Terms of use

LotSpot is an online auction marketplace for South Africa. Sellers list lots; any registered person may bid on them; the highest bid when the clock runs out wins, subject to any reserve.

LotSpot is a marketplace and a stakeholder, not the seller. The contract of sale is between the buyer and the seller. LotSpot does not own the lots, does not inspect them, does not authenticate them, and gives no warranty about their condition, provenance, legality or fitness for any purpose. What LotSpot does is run the auction and hold the money while the two of you complete the exchange.

LotSpot is not a bank, is not a payment institution, and does not provide financial or legal advice.

One account both buys and sells. You must give a real name (or a trading name you are entitled to use) and an email address you control, and keep them current — an escrow that has to be resolved by a human is resolved through those details.

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Do not share your password. If you think somebody else has it, change it immediately: setting a new password signs out every browser your account was signed in on, and your account page also has a “sign out everywhere” button.

You must be 18 or older and legally able to enter into a contract.

A lot is created as a draft, visible to nobody but you, and goes live only when you publish it. The clock starts at that moment.

Describe honestly. The description, the condition and the photographs are what a bidder is committing money to, which is why a lot cannot be edited once it is live and emphatically cannot be edited once somebody has bid on it. If something material about a lot is wrong, contact LotSpot rather than trying to change it under a standing bid.

You must be entitled to sell what you list. Anything whose sale is unlawful in South Africa — protected species and their products, stolen goods, items requiring a licence you do not hold — may not be listed, and a listing may be removed and an account suspended over it.

A reserve is the price below which you will not sell. Bidders never see the amount, only whether it has been met. A lot marked no reserve sells to the highest bidder whatever that turns out to be, and cannot also carry a reserve.

A bid is a commitment to buy. It is not a request, an expression of interest, or reversible because you changed your mind. If your bid is the highest when the lot closes and the reserve is met, you have bought the lot.

You may set a maximum bid. LotSpot then bids on your behalf, one increment at a time, only as far as it has to and never past your maximum. Your maximum is not shown to anybody.

A bid placed in the final minute extends the close by a few minutes. That is deliberate: it stops a lot being won by whoever has the fastest connection in the last second rather than by whoever is willing to pay the most.

You may not bid on your own lot, and you may not arrange for somebody else to bid on it to push the price up. Shill bidding inflates what a real buyer pays and the commission LotSpot earns on it, and it is grounds for suspension and for reversing the sale.

Before you can bid, or buy a lot at a fixed price, LotSpot holds a ZAR 1,000.00 deposit on your account. One deposit, per account, covering everything you buy — not one per lot and not one per bid.

You pay it by EFT quoting the reference on your deposit page, and it is held from the moment somebody at LotSpot matches it on the bank statement. Until then you cannot bid, because nothing is being held.

It is your money. LotSpot holds it and does not own it. It is not a fee, it is not income to LotSpot, and it is not applied to the price of anything you buy. It sits in the same bank account as escrowed funds and is accounted for as money owed to you.

Ask for it back on your deposit page and it is returned to the bank account on your profile. The request is refused only while you have a bid standing on a lot that has not closed, or a lot you have won that has not finished settling — those are what the deposit is standing behind. When neither is true, you get it back. Asking for it back closes bidding on your account straight away.

You do not need a deposit to sell. It is a buyer’s deposit.

There is one ground, and only one: you win a lot, or take one at its Buy It Now price, and do not pay for it. Nothing else costs you your deposit — not a bid you regret, not an argument with a seller, not going quiet.

If that happens, LotSpot may keep the deposit. It is not paid to the seller and it is not a charge for a service; it is what a defaulted sale costs, and it exists so that walking away from a bid does not land entirely on the seller and the underbidders.

A forfeiture is a decision taken by a person, against one named sale, with a written reason. It is never automatic, never done in bulk, and never triggered by a clock. The person’s name, the sale and the reason are recorded against your deposit permanently, and you can read the reason on your own deposit page.

Losing a deposit does not close your account. Paying a new one opens bidding again.

When a lot closes in your favour an escrow is opened and given a unique reference. You pay LotSpot by EFT, quoting that reference. You do not pay the seller directly, and a seller who asks you to is doing something the platform forbids — report it.

The reference is the only thing that ties your transfer to your purchase. A payment without it cannot be matched and will hold up your own sale.

Payment is due one hour after the lot closes. The same hour applies to a lot taken at its Buy It Now price, from the moment you take it.

You are told the actual time before you bid. Every open lot shows the clock time payment would fall due if you won it — for example “pay by 03:14, Fri 14 Aug” — in South African time, so it is a fact you can decide against rather than a rule you find out about afterwards. If a late bid extends the closing time under clause 4, the payment deadline moves out with it by the same amount.

The deadline passing does not, by itself, do anything to your sale or to your deposit. It does not cancel the sale, it does not release the lot to somebody else, and it does not forfeit your deposit. No money on this platform is moved by a clock.

What it does is put the sale in front of a person at LotSpot. They look at it and may allow you more time, refund the sale and return the lot to the seller, or forfeit your deposit against it under clause 6. Which of those happens is a decision, recorded with their name against it.

So if you are going to be late, say so. A missed hour that somebody has explained is a different thing from silence, and it is the same person reading both.

You may upload a bank confirmation or screenshot against a sale you are paying for. It is helpful and you are welcome to.

It is evidence, and it is not a payment. Uploading it does not move your sale a step, does not mark it paid, and does not stop the deadline in clause 7. Your payment is confirmed when somebody at LotSpot sees the money on the bank statement against your reference — not before, and not because a document says it is on its way.

A proof you upload is readable by you and by LotSpot. It is not shown to the seller: it carries your banking details, and they are owed a payout rather than your account information.

Your payment is held by LotSpot. It is not paid to the seller when it arrives, and it is not paid to the seller because the seller says the item is on its way. It moves only through the steps below, and the record of every step is kept.

1. Awaiting payment — the lot has been won and the reference issued.
2. Held — your EFT has landed and been matched. The money is in LotSpot’s custody.
3. Handed over — the seller has confirmed, on their own account page, that the item has been given to you or dispatched to you.
4. Received — you have confirmed you have it.
5. Released — and only then is the seller paid, less commission.

Both sides have to confirm. A seller marking a handover does not release the money, and neither does time passing.

LotSpot holds the money as stakeholder. It earns no interest for you, and it is held in a platform bank account rather than an account in your name.

Needs a decision before launch: Whether escrowed funds sit in a segregated trust account, and under what regulatory permission, is the single most important question a lawyer must answer before real money is taken. The current arrangement is a single platform account.

LotSpot charges the seller commission on the sale price. The rate is shown on the lot and is fixed for that lot at the moment it is created, so a later change to LotSpot’s rates cannot alter what was charged on a sale that already happened.

The rate falls as the price rises, and each slice of the price is charged at its own rate — the way a tax bracket works. A lot is not re-rated as a whole for crossing a threshold, so selling for one rand more can never leave you with less.

So a lot selling for ZAR 800,000.00 pays ZAR 22,000.00 in commission — an effective 2.75%, not 5.00%.

Commission and payout always add up to exactly the sale price. Where the split leaves a fraction of a cent, the fraction goes to the seller, so a seller is never paid a cent less than the arithmetic says.

The buyer pays no premium to LotSpot. What you bid is what you pay.

A payout goes to the bank account on your account page and nowhere else. The account number and branch code are encrypted before they are stored; only the last four digits are kept readable, so the platform can show you which account it has without decrypting anything.

A payout is not sent to an unverified bank account. Verification is a manual step today, and changing your account number clears it — an account verified last month says nothing about a number typed in today.

Needs a decision before launch: How quickly a released payout is actually paid out, and whether a bank charge is deducted, is not decided.

You can choose to have a payout added to your LotSpot wallet instead of sent to your bank. Money in your wallet is yours. It is not income to LotSpot, it does not expire, there is no dormancy rule, and no fee is charged for holding it or for taking it out.

A worked example. You sell a watch for R148 500. Commission on that sale is R6 455, so your payout is R142 045. If your account is set to the wallet, that R142 045 is added to your wallet the moment the sale releases, and nothing is transferred to your bank. You then win a camera for R27 500 and pay for it out of the wallet, which leaves R114 545. At no point does money move between banks.

Three things you can do with it: pay for a lot you have won, put up the R1 000 bidding deposit, or ask for it to be paid into your bank account.

A lot is paid for in one piece. If your balance covers it, the whole price comes out of your wallet. If it does not, you can put what you have towards it and transfer the difference — we tell you the smaller amount to send, hold your part aside so it cannot be spent on anything else in the meantime, and apply both halves together when your transfer arrives. Until then the lot is unpaid. You can cancel that at any time and pay the whole lot by EFT instead.

You can also ask us to pay for lots you win out of your wallet without being prompted. If you do, nothing is held aside while you are bidding: we look at your balance once, at the moment a lot closes in your favour. Bid on as many lots as you like — if your balance will not cover one of them by the time you win it, that lot is simply payable by EFT in the ordinary way. It is off unless you turn it on.

The R1 000 bidding deposit is not part of your wallet balance. It is also your money and LotSpot is also holding it, so it is shown beside your balance — but it is what stands behind your bids, so it is not available to spend or to withdraw while it is held. The two amounts are never added together.

To have money paid into your bank you ask, and somebody at LotSpot makes the transfer. From the moment you ask, that amount is held aside and cannot be spent, so the same money is never promised to a seller and to a transfer at once. You can cancel a request that has not been paid yet and the money becomes spendable again. Bank details must be on your account and verified before a withdrawal can go out, for the reason clause 12 gives — but you do not need them to hold or spend a wallet balance.

If a lot you paid for out of your wallet is refunded, the refund goes back to your wallet and not to a bank account. Money returns to where it came from — and where you paid for a lot half from your wallet and half by EFT, each half goes back the way it arrived.

Wallet balances sit in the same account as escrow funds and bidding deposits, and are accounted for separately, as clause 21 describes.

Where you take payouts as wallet credit, a completed sale finishes itself: once you have confirmed handover and the buyer has confirmed receipt, the payout is added to your wallet without anybody at LotSpot having to act. That is because there is no transfer to make. A payout to a bank account still waits for one of us to make the EFT.

Needs a decision before launch: How quickly a requested withdrawal is actually paid out is not decided, and no time is promised.

Either the buyer or the seller may raise a dispute. Doing so moves the escrow into a disputed state, and while it is there the money moves nowhere — it is not released to the seller and it is not refunded to the buyer.

A dispute is resolved by a person. There is no automatic rule that decides who is right. A member of the LotSpot team reads the record of the sale — the listing as it was published, every state change with its timestamp, and what each of you says — and then either releases the money to the seller or refunds the buyer. The decision is recorded against the escrow.

LotSpot is not a court and is not an arbitrator. Deciding where the money it holds goes is not a ruling on the underlying contract between you, and neither of you gives up any legal right by using this process. If you disagree with the outcome, your rights against the other party are unaffected.

Needs a decision before launch: Time limits — how long after receipt a dispute may be raised, and how long LotSpot has to decide one — are not set.

A refund returns the buyer’s money from escrow. It happens when a sale falls through before release, or as the outcome of a dispute.

Once money has been released to a seller, LotSpot no longer holds it and cannot reverse the payment. At that point any claim is between the buyer and the seller.

Needs a decision before launch: Whether and how the Consumer Protection Act’s cooling-off provisions apply — they generally do not apply to goods bought at a genuine auction, but that turns on facts a lawyer must check.

LotSpot may suspend an account that appears to be listing goods it may not sell, bidding without intending to pay, bidding on its own lots, or attempting to move a transaction off the platform to avoid escrow.

A suspended account can no longer act, but nothing is deleted: bids, listings, escrows and ledger entries are a record the platform is custodian of, and records that can vanish are records nobody can rely on.

LotSpot does not inspect lots and does not guarantee that a lot is authentic, as described, or lawful to own. It does not guarantee that a seller will hand over, or that a buyer will pay.

To the extent the law allows, LotSpot’s liability to you arising out of a sale is limited to the money it holds for that sale. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for fraud or for a breach of your rights under the Consumer Protection Act.

How LotSpot handles your personal information is set out in the privacy notice, which forms part of these terms.

These terms may change. A material change will be notified to the address on your account, and it will not apply retrospectively to a sale that has already completed.

South African law governs these terms, and the South African courts have jurisdiction.

LotSpot is a trading name of Proper Stake Holdings SA (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in the Republic of South Africa, operating at lotspot.co.za. Your agreement is with that company. Money you transfer for a lot is received by it, and is held pending the confirmations described in clause 10.

Payments are made to its First National Bank (FNB) account, in the name Proper Stake Holdings SA (Pty) Ltd. Your banking application will show that name rather than “LotSpot”.

Registered name:

Proper Stake Holdings SA (Pty) Ltd

Trading as:

LotSpot

Registration number:

2025/560156/07

Address:

82 Marais Street, Heidelberg, Gauteng, South Africa

Email:

mylotspot@gmail.com

Telephone:

067 947 9757

Funds you transfer are received into a bank account used for escrow funds only — not for the company’s trading income or its operating expenses. They are recorded against your sale and released only as clause 10 describes.

That account is dedicated to escrow, but it is not yet a trust account in the legal sense. The distinction matters at the point it would matter most: an ordinary business account is an asset of the company, so a creditor of the company could in principle reach money held in it, whoever that money belongs to. A trust account is constituted differently and carries protections this one does not.

A trust account is being registered, and funds will move to it once it is open. Until then the arrangement is as described above, and this clause will be updated when it changes rather than left to age.