Questions people actually ask

No. Buyers never pay SurplusYard anything — no fee, no commission, no membership. You pay the seller for the goods, directly.

Because the alternative is publishing sellers' phone numbers on an open web page, where they get harvested within days.

It costs an email address and about fifteen seconds: we send a 6-digit code, you type it into the same page, the number appears. No password, no fee, and the seller never gets your address. Once an item is marked sold the details close again.

Look at the badge next to the price. A minus sign means the new price came from the retailer's own page or from the seller. A tilde means it's an estimate, and we don't dress an estimate up as a verified saving.

Either way the honest check is the garage-sale one: look at it before you hand over money.

No. There is no escrow and no buyer protection scheme. SurplusYard is a noticeboard — we don't hold your money, inspect the goods or arrange the handover, and the contract of sale is between you and the seller.

So: inspect it before you pay, meet somewhere sensible, and don't transfer a deposit to someone you haven't spoken to. A seller pushing you to pay sight-unseen is the moment to walk away.

Nothing. Listing is free, selling is free, no commission. A $60 box of tiles and a $2,000 pallet of pavers both cost you nothing.

Two optional extras cost money: you can highlight a listing so it stands out where it already is, or promote it so it shows first in results it already appears in. Both are labelled as paid.

Sellers who want a listing seen can pay to highlight or promote it. Beyond that we're working on referrals — when nobody here has what you need, pointing you at somewhere that does, and being paid for the introduction.

What we don't do: sell your details, sell your listing data, or take a cut of what you sell for. If any of that changes you'll be told plainly, on this page, before it does.

A title, a price, a suburb, one photo, and ticking the terms. Quantity, size and a description are worth adding and are optional.

You don't have to type most of it. Photograph the box and the brand, size, colour, SKU and batch code get read off it — or paste the retailer's product link and the details come across from the shop's own page.

No. It's shown only to buyers who are signed in and who ask for it on your listing, and it closes once the item is sold. It never appears on a page a search engine can read.

Yes, and it costs a business exactly what it costs anyone else: nothing. Note that if you're selling in trade, the consumer guarantees under Australian Consumer Law apply to what you sell — from you, not from us.

No — we don't touch the goods at all. Sellers say how they're willing to hand something over: pickup, local drop-off, courier, or freight for anything on a pallet. You arrange it between you.

So the heavy things near you come first. A pallet of pavers three states away isn't a useful result.

Type a suburb or postcode, or share coordinates — shared coordinates are rounded before storage: accurate enough to sort a list, not enough to identify a house. Clearing it from the header forgets it entirely.

Email hello@surplusyard.com.au with the listing link and what's wrong with it. There's no report button on listings yet — it goes to a person, and that person reads it.

Listings get removed and accounts get closed for misrepresenting goods, selling things that can't legally be sold second-hand, harvesting contact details, or pushing people to pay off-site.

Anything you're legally allowed to. Not: goods that aren't yours, anything recalled, and materials with their own rules — asbestos-containing products, and certain electrical and gas fittings that can't be resold or installed second-hand.

If you aren't sure, check before you list it. The obligation sits with the seller.

You sign in with a 6-digit code emailed to you. The same email carries a link you can tap instead. Either works once, and using one cancels the other; the code lasts 10 minutes and the link 20. You stay signed in on that device for 60 days, and can end every session at once from your dashboard.

The trade-off worth knowing: anyone with access to your inbox can sign in as you. That's true of password resets too, but here it's the whole mechanism.

Yes. Email hello@surplusyard.com.au and we'll delete the account and its data. You can also ask for a copy of what we hold, or have something corrected — the privacy policy covers what that is.

No. SurplusYard is Australian only, prices are in Australian dollars, and the distance sorting, postcodes and consumer law all assume it.