Read this before you file a dispute. It explains how the process works on TalvexIT, what we can and can’t do, and what to expect after the determination.
TalvexIT never holds the money for your engagement. Customers pay suppliers directly. That means our dispute process cannot refund you, release money to you, or adjust any payment in either direction. What it produces is a written determination and, when warranted, an account sanction (warning / suspension / ban) on the at-fault party. The financial outcome is between you and the other party.
A dispute is a structured way to raise a problem with the other party of an engagement when you can’t resolve it directly. Either party can file one. As of v3 (June 2026), disputes can be filed on three kinds of engagement: Orders, Tenders, and Tender Contracts.
Before filing, try to resolve the issue directly. Most problems are sorted with a phone call or an email. A dispute is for situations where direct communication has broken down or where you need an independent record.
Each engagement type has its own eligibility window. The
Disputes Hub at /{customer|contractor|company}/disputes
shows you every engagement you could still dispute, with the
countdown to when the window closes.
| Engagement | Eligible when |
|---|---|
| Order |
Live: IN_PROGRESS, PENDING_REVIEW,
REVISION_REQUESTED.Post-completion: up to 14 days after COMPLETED — for problems that surface after
delivery (deliverable breaks, data issue discovered later, etc).
|
| Tender |
For the customer (tender owner): CLOSED tenders,
and AWARDED tenders where no contract has been
created (up to 14 days after award).For suppliers: any tender where you’ve submitted a proposal — OPEN, CLOSED, or
AWARDED-without-contract (also 14-day window).
|
| Tender Contract |
Live: PENDING, ACTIVE,
IN_PROGRESS.Post-completion: up to 14 days after COMPLETED.Post-cancellation: up to 14 days after CANCELLED — for premature cancellations where
there’s unpaid work or remediation owed.
|
The 14-day windows are tunable by platform admins via the
dispute_post_completion_window_days,
dispute_contract_cancel_window_days, and
dispute_tender_award_followthrough_days settings.
The Disputes Hub is your one-stop screen for everything dispute-related.
Each role has its own page:
/customer/disputes,
/contractor/disputes, or
/company/disputes.
It has two sections:
For items in a post-completion or post-cancellation window, the card shows when the event happened (e.g. “Completed 3 days ago”) plus a coloured pill warning you when the dispute window is closing soon (amber ≤7 days, red ≤3 days).
The ground picker is filtered to whatever applies to the target type you’re disputing:
The wizard filters the list to only the applicable grounds — you can’t pick “Proposal bad faith” on an order, or “Non-payment” on a tender that has no invoice yet.
It depends on the state at the time of filing.
IN_PROGRESS order,
a PENDING/ACTIVE/IN_PROGRESS
tender contract, or an OPEN/CLOSED/AWARDED
tender flips to DISPUTED for the duration of the
review. No mutations are accepted on that target until the dispute
resolves. When it does resolve, the target is restored to its
pre-dispute state.
COMPLETED order being disputed in its post-completion
window stays COMPLETED the entire time — the
engagement is finished, there’s nothing to pause. Same for
CANCELLED contracts within the cancel window. The
dispute still files, the admin still reviews, and the determination
still produces an outcome — the underlying record just keeps
its terminal status throughout.
| Outcome | What it means |
|---|---|
| NO FAULT | The admin determined neither party did anything wrong. Often happens when the dispute reflects an honest disagreement. The target resumes its pre-dispute status; there’s no sanction on anyone and no reputation mark. |
| WARNING | One party is judged at fault. A warning is recorded on their profile (visible to future counterparties for a configurable window — see Q12). No account restrictions. |
| SUSPEND | The at-fault party can’t take new work (supplier) or place new orders (customer) for a set period — 10, 30, 90 days, or until further notice. Existing engagements continue. |
| TERMINATE | The at-fault party is banned from the platform. Reserved for severe cases — fraud, negligent data breach, repeated non-payment. |
| REFUND DIRECTED | The supplier is directed to refund a specific dollar amount to the customer within 14 days. See Q8 for how this works given we don’t hold the money. |
Each outcome is paired with an “at-fault party” field:
SUPPLIER, CUSTOMER, or NEITHER.
SUSPEND and TERMINATE outcomes always have one of the first two;
NO_FAULT typically has NEITHER.
It’s the closest thing we can do to a refund. TalvexIT cannot directly refund you because we never held the money in the first place — you paid the supplier directly via whatever rail they accepted (bank transfer, PayPal, Stripe link, etc).
What we can do:
In practice this means a supplier who ignores a refund directive loses access to the platform. That’s the only enforcement lever we have, but it’s a real one — a suspended supplier can’t accept new tenders or quote new work until they comply or the suspension expires.
No. TalvexIT is a workflow and recordkeeping platform. We don’t process payments, we don’t hold escrow, and we have no authority to debit or credit any party’s account.
What we can do:
If you need the money back and the supplier ignores a refund directive, your options are: (a) the follow-up suspension lever described in Q8, (b) external recourse via small claims court or Fair Trading, with our determination as evidence.
Yes, as long as the dispute hasn’t been resolved yet. The filer (the party who opened the dispute) can withdraw it at any point before the admin issues a determination. Withdrawing returns the target to its pre-dispute status (for live items) and doesn’t leave any reputation mark on either party.
Yes — the “mutual close” option. If you’ve talked to the other party and resolved the issue between yourselves, either of you can propose a mutual close on the dispute page. The other party clicks to accept within 48 hours and the dispute is closed with no reputation impact on either side.
Mutual close is only available before our admin team assigns the dispute. Once an admin is reviewing the case, the mutual-close option is removed. This is deliberate — it prevents a party facing a sanction from pressuring the other side into a private settlement just to avoid the record.
Yes. Within 14 days of the determination being issued, either party can file an appeal with a written reason (at least 30 characters).
The appeal is reviewed by a different admin from the one who issued the original determination. They can either uphold the determination (it stands) or overturn it. Overturning a SUSPEND or TERMINATE outcome reverses the sanction immediately.
There is no appeal beyond the second admin’s decision — that’s our final position. If you disagree with the outcome after that, external recourse (small claims, Fair Trading, AFCA where applicable) is available to you.
Resolved disputes are visible on the at-fault party’s public profile (and to potential counterparties on tender invitations) for a configurable window of 3, 6, or 12 months. After the window expires, the dispute is removed from the public-facing profile entirely — though it stays in our internal audit log permanently.
The default is 12 months. The current setting can be checked in your account if you need to know the exact number.
Dismissed (NO_FAULT), withdrawn, and mutually-closed
disputes never appear on either party’s profile at any point.
Separate from the dispute system, every customer accumulates a payment-reliability badge based on how promptly they pay invoices from suppliers. This is a passive signal that suppliers see on tender invitations and customer profiles.
The buckets are:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pays on time | ≥ 90% of invoices paid by due date in the last 12 months. |
| Pays late | 60–90% on time, or median lateness 1–14 days. |
| Pays very late | < 60% on time, or median lateness > 14 days. |
| New / unverified | Fewer than 3 invoices in the last 12 months — not enough data to bucket. |
| Has unpaid invoices | One or more invoices outstanding past due-date plus 30 days. |
Suppliers can use this signal to decide whether to accept your tender invitation, what payment terms to quote, or whether to ask for milestone payments. It’s entirely derived from supplier-confirmed payment actions and isn’t part of any dispute — just a continuous record of payment behaviour.
A platform admin reviews every dispute. They read every submission from both sides, examine the engagement history, and produce a written determination. Admins are TalvexIT staff — not your supplier, not your customer, not anyone with a stake in the engagement.
Appeals go to a different admin from the one who issued the original determination, so an appeal is genuine peer review rather than the same person re-reading their own decision.
Yes. Disputes operate on full transparency — both parties see every submission and file the other side has posted, and the admin handling the dispute sees everything. This is by design: it stops either party making claims they can’t back up with evidence visible to all.
Files are stored securely in Azure Blob Storage and streamed through the API with authenticated access — no Azure URL is exposed to the browser. The contents are visible to the other party though, so don’t upload anything you wouldn’t be comfortable sharing (e.g. unrelated client confidential information, personal photos, etc).
For sealed-bid tender disputes raised before the deadline, the sealed-bid rule still applies — other suppliers’ proposal content remains hidden from view during the dispute.
Typical timeline:
So expect ~2 weeks for a clean resolution, ~4 weeks if either side appeals. Severe cases (DATA_BREACH, fraud allegations) may take longer because of additional compliance review.
For anything to do with a specific dispute: use the dispute page itself. Your messages and uploaded evidence are visible to the admin handling your case.
For general questions, account access, or to report an urgent issue not yet captured in a dispute: support@talvexit.com.au.
If you believe you have grounds for external recourse beyond the platform’s dispute process, the following Australian bodies can help:
TalvexIT · Dispute Resolution FAQ · Version 2026-06-03 (v3) · See also: v3 design spec · v2 design spec