Terms of Service
Effective 4 September 2026.
These terms are an agreement between you and Michael Fernandopulle, trading as The Middle Child Market, ABN 39 190 810 642 — "we", "us", "TMC". They cover your use of The Middle Child app and this website.
By creating an account or using TMC, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use TMC.
Contact: milarkventures@gmail.com
1. What TMC is, and what it is not
TMC is a marketplace. Members list second-hand baby and infant equipment; other members buy it. We provide the platform, we take the payment, we hold it, and we pay the seller.
We are not the seller. When you buy something on TMC, the contract of sale is between you and the person selling it. We do not own the goods, we never possess them, we do not inspect them, and we make no promise about their condition, safety, authenticity or fitness for any purpose. What a listing says is what the seller says.
What we do promise is the money: how it is held, when it moves, and what happens when something goes wrong. That is set out in sections 8 to 14 and we take it seriously.
2. Who can use TMC
You must be at least 18 years old and in Australia. You need an Australian address for payouts if you want to sell, and all transactions are in Australian dollars.
One account per person. Do not create an account on someone else's behalf or use someone else's account.
3. Your account
Sign in is by a six-digit code emailed to you, or with Apple. There is no password. Keep access to your email account secure, because access to your email is access to TMC.
You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else is using it.
We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that we reasonably believe is being used fraudulently, or where we are required to.
4. Listing something for sale
When you list an item, you promise that:
- You own it and are entitled to sell it.
- The description is accurate — brand, model, condition, and what is included.
- You have declared every fault you know about. "Well loved" is a condition, not a cover story. A missing part, a stain, a crack, a repair, a strap that does not lock: say so.
- The photographs are of the actual item, taken by you, and current.
- The item is clean and safe to hand to another family.
- It has not been recalled, and is not subject to a current safety notice.
You set your price. It must be between $1 and $50,000.
Listing an item is an offer to sell it on the terms shown. If a buyer completes checkout, you are committed to that sale.
5. What cannot be sold on TMC
Car seats, capsules, boosters and child restraints — never
No car seat, baby capsule, booster seat, infant carrier or child restraint may be sold on TMC, in any condition, at any price. A restraint that has been in a crash can look perfect and be structurally finished, and there is no way for a buyer — or for us — to verify a seat's history. So we do not carry them at all.
This includes travel systems. If your pram came with a capsule, keep the capsule and sell the pram on its own. Every pram listing requires you to confirm that no capsule or seat is included, and listings mentioning restraints are blocked automatically.
Attempting to route a restraint through TMC — by wording around the block, by including one "for free", or by arranging it off-platform after meeting here — is a serious breach and we will close the account.
Also prohibited
- Anything recalled or subject to a current safety notice
- Counterfeit goods, or items described as something they are not
- Anything you do not own or are not entitled to sell
- Items listed with no intention of selling, or used to move a buyer off TMC
- Anything unlawful to sell in Australia
Breast pumps
Pumps may be sold, but you must declare what is included and which parts that come into contact with milk or skin the buyer must replace before use — tubing, valves, membranes, flanges and bottles. The app asks you for both before it publishes a pump listing. Answering honestly is an obligation under these terms, not a form to get past.
Recall checking
We screen listings against our prohibited-items rules automatically. We do not currently check listings against the Product Safety Australia recall database. The recall declaration on a listing is the seller's statement, not a verified fact. Check recalls yourself at productsafety.gov.au before you buy, and before you sell.
6. Buying: offers, holds and checkout
Offers. You can offer less than the asking price. An offer expires after 48 hours if it is not answered. The seller can accept, decline, or counter.
Checkout reserves the item for 10 minutes while your payment is confirmed. If two people try to buy the same item at once, only one gets it — the other is never charged.
Pickup items work differently from posted items, and the difference matters. See the next two sections.
7. How the money is held — escrow
Your payment does not go to the seller when you make it. This is the core of how TMC works, and it works differently depending on how the item changes hands.
Pickup
When you place a hold, we authorise your card. Nothing is charged. The money is reserved with your bank but stays yours.
You and the seller agree a time. You meet, and you inspect the item before anything is charged. If you want it, the seller shows you a six-digit code and you enter it in the app. Entering the code is what charges your card and pays the seller.
If you do not want it, you walk away and you are never charged. You are not obliged to buy an item that is not what the listing said.
Entering the code completes the sale and it is final. There is no dispute process for a pickup, because you had the item in your hands and chose to accept it. You get five attempts to enter a code; after that the seller must issue a new one.
Posted items
Your card is charged at checkout, and we hold the money. The seller does not have it.
The seller posts the item with tracking. When it arrives you mark it received in the app, and that starts a 48-hour window to check it. Inside that window you either confirm you are happy — which releases the money to the seller — or raise a problem. If you do nothing once the window is open, the money goes to the seller automatically at the end of it.
If you never mark it received, the window opens by itself 10 days after the item was posted and runs its 48 hours from there. So a posted order settles 12 days after postage at the very latest, whether or not anyone touches it. That exists so a seller is not left waiting forever — but it also means you should not sit on a parcel that has arrived.
8. The clocks
Orders run on short, fixed deadlines. They are enforced automatically and we cannot extend them.
| An offer expires | 48 hours after it is made |
| Checkout reserves an item | 10 minutes |
| A pickup time must be agreed within | 48 hours of the hold being placed |
| The collection window runs | from 2 hours before to 24 hours after the agreed time |
| A pickup hold is capped at | 6 days from when it was placed |
| Inspection of a posted item | 48 hours from when you mark it received |
| If nobody marks it received | the inspection window opens 10 days after posting |
The 6-day cap is absolute. Whatever rescheduling has happened, the authorisation on your card is released 6 days after the hold was placed, the order is cancelled and the item goes back on sale. Nothing is ever charged after the cap. Card authorisations expire at the issuing bank at around seven days, and we stop a day short of that on purpose — so that a payment can never fail in front of a seller at handover.
If a deadline passes, the authorisation is released, nothing is charged, and the listing goes back into the feed.
9. Fees
TMC's fee is 3% of the item price, split:
- Buyers pay 1% of the item price, added at checkout.
- Sellers pay 2% of the item price, deducted from the payout.
The fee applies to the item price only. We take nothing from postage.
Card processing is passed through at cost, shown to buyers as its own line. The rate is 1.75% + 30c, worked out so the right amount still reaches the card network after it takes its percentage of the whole charge — which makes the line a few cents more than 1.75% of the item price. We keep none of it. It is shown separately so you can see exactly what TMC charges and what the bank does.
Fees are frozen on your order at the moment it is created. If we change our fees later, orders already placed keep the fees they were made under.
Michael Fernandopulle is not currently registered for GST, so no GST is charged on TMC's fee. If that changes, we will say so here and in the app.
10. Postage
Postage is a pure pass-through. The buyer pays it on top of the item price, and it goes to the seller in full. We take nothing from it.
The seller books and pays the carrier themselves. We do not buy labels, we are not the shipper, and we are not a party to the carriage contract.
Postage in the app is priced from the Australia Post prepaid satchel card, which charges one national price by satchel size for anything up to 5 kg — so the price is the same whether it goes across town or across the country:
| Satchel | Size | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Extra small | 215 × 280 mm | $10.55 |
| Small | 355 × 225 mm | $12.05 |
| Medium | 390 × 270 mm | $16.40 |
| Large | 405 × 315 mm | $20.70 |
| Extra large | 510 × 440 mm | $24.95 |
Prices are GST inclusive, as at 1 July 2026. Australia Post reprices annually; an order already placed keeps the postage figure it was created with.
Sellers can set their own postage figure. If you set it below what the carrier charges you, you are out of pocket by the difference — it does not change what TMC takes.
Tracked postage is compulsory. An order cannot be marked as posted without a tracking number. Without a delivery scan, a "never arrived" claim cannot be resolved fairly for anyone.
Buyers: you give the seller your delivery address in the message thread. We do not collect it.
11. Prams are pickup only
Prams cannot be posted through TMC. A folded pram exceeds Australia Post's chargeable cubic weight ceiling and is refused, and the ones that squeak under it are priced by zone somewhere between roughly $63 and $184 — a spread no listing-time figure can honestly cover. So prams are collected in person, always.
12. Cancelling, and refunds
A cancellation is allowed exactly up to the point where the other person has done something they cannot undo.
| Situation | Can be cancelled by | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Pickup, before a time is agreed | Either of you | Authorisation released. Nothing charged. |
| Pickup, time agreed, not yet collected | Either of you | Authorisation released. Nothing charged. |
| Posted, paid but not yet posted | Either of you | Full refund of everything you paid. |
| Posted, once it has been posted | Neither | Section 13 applies. |
| Pickup, once the code has been entered | Neither | The sale is complete. |
Cancelling repeatedly, or cancelling after agreeing to meet, wastes someone else's afternoon. Do it often enough and we will close your account.
Refunds come only from money we are holding for that order. We do not pay compensation out of our own funds, and we cannot refund an amount larger than was charged.
13. When something goes wrong with a posted item
If a posted item does not arrive, is not what the listing said, arrives damaged, or is missing something the listing declared, raise it within the 48-hour inspection window by emailing milarkventures@gmail.com with your order details and photographs.
While a problem is open, the money stays held. It goes to neither of you until it is resolved.
We will ask the seller to respond, look at the evidence from both sides, and decide one of: release the payment to the seller; refund you in full once the item is returned; or a partial refund you both agree to. If a return is needed, the buyer pays return postage unless the seller misrepresented the item.
Tracking is what decides "it never arrived." We will ask you both for the tracking number and check it with the carrier. If the carrier's own record shows the item was delivered, the claim lies with the carrier rather than with the seller. Note that we do not receive tracking updates automatically — the number in the app is what the seller typed in — so sellers should keep the lodgement receipt.
We resolve disputes only from the money we are holding. Our decision under these terms is final. That does not affect your rights under section 15.
14. Chargebacks
We carry chargeback liability. If a buyer disputes a payment with their bank, the money is taken back out of our account, not the seller's. That is a consequence of holding funds in escrow: there is no way to configure a payment platform to both hold money between payment and handover and put the bank's chargeback on the seller. We chose escrow, and this is what it costs.
Because we carry it, we need this in writing:
If a chargeback is raised on a sale you made, and the item was not as described, was not sent, or the sale was not genuine, you owe us the amount charged back plus any fee the card network charges us. We may recover it by reversing the payout for that order, by setting it off against money we hold for you on other orders, or by asking you for it directly. We will tell you what has happened and give you the chance to give us evidence to fight it before we do.
We will not come after a seller for a chargeback where the seller did everything right — where the item was as described, was sent with tracking, and was delivered. Fraud against the platform is our problem, not theirs.
Raising a chargeback with your bank instead of contacting us first is not a shortcut. Email us. It is faster and it does not cost a third party money.
15. Your rights under Australian Consumer Law
Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), including the Australian Consumer Law, that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Two things worth understanding:
- Consumer guarantees generally apply to goods sold by a business in trade or commerce. A private individual selling their own used pram is usually not doing that, so the statutory guarantees may not attach to the goods. Your protection on TMC is the escrow and the inspection window, not a manufacturer's warranty.
- If you are selling regularly and at volume, you may be operating a business whether or not you think of it that way, and the consumer guarantees may apply to you as the seller. That is a matter between you and your buyer.
To the extent the law allows, our services are provided as they are, and our liability for a failure to comply with a consumer guarantee in respect of our services is limited to supplying them again or paying the cost of doing so.
16. Behaviour, reports and removal
Be decent. No harassment, abuse, discrimination, spam, or pushing people off-platform to avoid fees.
Anyone can report a listing, a message or a person from inside the app. We review every report within two business days. You will not normally hear back unless we need something more from you, and the person you reported is never told who reported them. You can also block someone: they disappear from your feed and cannot contact you, and they are not told.
We may remove a listing, hide content, or suspend or close an account where we reasonably believe these terms have been breached — and we will remove a prohibited item immediately, without waiting to hear from the seller.
17. What you post
You keep ownership of your photographs and words. You give us permission to store, display and reproduce them for the purpose of running TMC — showing your listing, showing it in search results, and keeping the record of a completed sale visible to the person who bought it.
That last part is why a listing attached to a completed order stays visible after you delete your account, with your name removed. See the Privacy Policy.
18. Safety
Second-hand baby equipment needs your own judgement. Check the item against the manufacturer's current guidance, check for recalls at productsafety.gov.au, replace parts that make contact with milk or skin, and do not use anything you are unsure about.
If you are meeting for a pickup, meet somewhere you are comfortable, and take someone with you if you would rather.
We do not inspect, test, certify or guarantee any item on TMC.
19. Liability
To the extent the law allows, and subject to section 15:
- We are not liable for the goods themselves, or for anything a member does or fails to do — including a seller who does not send, a buyer who does not show up, or an item that is not as described.
- We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit.
- Where we are liable, our total liability to you in connection with an order is limited to the amount paid for that order.
Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
You agree to cover us for loss we suffer because you breached these terms or sold something you were not entitled to sell.
20. Tax
If you sell on TMC, whether you owe tax on what you earn is between you and the ATO. Selling a few things your own family finished with is usually not taxable; buying to resell may be. We do not give tax advice and we do not withhold tax.
21. Changes
We may change these terms. The current version is always on this page with its effective date. If we make a significant change we will tell you in the app. Continuing to use TMC after a change means you accept it. Orders already placed keep the terms and the fees they were made under.
22. Closing your account
You can delete your account in the app at any time, unless you have an order in progress. Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone. What is kept and why is set out in the Privacy Policy.
23. Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of Victoria, Australia. You and we submit to the courts of Victoria.
24. Contact
Michael Fernandopulle, trading as The Middle Child Market — ABN 39 190 810 642