Disputes, fraud flags and overrides

Auctions have extra safeguards because money and fairness are at stake. This page covers the four tools: disputes, fraud flags, overrides and the audit trail.

Disputes #

A dispute freezes a purchase while you sort out a problem. It can be opened by the buyer (from their purchase page), by your staff, or by the card processor (a chargeback).

While a dispute is open, the purchase cannot settle, take payments or be cancelled, and the unit's photos are kept.

Open a dispute #

1. Open Auctions › Auction purchases and select the purchase.
2. Under Problems, select Open a dispute.
3. Choose what it is About: not as described, title or paperwork, payment, fees or taxes, pickup or delivery, a claimed bidding error, or other.
4. Write a Summary and select Open dispute.

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1. Who cancels. For a cancellation: the buyer (or nonpayment) or the dealership.
2. Policy reason. Cancellations use only the reasons in your published policy.
3. Dispute reason. What the dispute is about.
4. Summary. What happened, in a few sentences.

Work and resolve a dispute #

1. Open Auctions › Auction disputes. Select Show resolved to see closed ones.
2. Open the dispute.
3. Add evidence or notes. Entries cannot be edited later.
4. Choose a Resolution: for the dealership (the sale proceeds), for the buyer, withdrawn, or, for chargebacks, won or lost.
5. Write an explanation (it is sent to the buyer) and select Resolve.

Resolving puts the purchase back where it was before the dispute and releases the photo hold.

Fraud and risk flags #

MotoDealerHQ watches for warning signs and raises a flag for a person to review. It never blocks a bidder on its own.

Flags are raised for:

• duplicate accounts (the same verified mobile, or a browser shared by two or more other accounts),
• bidders sharing a device or network in the same auction (a possible shill-bidding sign),
• bid flooding,
• matches with your staff (affiliation),
• chargebacks.

To review flags:

1. Open Auctions › Fraud flags. The tabs show Open, Dismissed and Actioned flags.
2. Read the flag and open the bidder or auction it links to.
3. Type a review note, then select Dismiss (no problem) or Actioned (you acted, for example by suspending the bidder).

IP addresses and device fingerprints are stored only in a scrambled (hashed) form.

Overrides: two people for sensitive actions #

Three actions always need two people:

• cancelling an auction that has bids,
• extending an auction's end time,
• reinstating a banned bidder.

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1. Action. What you want to do. Pick the auction or banned bidder, and for an extension, the minutes.
2. Reason code. Why.
3. Explanation. Required, at least 10 characters.
4. Second approver. Requests waiting for someone else.

To request and approve:

1. Open Auctions › Overrides, fill in the form and select Request.
2. A different person with override permission opens the same page within 24 hours, adds a note and selects Approve or Reject.
3. On approval, the action runs at once and both names are recorded.

You cannot approve your own request; the page shows "Waiting for a second approver".

The audit trail #

Every auction event is kept in an append-only log. Each entry includes a fingerprint (hash) of the entry before it, so any edit, deletion or reordering is detected. Nobody can edit or delete entries through the console.

• On each auction page, Tamper-evident event log shows that auction's events and "Integrity check passed".
• Audit trail (from the auctions dashboard) shows dealership-wide events such as bidder decisions, settings changes and overrides, and checks every chain.
• Once a day, a summary of every chain is copied to MotoDealerHQ's platform audit log, outside your dealership's reach.

Tips #

• Treat flags as prompts, not verdicts. Check the bidder's history before acting.
• Write clear notes. Notes, decisions and evidence are permanent.

Permissions #

Limitations #