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Accepting an offer starts a trade and holds both sides’ items until it resolves. Each side marks its own steps: add tracking, mark sent, confirm received. When both sides confirm, the trade completes. Depending on your subreddit’s settings, your trade count in flair goes up or the confirmation comment its bot reads gets posted. The tab splits into Open and Resolved and opens on the live half. A trade is the one record with no Reddit artefact of its own. Your listing is a post and your negotiation is a comment thread, but a trade is only announced by a reply. What outlives it is that comment and your flair.

The steps

Each side marks its own half. Confirm received is the only step that is a claim about the other side, and it is what replaces the “+1 confirmed trade” comment convention these subreddits run on. Where your side stakes no items the send button reads Mark payment sent. Adding tracking is optional and does not have to come first. It stays available for the whole open trade, so a number that arrives late can still go on and a typo can be fixed. You see the other side’s confirmation as soon as they make it. Nothing is hidden until you have moved.

Tracking

Pick a carrier and type the number. USPS, FedEx, UPS and Other, up to 64 characters. The number is a label, not a link. Trade Post never looks it up, and there is a copy button beside it for pasting into the carrier’s own site. Letters, digits, spaces and hyphens only, which covers every carrier’s format. The field is not a message box: it is the one thing you type here that the other side sees without it being posted to Reddit, so it is kept to the shape of a tracking number. Message on the same card opens Reddit’s own composer if you have something to say.

The deadline

A trade nobody finishes closes itself. Your subreddit sets the deadline, and the clock restarts whenever either side does something. If it runs out, the trade closes, both sides’ goods are freed, and a notice goes in the thread. Each card says who owes what and when it is due, and turns red once it is overdue. The deadline is copied onto the trade when the offer is accepted, so a moderator changing the subreddit’s window does not move a trade already running. Going silent is inferred from that deadline, and your subreddit decides whether it counts against you.

Backing out

Back out is available while nothing has been sent. Once either side marks their half sent, the trade has to run to its deadline instead. A reason is required, up to 500 characters, and the reply quotes it. It ends the trade and frees both sides’ items. It counts against you where your subreddit records back-outs.

Feedback

Where your subreddit runs its own confirmation bot, a completed trade offers a button to post the line that bot reads, with your feedback underneath. Up to 500 characters, required. Whoever posts first gets the top-level comment and the other replies to it. The button is available for 14 days after the trade resolves. Trade Post keeps the id of the comment, not your words. Reddit owns those the moment they land.

Messaging the other trader

Message sits next to Thread on every trade card, open or resolved. It opens Reddit’s own message composer with the listing title and a link to the thread already filled in, and you write the rest. Send it from your own account, the way you would any Reddit message. This is where addresses and payment handles are exchanged. Trade Post does not store them and never sees the message. What is kept.

What happens to your items

An item marked sent stays traded when a trade closes at its deadline, because it left. Everything else goes back to available.

Notes

  • A trade record lasts 45 days, fixed from when it started. Your subreddit’s deadline can never land outside that. See what is kept.
  • Nobody arbitrates. Both of you say what happened and the app keeps the record.