How this works, and what it will not tell you.

Every listing carries two numbers that answer two different questions. The grade says what condition the unit is in. The confidence percentage says how much evidence that grade is standing on.

A Grade B at 78% and a Grade B at 45% are not the same claim, and the listing shows both. The grade is derived from per-dimension findings, not from an overall impression: seven dimensions are scored independently — cosmetic, corrosion, seals and gaskets, controls and electronics, cavity interior, moving parts, and completeness — and each finding links back to the photo region it was read from. If a finding says the door gasket is perished, you can open the photograph it came from.

Confidence is built from three things: how many of the eight required photo angles are present, how much of the unit’s life is covered by uploaded service invoices, and whether running hours have been independently verified. An invoice that cannot be read lowers the confidence and is recorded as an extraction failure rather than quietly dropped. The full rubric, with the evidence required for each grade and an annotated photograph per grade, is the grading rubric. What the grade does not cover is section 02, and it is the part worth reading first.

Every report carries a “What we don’t know” panel. It appears on every listing, it cannot be collapsed, and it cannot be removed.

One line is on every single report regardless of how complete the evidence is: the unit was not powered on or tested under load. Condition is inferred from photographs and documents. A unit coming out of a closing site is usually already disconnected, and nobody is going to run a 3-phase supply to it for a photograph.

The panel also names the evidence that is missing on that specific unit: which of the eight angles were not supplied, how many years of the unit’s life have no invoice on file, and whether running hours are seller-stated rather than verified. Those three are what pull the confidence percentage down, and they are listed individually rather than summarised.

A listing needs eight photographs. They are not eight nice pictures of the machine — each one is evidence for a specific dimension of the report.

The nameplate slot is blocking: Continue stays disabled, and says why, until a legible nameplate is uploaded. It is the only part of a machine that cannot be talked up. Brand, model, serial and year come off that plate and are matched to a catalogue entry with a real new price — which is what turns “a commercial oven” into a 2022 Rational SCC WE 61 that cost $18,400 new.

Each file gets quality feedback as it lands, naming the fault and the next action — too dark, motion blur, nameplate not readable — rather than a generic upload error. Service invoices go in as PDF, JPG or HEIC. A PDF with no text layer cannot be read, so the flow asks for a photograph of the printed invoice instead.

One commission, charged to the seller, on a sale that completed. It runs from 8% down to 6% depending on the sale value.

The rate falls as the value rises, and the band is decided by the final sale price rather than the asking price — so an accepted offer moves the rate with it. There is no listing fee, no subscription, and nothing is charged to the buyer.

A listing that does not sell costs nothing. The condition report is included. Card processing comes out of our side rather than yours, so the commission is the whole of what AssetDelta takes. The full schedule, including the Verified Inspection fee and indicative removal ranges, is on the pricing page.

At the pricing step a suggested band is drawn from four inputs, and every one of them is shown rather than rolled into a single number.

Catalogue new price

The list price of the matched model when it was new, taken from the catalogue entry the nameplate resolved to.

Depreciation

A curve applied to the unit's age, with a floor — commercial equipment does not go to zero value.

Grade multiplier

A serviced Grade A carries a premium over straight depreciation; a Grade D is discounted to parts value.

Comparable sales

Recent completed sales of the same model, where there are any. Where there are none, the band says so.

The band is a starting position, not a rule. It is draggable, and sellers routinely price above it on a unit with full service history. On the worked example, a 2022 Rational SCC WE 61 that cost $18,400 new was quoted $1,900 by a liquidator and listed at $9,750. The difference is not a discount or a markup. It is what eight photographs and a folder of service invoices were worth once somebody could actually read them.

When a buyer commits, the card is authorised and the money is held by Stripe under a manual capture. Two things follow from that, and they matter to both sides.

• The seller has not been paid. Nothing moves to their account at this point.
• AssetDelta is not holding the money either. It sits with the payment processor until the release conditions are met.

The release condition is collection plus 48 hours. Between commitment and release, the order tracker shows the current step and the one action it needs from you — agree a collection window, arrange removal, confirm collection.

Contact details unmask for both parties the moment funds are held, and not before. Until then, phone numbers, email addresses and off-platform links in messages are masked — and the mask is visible, so you can see that something was removed rather than wonder whether the message arrived intact.

48 hoursafter the unit is collected, the capture is issued and the balance goes to the seller’s connected Stripe account.

The commission comes off at that point, along with a Verified Inspection fee if the unit carried one. Three things can happen inside the window:

• The buyer confirms early. The release happens then; it does not wait out the window.
• The window closes with nothing raised. The release happens on its own — the buyer does not have to act for the seller to be paid.
• An issue is raised. The order moves to disputed and the funds stay held. A disputed order is never released automatically.

The payouts page shows gross, commission, inspection fee and net for every sale, and exports to CSV for the accountant who will ask about it.

The buyer pays for removal, directly to the removal contractor. AssetDelta does not carry equipment, does not set removal prices, and takes no margin on them.

It still matters to the seller, because a buyer prices removal into what they are willing to offer. A unit needing a 3-phase disconnect, a Gas Safe cap-off or F-Gas refrigerant recovery costs more to move than one that unplugs, and a unit two floors up with no lift costs more again. That is why the listing captures the utilities to disconnect and the access notes rather than leaving them to be discovered on the day.

The removals lookup ranks contractors by distance from the collection postcode and tags what each one is certified to do. Contractors that cannot legally perform the disconnection your unit needs are excluded from the results, and the exclusion is stated rather than silently applied — a shorter list with no explanation is worse than a longer one. Indicative cost ranges are published on the pricing page.

This is what the 48-hour window is for. Raise an issue from the order and the funds stay held while it is settled.

You do not have to release first and argue afterwards. Send three things with the issue, because they are what settle it:

• Photographs of the fault, and the error code on the panel if the unit shows one.
• The serial from the nameplate, so the unit in front of you can be matched to the unit in the report.
• What was connected when you powered it up — supply type, water, gas, drain.

The report snapshot attached to your order is the version that was live at the time of sale, not the current listing. The claim is judged against what was actually published to you, and the seller cannot edit their way out of it afterwards.

What this does not cover is a fault the report already declared. If the panel said running hours were unverified and the motor turns out to have done 9,000 of them, that was disclosed before you committed. A report that stated something untrue is a different matter, and the window and the snapshot are what establish which of the two happened.

The person who owns the machine usually knows more about it than a model reading its photographs, so every field on a draft report is editable.

Correct the serial, adjust the age, disagree with a per-dimension finding. Each edit is logged with the value before and after, the confidence recomputes, and the amended field carries a visible seller-amended marker on the published listing. The marker is the point — an amendment that was hidden would make every other figure on the page worth less, so amendments are shown rather than absorbed.

If a computed grade understates a unit you had serviced last month, a Verified Inspection is the stronger answer: an inspector attends, and their signed grade replaces the computed one on the listing, with their name and the date of the visit. The fee is $185.00 per unit, and it is stated before you book rather than after.

Anything about a specific unit belongs in the message thread on that listing. Anything about a sale in progress belongs on the order itself.

Raising it from the order matters more than it sounds: the report snapshot, the escrow state and the collection timeline travel with the thread, so nobody has to reconstruct what was published or when. Both threads reach a real person on the other side, and contact details unmask once funds are held.

For the rules rather than the mechanics, the terms of use set out the marketplace role and who is responsible for what, and the privacy notice covers where your photographs and invoices go once you upload them.