How do I know a seller is trustworthy?

That's the honest short answer. On HFR, every seller has a persistent accountability record built from every transaction they've completed on the platform — bilateral ratings, issue tags, transaction-class distribution, verification badges, and how long they've been active. That record is on every profile. It's designed to answer this exact question in the two minutes before you send a first DM.

Here's what to actually look at, in the order that matters.

Every seller profile shows a Trust Score chip near the top: a single number, 0–100, and a state label.

• Trust Established (75–89) — where most active experienced sellers live. This is the healthy default.
• Elite/Exceptional (90+) — rare by design. Years of clean transactions at scale.
• New/Building — cold-start (no completed transactions) or limited volume, below 75. Not a warning sign on its own; the record just hasn't accumulated yet.
• Caution — an overlay, not a tier. Appears alongside whichever tier applies, only when there's an upheld condition flag, an unresolved dispute, or a low listing completion rate. Read the record for what.

Do not stop at the number. The state label plus the transaction count is more informative than the score alone. A brand-new seller with three clean transactions caps in the high 70s; that's not the same as an experienced seller who has spent years at 78 through consistent work.

The Accountability Record and Trust Score FAQ covers what feeds the score, why it's designed the way it is, and why the number is always shown next to the state (never alone).

Below the Trust Score chip, click through to the full record. This is the four-dimensional breakdown of everything HFR knows about the seller's transactions.

Skim it in this order:

• Transaction count and history length. Forty transactions across three years reads differently than forty across three months. Both can be excellent; they mean different things.
• Rating distribution across item condition accuracy, communication, packaging, and shipping speed. A seller who is 5/5/3/5 across many transactions is a careful describer who ships slowly. A seller with 4/5/5/5 across everything is uniformly excellent. Both are useful. What you're looking for is consistency, not perfection.
• Issue tags. These are named — Condition not as described, Communication issue, Packaging issue, Shipping delay, Payment or refund issue. Zero tags across many transactions is a definite signal. A single old tag with a documented resolution is not a red flag. A recent pattern of the same tag is.
• Transaction-class distribution. The bar showing what price bands the seller has completed transactions in — Under $1,000, $1,000–$5,000, $5,000–$25,000, $25,000+. Forty $500 trades does not tell you the seller has ever packed a $40,000 amplifier. Match the seller's demonstrated experience to your transaction size.
• Recent vs lifetime. HFR shows both, side by side. A seller who was exceptional in 2023 and unreliable in 2026 is not the same seller. Weight recent activity accordingly.

The Accountability Record and Trust Score FAQ goes deep on the design of all of this.

These are supplemental to the Trust Score, not substitutes for it. A verified identity does not tell you the seller ships carefully. A high Trust Score does not tell you the seller is who they say they are. Both matter.

• ✓ Identity Verified (coming soon). Once live, this will mean Stripe Identity confirmed a real-world identity behind the account. Until it ships, lean on the Accountability Record and High-Value Verified status instead.
• ✦ High-Value Verified. Automatically earned after 5 or more rated transactions in the $10,000+ class. Cannot be claimed or paid for. A concrete signal that the seller has done the work at scale, not just in principle.
• Verified Dealer. Professional sellers who passed HFR's dealer application and verification process. Business documentation reviewed. Different profile treatment from private sellers.

The Buyer Protection FAQ has more on how to weigh identity verification once it's live.

The seller's record tells you a lot. Their first response tells you the rest.

Serious sellers respond to serious questions specifically. A DM that engages with the details of your inquiry — condition specifics, provenance, willingness to send additional photos — is a seller who will handle the transaction similarly. A DM that dodges, hurries, or generalizes usually predicts the transaction.

Common signals to notice on that first exchange:

• Response time. Within hours is standard for active sellers. Within a day is baseline. Multi-day silence with no acknowledgment is a signal, especially on high-value transactions.
• Willingness to answer specific questions. “What's the plate on the underside look like?” gets a photo. “Anything I should know about the internal caps?” gets a real answer. Vague or defensive answers on either matter.
• Volunteered information. Sellers who preemptively mention condition detail, prior service history, or original packaging status are the sellers who don't hide things. That trait extends through the transaction.
• Pressure or urgency. “Another buyer is asking,” “this needs to move today,” “wire only” on a first exchange with an unverified counterparty are all signals to slow down, not speed up. Trust Established sellers with strong records are generally not in a hurry.
• Payment method requests. A first-transaction seller requesting PayPal Friends & Family or wire-only on a shipped $10,000+ piece is a signal that overrides other positive signals. This is called out in the Payment and Buyer Protection FAQs. It is the single fastest way to identify a seller you should not send money to.

The Accountability Record is comprehensive within HFR. It has limits worth naming honestly:

• It only reflects HFR transactions. A seller may have twenty years of clean history on other marketplaces or in private trades. HFR does not import external reputation — reputation on the platform is verifiable, attributable, and earned here. External reputation may be worth asking about in DMs, but it does not appear on the record.
• New sellers have thin records. Everyone starts somewhere. A New/Building seller with three clean transactions is not a warning sign; they simply have less signal than a Trust Established seller with fifty. Adjust your diligence accordingly.
• The record is retrospective. It tells you what has happened. It cannot guarantee what will happen on your transaction. What it does provide is the strongest available prediction — and the strongest available accountability after the fact.

Rough guidelines. Judgment always applies.

• Under $500. Any seller with a positive record and reasonable communication is generally fine. Do not over-index on Trust Score minutiae at this tier.
• $500–$5,000. Confirm the seller is at least New/Building with clean signals, ideally Trust Established. Read the Accountability Record's issue tags. Read the transaction-class distribution — has the seller done deals at your size before?
• $5,000–$25,000. Trust Established (75+) with 10+ rated transactions is the sensible floor. ✓ Identity Verified, once it ships, will be strongly recommended here — until then, read the full Accountability Record, not just the Trust Score. Confirm the transaction-class distribution shows experience at or near your value.
• $25,000 and up. Trust Established or Elite/Exceptional Trust Score. Prefer ✦ High-Value Verified or Verified Dealer counterparties. Read every issue tag on the record. Ask for provenance in DMs. Consider local pickup if geography allows.

No infrastructure — HFR's or any other platform's — makes bad outcomes impossible. What the Registry does is make sellers' actual behavior visible in advance and permanent after the fact.

The buyers who consistently get good outcomes on HFR are the buyers who spend ten minutes on the seller's record before sending the first DM. That practice is the single highest-leverage form of protection available on the platform, and it is free.

The Trust Score, the Accountability Record, and the verification badges exist because the alternative — sending significant money to a stranger on the internet based on their listing text alone — is a decision that should be informed. HFR built the infrastructure to inform it.

Use it.