Terms of use

SurplusYard is operated by:

Using the site means you accept these terms. If you don't, don't use it.

SurplusYard is a noticeboard. Sellers list surplus building materials, trade supplies; buyers find them and contact the seller directly.

We are not a party to any sale. We don't own the goods, don't inspect them, don't hold your money, don't handle delivery, and don't guarantee that anything listed exists, works, is legal to sell, or is as described. The contract of sale is between the buyer and the seller and nobody else.

That's not us dodging responsibility — it's what the site actually is, and knowing it should change how you behave. Inspect before you pay. Don't send a deposit to someone you haven't spoken to.

Signing in is a 6-digit code sent to your email address, with a link under it that does the same thing. Anyone with access to that inbox can sign in as you, so treat it accordingly. The code lasts 10 minutes and the link 20; using either one spends the other. Once you are in, the session lasts 60 days on that device, and you can end every session at once from your dashboard.

You must be at least 18. One person, one account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else is using yours.

By posting a listing you confirm that:

• the goods are yours to sell, and you're legally allowed to sell them;
• your description, quantity, size, condition and photos are accurate;
• the photos are yours, or you're entitled to use them;
• any price you give as the “new” price is a real price you can point to, not a number chosen to make the saving look bigger.

Some things can't be listed here regardless of who owns them:

• Asbestos and products containing it. Including bonded sheet, fibro, vinyl backing, pipe lagging and old roofing. If a product predates 2004 and you aren't certain, assume it may contain asbestos.
• Unsafe, non-compliant or recalled electrical goods. Anything without a current Australian approval, anything subject to a recall, and anything modified from how it was approved.
• Goods requiring a licence you don't hold. Some gas, electrical and plumbing components can only be sold or supplied by a licensed person.
• Stolen goods. It has to be yours to sell.
• Anything whose sale is restricted under Australian law. Building products carry real safety obligations, and some materials that were legal to install are not legal to resell.

Building products carry real safety obligations — if you don't know whether something can be resold, find out before you list it. The obligation to know sits with you.

If you list a plant, a shrub or a tree, four more things apply. They are shown again on the posting form, and you confirm them there:

• Nothing on a weed list. Declared weeds and invasive species are illegal to sell or give away, and the list differs by state and sometimes by council. Check yours before listing.
• No plant you know to be diseased or infested. Myrtle rust, phytophthora, scale, borer. If you have seen a problem, either say so plainly in the description or don't list it.
• Interstate movement is the two of you to sort out. Fruit fly zones and state quarantine rules restrict which plants and soil can cross a border, and in some cases which can leave a region. We don't check, and a listing appearing here is not permission to move it.
• Say who does the digging. An established tree usually means machinery, and can mean a permit — many councils protect trees over a certain size, including on private land. Agree who lifts it, who pays, and who is responsible for the hole.

Weed declarations, quarantine zones and tree protection rules are set by states and councils, not by us, and they differ across a border or a council boundary. We have no way to check which ones apply to either of you, and a listing appearing on this site is not a finding that moving the plant is lawful.

Every listing is checked automatically against the rules above before it appears, and some are held for a person to look at. That check reads what the seller wrote — it cannot inspect the goods, and it will not catch something described in different words. Nothing here has been inspected or verified by us, and a listing appearing on this site is not us saying it is safe or accurate. We remove listings when we become aware of a problem.

To be specific about what that check is and is not. It reads the title, description and notes on every listing and compares them against the restrictions above and a list of patterns associated with unsafe or fraudulent goods. Where it finds something it refuses the listing outright, or holds it out of sight until one of us has looked at it. It runs again whenever a listing is edited.

It cannot look at the goods, and it only sees the words the seller chose. A product that contains asbestos and is described as “old wall lining” passes it. A recalled appliance listed by model number with no mention of the recall passes it. It will also stop listings that were perfectly fine, which is why a person reviews everything it holds. Do not treat a listing appearing here as any evidence that it is safe, legal, or what it says it is. Inspect goods before you pay for them.

Before a listing goes up you confirm, by name, that you have read these terms and that none of the above applies to what you're posting. That confirmation is recorded against the listing with the date and the version of these terms you agreed to.

You keep ownership of what you post. You give us permission to display it on the site and in search results, which is the only thing we do with it.

Listing and selling are free. There is no subscription, no listing fee, no success fee and no percentage of the sale price. Whatever a buyer pays you is yours.

Until 30 August 2026 a flat $5 fee was payable when a seller marked an item sold. That fee no longer applies. Any amount outstanding at that date was written off and is not payable. Fees already paid are not refunded — they were charged for a service that was described and provided.

Two optional paid features exist, and you never have to buy either:

• Highlighting — a one-off payment that changes how your listing looks for a set number of days. It does not change where your listing appears in results.
• Promotion — a monthly subscription that shows your listing first among results it already matches. It cannot place your listing in results it does not match, and it does not reorder results a buyer has explicitly sorted by price, distance or date. Cancel any time; it runs to the end of the period you have paid for.

Both are labelled to buyers as paid. Payments are taken by card through Stripe; we don't see or store your card details.

If a listing you have paid to highlight or promote is sold, withdrawn, or removed by us, that paid feature ends with it. A subscription stops being billed; a one-off payment is not automatically refunded, and you should contact us if you think you are out of pocket.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) or any other law that can't be excluded by agreement. Where we're permitted to limit our liability, we limit it to resupplying the service or paying the cost of doing so.

Where a seller is acting in trade, the consumer guarantees apply to the goods they sell you — from them, not from us.

We may remove a listing, or close an account, without notice, if someone is misrepresenting goods, posting things they can't sell, harvesting other people's contact details, scraping the site, abusing another user, or trying to route around the fee.

Contact details revealed on this site are for contacting that seller about that item. Using them for marketing, adding them to a list, or passing them on is a breach of these terms and, depending on what you do with them, of the Spam Act and the Privacy Act as well.

We'll try to keep the site up and the data intact, but we don't promise either. Take your own copy of anything you'd be upset to lose.

We may change these terms. Material changes will be posted here with a new effective date, and continuing to use the site after that means you accept them. Changes never apply retrospectively to a fee already incurred.

These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, and both sides submit to the courts of that place.

If something has gone wrong, email jjessop@gmail.com first. Most things are fixable in a message.

See also our privacy policy, which explains what we do with your information.