When you find someone on the Internet with whom you arrange a good deal to trade your cards, there is often the problem of the distance as you both live far from each other. In these cases the exchange is normally performed through the postal mail whereby each one sends their cards to the other.
But, even though most people behave in good faith, there are always those who try to take advantage of these situations, or who simply get delayed in sending their cards, or they just even forget, out of laziness or carelessness. In any case, you never have any guarantee that you will receive the cards you agreed in exchange for the ones you send.

At Trade Cards Online we have developed a system to avoid all these problems when exchanging cards through the mail. Here we answer the most frequent questions about this new Protected Trade Service.

How is a Protected Trade performed?

The basic procedure is as follows:

• Two users of Trade Cards Online reach an agreement concerning the cards they want to trade.
• One of them (user A) initiates a Protected Trade on our web and enters the data for it (the cards each user has to send, and whether they want to exchange any amount of money).
• The other user (user B) review the entered data and accepts the Trade.
• Both parties in the Trade send their cards to Trade Cards Online, to our postal address in Huelva, Spain, or in Texas, USA, whichever they choose.
• After receiving both deliveries, we check that the cards are the agreed ones, and only then we send them to their new owners.
• If one of the parties of the Trade does not send the agreed cards in a specified period of time, the cards that the other party had sent for the Trade are returned to them. The user who did not meet the agreement without a reasonable explanation is banned from the use of this service, to prevent further inconveniences to other users.
• This way, you get the assurance that you either receive the cards you wanted, or you at least do not lose the cards you send.

At any moment you will be able to check the status of the Protected Trades in which you participate, accessing them in our web.

Can I use this service to buy and sell cards?

Yes, this service may be used to protect an arrangement to buy and sell cards the same way that it protects a card trade. When creating a Protected Trade, the option is given to specify a money exchange between the participants besides the exchange of cards, so that a purchase is just the case in which one of the users (the buyer) does not provide cards to the Trade, but transfers money to the other user (the seller). This way you can safely buy and sell cards through the Internet with the assurance that you will not be cheated or lose your money or your cards.

How much does this service cost?

This service implies a shipping cost (to send the cards from Trade Cards Online to their new or old owners), and a processing fee, that you will need to pay for the Trade to be processed successfully.

The processing fees by user and Trade is just 1€ (or 1 US$). The shipping costs depend on the country to which we have to send your cards, and on the amount of these. You will be able to see the associated costs of a Protected Trade at any moment, including before you initiate or accept it.

How is the payment for this service satisfied?

The payment for these costs will be made from an account that will be opened for you on the site automatically. You will need to deposit enough money in it. At any moment you will be able to access your account in our web and see all the movements performed in it. You can also request money refunds from your account, with certain limitations.

To deposit money in your account you can do it following the methods detailed here.

Every amount of money we receive at Trade Cards Online will be deposited into your account and used to pay for your Protected Trades. This way, if you deposit, for example, 5 Euro, you will be able to perform several Trades, depending on the associated costs, without sending more money, until your account balance runs out.