Buyer protection
The Botsdex Guarantee
Every robot on Botsdex is sold by an independent seller. This is what we guarantee about their delivery and their condition, whoever you buy from.
1.What it covers
You are buying a machine that arrives on a truck, in a crate, often from another country. The Botsdex Guarantee covers the two things that can go wrong between a seller taking your money and you switching a robot on: it does not arrive, or what arrives is not what you bought.
It applies to every order on Botsdex, from every seller. A seller cannot shorten it, waive it, or contract out of it, and declaring a listing final sale does not affect it. If a robot arrives smashed, “final sale” is not an answer.
2.When you can claim
You can raise a claim when all of these are true:
- You paid through Botsdex. Orders arranged off-platform are not covered, which is one of the reasons we ask you to keep the conversation here.
- It is within 180 days of delivery (or, for a rental, of the last day of your booking). Safety and fraud have no deadline at all.
- You messaged the seller first, then started a resolution request that gave them 48 hours to make an offer. Most problems are a shipping mistake and the seller fixes them faster than we can.
If the clock has not started because we never recorded a delivery, the window is not running against you. We will not tell you a deadline passed on a milestone we never observed.
3.What you get back
When a claim is upheld you are refunded in full: the price of the robot, the shipping you paid to receive it, and the cost of sending it back. Our own commission comes back with it, because we are paid for a sale that worked.
| What went wrong | Robot price | Shipping you paid | Return shipping |
|---|---|---|---|
| It never arrivedThe delivery date has passed, or tracking shows delivered and nothing arrived, and the seller has not resolved it. | Refunded | Refunded | Not applicable |
| It arrived damagedThe robot or its crate was damaged in transit. Photograph the crate before you unpack it, and the unit before you power it on. | Refunded | Refunded | Refunded |
| It is not what was listedThe machine materially differs from the listing: a different model or configuration, missing declared capabilities, or condition that does not match what was stated. | Refunded | Refunded | Refunded |
| It is unsafeThe robot presents a safety risk to your people or your site. Stop using it and tell us. Always open, with no deadline. | Refunded | Refunded | Refunded |
| FraudThe seller took payment in bad faith, or the machine or its provenance is not genuine. Always open, with no deadline. | Refunded | Refunded | Refunded |
| Something elseAnything the categories above do not cover. What is owed depends on what happened, so this one is decided case by case rather than by the table. | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Return shipping is the seller’s cost on every one of these, not yours. The seller chose the crate, the packing and the carrier, so the freight to undo a failure sits with the party who could have prevented it. You never arrange a return at your own expense to prove a robot arrived broken.
“Something else” carries no table entry on purpose. It is a way to reach us about a problem the rows above do not describe, and what is owed depends on what happened. Promising a refund for an unnamed problem would be a promise we could not keep evenly.
4.How to claim
Open the order in your account and message the seller. That starts a record we can read later, which is why it matters more than a phone call.
- Tell the seller. Describe the problem and what you want. Photograph the crate before you unpack it and the robot before you power it on, every time. On a damage claim those photographs are usually the whole case.
- Give them 48 hours. Most claims end here, with the seller sorting it out directly.
- Escalate to Botsdex.If they have not resolved it, the “Report a problem” option on the order opens a formal claim. We read the order, the messages and the evidence from both sides.
A person decides, not a rule engine. At these amounts an automatic refund button would be a fraud vector pointed at the seller, and a purely automatic denial would be one pointed at you. We will ask both sides for what we need and tell you what we decided and why.
If you ask your bank or card provider for a chargeback on the same order, that becomes the process instead of this one. We cannot run both, and your bank’s decision overrides ours.
5.Changing your mind
This is a different thing, and it is the seller’s to decide. A robot configured for one buyer’s production line often cannot be resold as new, so many listings here are final sale. That is legitimate, and it is why we do not pretend otherwise with a blanket returns window.
What we do require is that you know before you pay. Every listing must state its returns terms, and a seller cannot publish without answering. You will find the answer on the product page under “Buy with confidence”, next to the price, not buried in a policy you discover afterwards.
Four things make up a seller’s terms, and each one is shown on the listing:
- The window. How many days after delivery you have to change your mind, not days after you ordered. A machine that spends six weeks on a ship does not eat your window. Zero days means final sale.
- A restocking fee, if the seller charges one. It is a percentage of the robot’s price, withheld from your refund, and we cap it at 30%. A fee that could take most of the money back is not a restocking fee, and it is not something you can meaningfully agree to from a product page.
- Who pays return shipping.On a change of mind this is the seller’s choice and it is usually you. Freight on a crated robot is not a postage label, so read this one before you buy rather than after.
- Their conditions, in their words. Typically the original crate, the original packing, and a limit on operating hours. A return that ignores them can be refused.
To start one, open the order in your account and message the seller. Change-of-mind returns are arranged between you and them; we are not the counterparty and we do not overrule their stated terms. Where we do step in is everything in the table above, which no seller’s terms can touch.
None of this applies to rentals and leases, where the robot goes back at the end of the booking by design. That return is part of the agreement, not a change of mind, and the listing sets out how it works.
6.What it does not cover
- Change of mind, which is governed by the seller’s stated policy on the listing.
- Wear, damage or faults you caused after taking delivery, including damage from operating the robot outside the conditions the seller documented.
- Ordinary servicing and consumables.A machine needing maintenance is not a machine that was mis-sold; that is the seller’s warranty and support, shown separately on the listing.
- Business losses from downtime, lost output or a missed deadline. We refund what you paid for the robot and its freight, not what you hoped to earn with it.
- Anything bought or paid for off Botsdex, even with a seller you first found here.
7.If you are a seller
This guarantee is not a refund button a buyer can press. Every claim reaches you first, and you get 48 hours to resolve it before it can be escalated. If it is escalated, a person reviews it and you are asked for your account before anything is decided.
What the guarantee does mean is that the cost of a delivery or condition failure lands on you rather than on the buyer, including the freight both ways. Crate accordingly, describe accurately, and state your returns terms honestly. The three together are most of what separates a seller who gets claims from one who does not.