May 2026 Dispute Resolution Rules Clarifications

• A seller is an upgraded BHW member (Jr. VIP, Premium Member or Marketplace Seller) who sold in the correct part of the forum.
• A buyer is a registered user of the forum who has engaged with the seller ON BHW.
• An interaction is a meaningful back and forth between buyer and seller to prove that the purchase originated from BHW.
• The Proof of Payment is a date stamped proof that money left the buyers account/wallet and went to the seller.

Mukis said:

If possible, I would like to express my humble opinion regarding the dispute resolution procedure.

The problem is that this clarification does not solve the issue of scammers in any way. Scammers can be found both among sellers and among buyers. Some time ago, I was involved in a dispute where a scammer tried to claim an amount from me that he had never actually transferred. I was the seller in that situation.

At that time, the moderators asked me why I was conducting business on Telegram, where scammers are everywhere. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. Probably because it is not prohibited?

After that, I started asking myself why I was not keeping all communication on BHF. And I honestly tried to do so.

The results were quite poor: my sales dropped sharply. There were two reasons for this:

Some buyers did not want to move from Telegram to BHF. They did not even want to write anything in private messages. Could this potentially be considered scammer-like behavior?

Others simply did not have a BHF account and did not want to register.

I had suspected that Telegram was a competitive advantage, but at that point I became fully convinced of it. I lost around 25% of my sales.

As a result, I had to return to the previous interaction model, which, in theory, may lead to a dispute with a scammer.

I kindly ask the administration to consider this situation in some way: either prohibit everyone from using Telegram, or refuse to accept evidence from Telegram conversations, or resolve it by any other method. The current status quo negatively affects the overall experience of using the forum. Addressing this would be in the interest of the entire community.

Thank you for your attention.

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PetraAnn said:

Thank you for your feedback.

If doing your business via telegram is working for you, fantastic. What we're doing here is saying in order for buyers and sellers to take advantage of Dispute Resolution, these are our requirements.

My suggestion is to always start the conversation on BHW. Either via your sales thread, a DM, or in a WTB/HAF thread if both parties are upgraded. We just need to see the interaction started here. The entire sale doesn't have to happen here. Simply clarify the deal in DMs then move on to whatever platform you want to conclude the sale. Whatever you and your buyer chooses, to take advantage of the Dispute process, there has to be sufficient interaction here between buyer and seller for the Dispute to go through.

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Mukis said:

I understand that you are saying you updated the dispute submission procedure, but I was trying to draw your attention to a much more significant issue, at least from my point of view.

In any case, thank you for taking the time to look into it.

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PetraAnn said:

Before we start today's thread, I just want to make it clear that nothing has changed in the Dispute Resolution Rules. Everything mentioned in the https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/april-2026-update-to-the-dispute-resolution-rules.1808500/ remains as it was.

So what are we talking about today? Dispute Resolution Rules CLARIFICATIONS!

There are a few areas of the rules that might have been a bit ambiguous (i.e. unclear or confusing). So, we're going to talk about them and clear everything up so we're all on the same page in the event you need to make use of the Dispute Resolution process.

Buyer	Any registered user on BHW that makes a purchase from an upgraded member in a location they're allowed to sell in.
Seller	Any upgraded member who makes a sale in the location their membership allows.
Interaction	Any meaningful back and forth between the buyer and seller about the purchase somewhere on BHW. This could be in their sales thread, their WTB/HAF threads or via DM.
Proof of Payment	A date stamped proof of money leaving your account and going to the accused.

Buyers on BHW
For the purpose of the Dispute Resolution process, a buyer is someone who has a registered account on BlackHat World. When they're getting ready to make a purchase, they do their due diligence and attempt to talk to the seller about the product or service that they're about to buy. This could be done on the seller's Marketplace sales thread, in a Want to Buy or Hire a Freelancer thread, or via DM (direct message).

Sellers on BHW
Once again, for the purpose of Disputes, a seller is a BHW user who has an upgraded account that allows them to trade (i.e. sell) on the forum in permitted locations. This means that the engagement between buyer and seller took place in a sales thread, via a DM or in a WTB/HAF thread. In order for a buyer to lodge a dispute against a seller, the person they made the purchase from needed to be a Jr. VIP, Marketplace Seller, or a Premium Member at the time money exchanged hands.

Interactions Between Buyers and Sellers
We would like to iterate the point that we have always required the transaction (i.e. business, deal, exchange, purchase, trade, interaction, engagement, etc and so on) to have taken place on Blackhat World. This means, and has always meant, that in order to submit a Dispute against a seller (or buyer) there has to be some sort of INTERACTION.

The interaction could be a back and forth on the seller's sales thread. It could be a back and forth on a WTB or HAF thread. And of course it can be a conversation via DM. There could be other engagement around the forum that could count as well, but the first 3 are very solid proofs that the transaction, i.e. interaction, started on BHW.

Since there's been confusion with the word transaction, it has been updated in the rules to INTERACTION to be more clear that it all has to start right here, on this forum, in order to take advantage of our Dispute Resolution process.

Proof of Payment
While this is also considered a transaction, to make it clearer to everyone, we've updated the language to be "proof of payment." Every Dispute form should have some sort of date & time stamped proof that money left the buyers wallet/account and was sent over to the seller.

What really makes this a solid piece of proof is if in the supporting evidence, we see the seller give their payment info and it matches the time stamped proof money was sent.

Dispute Resolution Clarification TL;dr

• A seller is an upgraded BHW member (Jr. VIP, Premium Member or Marketplace Seller) who sold in the correct part of the forum.
• A buyer is a registered user of the forum who has engaged with the seller ON BHW.
• An interaction is a meaningful back and forth between buyer and seller to prove that the purchase originated from BHW.
• The Proof of Payment is a date stamped proof that money left the buyers account/wallet and went to the seller.

Once again, these are just rule clarifications. Non-upgraded users have never been allowed to sell products or services on this forum. We've always required that there be some sort of interaction or engagement between buyer and seller, right here on this forum, in order to utilize the Dispute Resolution Process. And, of course, we've always asked for a proof of money exchange to be included in the evidence in order to proceed with the Dispute.

In order to make sure that we can give the time and attention needed to each Dispute, we want to make certain we're all on the same page as far as the wording of the rules goes!

As always, feel free to leave your questions, comments or concerns in the thread.

Previous Dispute Updates:

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/april-2026-update-to-the-dispute-resolution-rules.1808500/
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/dispute-resolution-tweaks-and-updates-from-september-3rd.1752050/

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Venusaur said:

One doubt
I see that

Seller = Any upgraded member who makes a sale in the location their membership allows.

So, what about those little scammers selling without an upgraded account? Won't be possible to open a dispute against them anymore? I guess it will be, but just to confirm.

And do you have another name for them, rather than ''seller'' ? If you can clarify the correct term to refer to them, it would be nice.

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jennykumar said:

does interaction (conversation) on off-BHW platform like telegram/whatapp is considered for dispute resolution.
many-a-times a scammer would first start conversation in BHW dm, but later ask to move to telegram and final negotiations/deal occur there.

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Mukis said:

If possible, I would like to express my humble opinion regarding the dispute resolution procedure.

The problem is that this clarification does not solve the issue of scammers in any way. Scammers can be found both among sellers and among buyers. Some time ago, I was involved in a dispute where a scammer tried to claim an amount from me that he had never actually transferred. I was the seller in that situation.

At that time, the moderators asked me why I was conducting business on Telegram, where scammers are everywhere. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. Probably because it is not prohibited?

After that, I started asking myself why I was not keeping all communication on BHF. And I honestly tried to do so.

The results were quite poor: my sales dropped sharply. There were two reasons for this:

Some buyers did not want to move from Telegram to BHF. They did not even want to write anything in private messages. Could this potentially be considered scammer-like behavior?

Others simply did not have a BHF account and did not want to register.

I had suspected that Telegram was a competitive advantage, but at that point I became fully convinced of it. I lost around 25% of my sales.

As a result, I had to return to the previous interaction model, which, in theory, may lead to a dispute with a scammer.

I kindly ask the administration to consider this situation in some way: either prohibit everyone from using Telegram, or refuse to accept evidence from Telegram conversations, or resolve it by any other method. The current status quo negatively affects the overall experience of using the forum. Addressing this would be in the interest of the entire community.

Thank you for your attention.

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BrodyGregory said:

Feels like a lot of folks get tripped up because the convo moves to Telegram too fast, then there’s nothing solid for staff to look at later. I just keep a quick message on BHW before taking anything off-site, even if it’s just a simple confirmation. Saves headaches and keeps both sides covered if stuff goes sideways.

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Webmasterzzz said:

if the seller has a website and i buy his service from his website without sending a PM to him on forum. can i open a dispute on here if the service failed?

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PetraAnn said:

No. ONLY conversations that start here on BHW first count. TG and other off forum conversations only count as supporting evidence as long as that initial engagement here has been satisfied.

And to clarify, if the seller DMs you then takes you off forum BEFORE you exchange money (i.e. finalize the deal), that counts as long as you actually responded. We need to see a back and forth.

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