Here is the uncomfortable thing about buying from a small maker: the trust runs almost entirely one way.
You pay first. They post it. If it never turns up, or it turns up broken, or it turns up and it is not what was on the table — you are the one holding nothing, and they are the one holding your money. The seller is not a villain in this story. Most are not. But "most" is doing a lot of work in a sentence about your rent money.
So the money waits
When you pay, the money goes to us, not to the seller. It is released after the item has reached you.
That single arrangement removes most of the fear from the transaction, and it does something less obvious too: it is good for the seller. A maker with no reviews and no following is otherwise asking a stranger to take a risk on them. They are not, now. The risk sits with us.
When something is wrong
Take photographs — of the item and the packaging, before you tidy anything away. Then Orders → the order → Raise issue.
A person reads it. We answer within 48 hours. Not a bot, not a form that closes itself after seven days of silence.
Most cases are not fraud. They are a courier, a misjudged wrap, a glaze that read differently on a phone screen. Those have obvious answers and we get to them quickly. The rarer case — somebody who took money and sent nothing — is why the money was never theirs to take.
What this is not
It is not a promise that you will love everything. Taste is not a dispute, and a maker who did exactly what they said they would is owed their money.
It is not an unlimited window. The protection is for the journey from their table to your door, and it ends when you have the thing and it is what it was.
Read the full terms on buyer protection, or see what a maker keeps at the other end of the same transaction.