Who you are buying from
Every listing names its seller. The contract of sale is between you and that seller. The Aqua Guide collects the payment, holds the record of the order, and processes refunds — so if something goes wrong, you deal with us and we deal with them.
Cancelling an order
- Before the seller accepts it, you can cancel the order yourself from your orders page, for any reason. Anything you have paid is refunded in full.
- After it is accepted but before it ships, ask the seller through the message thread on the order. Most will agree.
- Once it has shipped, it becomes a return rather than a cancellation — see below.
- A seller may cancel an order they cannot fulfil. If they do, you are refunded in full, automatically.
Returns
You have seven days from delivery to open a return. The window is measured from the day the parcel arrives, not the day you ordered — a slow courier does not eat into your time.
You can open a return for any of these reasons:
- It arrived damaged.
- Livestock arrived dead.
- It is not as described.
- The wrong item was sent.
- It never arrived.
- You changed your mind.
- Something else — tell us what.
Who pays to send it back. If something was wrong with the order — damaged, dead on arrival, not as described, the wrong item, or it never came — you are refunded in full and pay nothing. If you are returning it because you changed your mind, the seller's return postage comes out of the refund. You are shown that figure before you confirm, and it cannot change afterwards. Many sellers charge nothing.
Before it is sent. While an order is still waiting to be dispatched you can simply cancel it from your orders page, and anything you have paid is refunded in full with nothing deducted.
You can attach up to three photos, or a video. For damage and for livestock losses, please record it before you do anything else — ideally in the unopened bag. An hour later the evidence no longer exists, and without it a seller has only your word and their own to weigh.
Livestock that arrived dead
This one claim needs a photo or a video, and it needs to have been taken at the right moment. Film the sealed bag and then the fish within an hour of the parcel arriving — or within four hours of collecting it, where the livestock came by bus, train or air cargo and you picked it up from a counter — and upload the original file from your camera roll. We read the recording time the camera saved inside the file and compare it to the delivery — so a clip sent through WhatsApp first will not work, because those apps strip that time out on the way.
Tell us the parcel arrived, using the button on your order, as soon as it does. That records the delivery time from your own phone rather than from a courier update written at the end of the day, and it is what your video is measured against. Both you and the seller see what we found in the file. It is a guide, not proof — the check can be fooled and honest files sometimes carry no time at all — so nobody's claim is refused on that alone.
Live animals and plants
Livestock is the one category where a return usually cannot mean sending it back. A fish that has been in your water cannot go back into the seller's system without risking their whole stock, so a successful livestock claim is settled as a refund or a replacement, not a physical return.
Losses in transit happen even when everybody does everything right. Report them within the return window with a photo and the seller will normally refund or replace. Losses that occur after acclimatisation are not usually the seller's responsibility — water parameters, tank mates and cycling are outside their control.
What we cannot refund
- Items you have changed your mind about after they have been delivered alive and as described, unless the seller offers it.
- Livestock losses reported after the return window has closed.
- Damage caused after delivery — including losses following acclimatisation into an uncycled or unsuitable tank.
- Services already performed, such as a completed aquascape.
How a refund is paid
- Refunds go back to the original payment method. We cannot redirect one to a different card or account.
- We start the refund as soon as the return is approved. Your bank or card issuer then takes its own time — typically five to seven working days, occasionally longer.
- Delivery charges are refunded when the fault was the seller's — damage, a wrong item, a non-delivery. They are not usually refunded on a change of mind.
- Where a payment could not be reversed automatically, an administrator sends it by hand. It is tracked either way; nothing is written off quietly.
- Every refund produces a credit note, which appears under the invoice on your order and prints with it. It names the invoice it reduces and shows how much of the refund was tax. If you bought on a business GSTIN, that is the document your accountant needs.
If you are not happy with the outcome
A seller can refuse a return, and they have to give a reason. If you think the refusal is wrong, reply on the return and ask us to look at it — our support team can overrule a seller's decision, and does where the evidence supports it.
Sellers
When a refund is issued, the amount comes back out of the seller's wallet, and the commission The Aqua Guide charged on that order is returned too. Nobody keeps a share of a sale that did not stand.
Contact
Questions about a specific order are fastest through the message thread on the order itself. For anything else, use the contact form and quote your order reference.