Buying something on
Facebook Marketplace?

A $300 box trailer deposit. A friend found a trailer on a popular marketplace. The seller said other people were interested and asked for a deposit to hold it until the following week. He sent $300. When he called to arrange collection, the phone number was inactive. The seller was gone.

A Christmas gift that never arrived. Our son ordered a large stuffed toy from an overseas marketplace. He was told there was a backlog and that it would ship in six weeks. Seven weeks later, the company had disappeared after taking orders for months.

Glasses that were nothing like the advertisement. I bought expensive glasses advertised as cutting-edge AI translation and multi-focus glasses. What arrived was a pair of cheap plastic glasses that looked like something you could buy for $19 at a garage sale. A promised refund or store credit never arrived.

An $800 electric bike — and an empty box. Another friend ordered an electric bike overseas and watched the tracking for weeks. On delivery day, a small empty cardboard box arrived.

Those experiences led to a simple question: how can this be stopped, or at least how can people better protect their hard-earned money?

This is how Deposit Guardian was born. We are using modern technology to build a simpler transaction process designed to help protect buyers while also being fair to honest sellers and legitimate businesses.