Last updated: 19 September 2026
In short: you buy from the vendor, not from Stallspace. Your money goes straight to them and your return is arranged with them. South African law gives you a set of rights that no vendor on this marketplace may take away, and they are set out below. If a vendor will not honour them, tell us.
Stallspace is a marketplace. Each storefront is an independent business that sets its own prices, holds its own stock and is the seller of record for everything it lists. Payment goes directly from you to that vendor — Stallspace never receives or holds your money, and never stores your card details.
One consequence matters for refunds. Stallspace never received your money, so a refund is always paid out of the vendor's own account and is always the vendor's decision. Where the vendor uses PayFast, they can start that refund from their Stallspace dashboard and we pass the instruction to PayFast using the vendor's own merchant credentials. Stallspace cannot decide to refund you, and cannot refund you if the vendor will not.
Before the vendor has dispatched it. You may cancel any order at any point before it ships, for any reason, at no charge. Contact the vendor through the enquiry form on their storefront, or the email address or phone number they publish, and quote your order number. If you have already paid, the vendor cancels the order and refunds you in full, including the delivery fee. No cancellation or restocking fee may be charged on an order that has not been dispatched.
After it has shipped. An order already on its way cannot be cancelled, but the seven-day right in section 3 below lets you return it once it arrives.
If the vendor cancels. A vendor may cancel your order if the item turns out to be out of stock, or if they cannot deliver to your address. They must tell you why, and they must refund you in full within 30 days, as section 46 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act requires. A vendor may also cancel where the listed price contained an obvious error that they have since corrected and taken reasonable steps to publicise, which is the narrow allowance in section 23(9) of the Consumer Protection Act. A vendor may not cancel simply because they would prefer a higher price. You are never left paid-up against an order that will not be filled.
If delivery runs late. A vendor must deliver within the timeframe published on their storefront, or, where they publish none, within 30 days of your order. If they miss the 30 days, section 46 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act lets you cancel with seven days' written notice and take a full refund. If they miss their own shorter published window, you may require delivery at the agreed time, accept a later date, or cancel without penalty where the timing mattered, under section 19 of the Consumer Protection Act. Our Delivery Policy sets out the timeframes.
How long a refund takes. Vendors refund to the method you paid with. Where a vendor collected payment by card through their payment gateway, the refund is returned the same way and normally reflects within five to ten business days once the vendor has processed it, depending on your bank. Every vendor on Stallspace must start a refund within five business days of agreeing to it. Where you cancelled under the seven-day online cooling-off right, section 44(3) of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act gives the vendor 30 days from the cancellation as the outside limit. Where you returned goods under the Consumer Protection Act, or cancelled before dispatch, the Act requires the refund within a reasonable time and our five-business-day rule applies.
Because you are buying online, section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act gives you seven days from delivery to cancel for any reason at all, without penalty and without giving a reason. You return the goods; the vendor refunds you within 30 days of the cancellation.
You pay the cost of sending the goods back, and the goods must be returned in the condition you received them. Section 42(2) of the Act excludes some transactions from this right. The ones most likely to come up on Stallspace are goods made to your specification or clearly personalised, goods that by their nature cannot be returned or that deteriorate or expire quickly, food and drink and other everyday consumables delivered to your home or workplace, audio or video recordings and computer software that you have unsealed, newspapers and magazines and books, and services for a specific date or period such as catering or an event. A vendor must say clearly on the product page when an item falls into one of these categories.
Separately, and for longer, section 56 of the Consumer Protection Act gives you six months from delivery to return goods that are defective, unsafe, not durable, or not fit for the purpose they are ordinarily used for. You may ask for a repair, a replacement or a refund, and the choice is yours, not the vendor's.
The vendor bears the cost of that return. This right cannot be signed away by a general disclaimer. A vendor may sell an item in a stated condition, such as a second-hand item with a described fault. For that to bind you, the vendor must have told you about that specific defect before you bought and you must have expressly agreed to take the item as it is. Even then the item must still be usable and durable for a reasonable period, and the six-month right applies to every other defect.
If goods do not match their description, sample or the specification you ordered, you may refuse delivery or return them, and the vendor carries the cost of doing so.
Vendors are required to respond to a return request within five business days.
Some vendors let you place an order and pay when you collect it. Until you have paid and taken the goods, you may cancel at any time at no cost — there is nothing to refund. Once you have collected and paid, the rights in sections 3 to 5 above apply as normal.
If a vendor delivers goods you did not order, you do not have to pay for them and you do not have to send them back. Section 21 of the Consumer Protection Act treats them as unsolicited goods, and they become yours if the supplier does not collect them within the periods the Act sets.
If you paid by card and believe a charge was not authorised by you, raise it with your bank. Where a dispute is simply about a late or unsatisfactory order, please try the vendor and then us first. A chargeback filed before anyone has had the chance to fix the problem costs the vendor a fee whatever the outcome, and the steps above usually settle it faster.
Email us at support@stallspace.co.za with your order number and what has happened. We cannot refund you ourselves, but we can take it up with the vendor, and persistent failure to honour these rights is grounds for us removing a vendor from the marketplace.
You may also take a complaint to the National Consumer Commission, or to a recognised consumer goods ombud, independently of us.
Every vendor accepted onto Stallspace agrees to honour the rights above as a minimum. A vendor may offer a more generous policy — a longer exchange window, free return shipping — and many do. None may offer less.
This page summarises rights given by the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002. It is a plain-language summary, not legal advice, and the Acts themselves prevail where this page is unclear or incomplete.