemos, MI 48864.