FAQ — how TechVentory works

A marketplace where appliance repair technicians sell spare parts sitting unused in their truck stock to other technicians — and, through eBay, to anyone. You list a part once; it can appear both on this site and on eBay at the same time, with eBay's shipping cost calculated automatically from your part's weight/size and your ship-from address.

Find a listing and hit Buy. Enter a shipping address, then either pay from your TechVentory balance instantly or pay by card through Stripe — shipping is calculated for real from the seller's actual package weight and size, not a flat guess. Your payment is held in escrow; the seller only gets paid out once delivery is confirmed, so you're covered if something never ships.

Dashboard → Orders lists everything you've bought and sold, with live status (paid, shipped, delivered, completed) and tracking once the seller ships. Message the seller directly from the listing or order if something's wrong — since payment is held until delivery, a real problem gets resolved before the seller is ever paid.

Dashboard → My listings → Add listing. Take a photo of the part's manufacturer sticker — the part number, brand, and appliance type get read automatically. Fill in condition, price, and quantity, add photos, and publish.

Connect your eBay account once (Dashboard → eBay). Every listing can then also be pushed to eBay — same title, price, and photos, with shipping cost calculated for real from the part's weight/dimensions and your address, not a flat rate. Marking something sold or updating its price keeps both sides in sync automatically.

Connect a bank account once (Dashboard → Orders prompts you the first time you have a sale waiting) via Stripe — the same one-time setup used across TechVentory for payouts. Once a buyer's delivery is confirmed, the held payment is released to your connected account automatically, minus TechVentory's commission.

Purely for your own organization — buyers never see them. A Location is a physical place you keep stock (your truck, garage, a warehouse); Shelves are the finer-grained bins within a Location. If you keep stock in more than one place, tagging each shelf with its Location also lets eBay calculate shipping from the right address when that listing sells.

Following bookmarks a seller so you can quickly get back to their listings. Part watchesis the opposite direction: search a part number that returns nothing, ask to be notified, and you'll get a push notification the moment anyone lists it.

For anyone who doesn't want to deal with writing listings or connecting eBay themselves. You keep the part, take two photos — one of the part number sticker, one of the part on a 1-inch grid sheet for size — enter the weight, and submit. We write up the actual listing, publish it to eBay under our account, and once it sells, we buy the shipping label and pay you your share.

One shared TechVentory balance (Dashboard → My Balance). Top it up with a card in any amount, then spend it instantly on part purchases or your Pro subscription without checking out separately each time. Every top-up, purchase, subscription payment, and refund shows up in your transaction history.

Pro unlocks eBay sync, Stock Lists (checklists of parts a Location should always have on hand, with low-stock alerts), and unlimited Locations. New accounts get a free trial automatically; after that it's a monthly or yearly subscription, payable by card or straight from your TechVentory balance (Dashboard → TechVentory Pro).

Optional. Submit your company name, W9, trade license, and liability insurance certificate (Dashboard → Verification) and our team reviews it manually. Once approved, your seller profile shows a Verified badge — those documents are never shown to other users, only our review team. If you're a solo technician, use your own name as the company name.