Raising a Dispute
A dispute — the interface calls it a fraud concern — is your manual escalation path for a delivered placement that went wrong: the post never appeared, was deleted early, was altered, or ran in the wrong place. It freezes the owner's payout while the platform's team reviews the evidence, and refunds you if the concern is upheld.
Raising one creates a dispute with its own OFPD- reference, distinct from the OFO- order it is about. Quote the OFPD- when you follow up on the review; quote the OFO- when you mean the placement. Both are Onflow Ads IDs and both are safe to put in a support message.
Check the automatic protections first. A declined or ignored booking refunds itself. A booking the owner accepted and never posted refunds itself. A monitor-verified delivery failure refunds automatically on Elite and above. A dispute is for what the automatics did not catch.
Before you start
- The post must have been published. Before that the accept/decline machinery covers you, and the form refuses: "You can raise a concern once the owner has posted your ad."
- You have 14 days from delivery — even if the payout has already been released. After that: "The window to raise a concern on this booking has closed."
- One open concern per order. While one is under review: "A concern on this booking is already under review."
- Read the evidence first. The review is decided on the same trail you can already see.
Check the evidence yourself first
- Press "🔗 View live post ↗" on the order. Is the post live, and is it intact? A missing pin is only evidence if you actually bought one — on an ordinary booking nothing was ever pinned, so its absence proves nothing.
- Open "Delivery proof". The archive holds the creative as booked and every monitor capture, including any edited since booking flags.
If the trail already shows the failure, your concern is on solid ground. If it shows a clean delivery, read what a rejected concern costs before you submit.
Step by step
- Open your Campaigns page and press Details on the order.
- Press "Open a dispute ·
<label>". The chip carries your plan's published resolution target — "48h SLA", "24h SLA", or "queue-ordered" on plans without one. - The form opens, headed "Raise a fraud concern — held funds stay frozen while we investigate (
<your SLA label>).", above a warning block about the cost of an unfounded claim. - Pick a reason chip:
- "The post was never published"
- "It was deleted early"
- "The content was altered"
- "Wrong channel or audience"
- Optionally add detail: "Add any detail that helps us investigate (optional)…"
- Press "Submit concern" and confirm.
On success: "Thanks — our team will review this. The owner's payout is held while we investigate." — plus your plan's resolution target in hours, where you have one.
The four reasons are not interchangeable. "It was deleted early" and "The content was altered" are both things the monitor may already have recorded, and the proof archive will show it. "Wrong channel or audience" is the one the monitor cannot see for you — say what you expected and what ran.
"It wasn't pinned." Unless you bought the pin extra or booked the 7 days in feed · pinned throughout format, no pin was ever sold, so there is nothing to have failed.
"The owner posted over my ad." The exclusivity window is policed on its own, automatically: the owner takes a reliability penalty and you are notified, but there is no money remedy, because your ad still ran for its full booked duration. It is not one of the four reasons and no reason can be stretched to cover it.
Filing either of these gets the concern rejected, and a rejected concern costs −0.5 reliability.
What happens the moment you submit
- Held funds stay frozen. The dispute blocks the automatic release to the owner. If the payout already went out — a concern can be raised up to 14 days after delivery — the owner's wallet is frozen for the full 14 days instead, so the money is still reachable.
- The evidence is frozen with it. The platform snapshots what its own monitor witnessed at that moment: every check it made, the last check time, any flag and its public note, the measured views, forwards, reactions and clicks, the views the owner promised, and the proof-capture trail. The review is decided on that, not on two competing stories.
- Your resolution clock is stamped from your plan at the moment you raise it — see below.
- The order shows its state. It carries a Dispute · open pill with a live countdown to your resolution target, or "in the review queue" where your plan has no target.
- The owner is notified that a concern was raised and their payout is on hold.
Your resolution target
The published target is a plan benefit, and it is written onto the dispute when you raise it — so changing plans mid-review cannot move the clock you were sold.
| Plan | Resolution target |
|---|---|
| Free | Queue order — no published target |
| Lite | Queue order — no published target |
| Plus | Queue order — no published target |
| Elite | 48 hours |
| Master | 24 hours |
| Ultimate | 24 hours |
On a plan without a target the interface says "queue-ordered" rather than counting down to a deadline nobody promised. Your concern is reviewed on the same evidence, by the same team, with the same outcomes. What a higher plan buys is a published time, not a better hearing.
Outcomes
| Outcome | What you see | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Upheld | The order moves to REFUNDED | You are refunded to your wallet, as non-withdrawable balance |
| Rejected | The concern is closed | The hold clears, the owner's release proceeds, and the concern costs you −0.5 reliability |
Either way the owner's frozen wallet is released the moment the concern is decided — a cleared owner is not punished by the review itself.
The form warns you before you type: "If our review finds this concern doesn't stand, it costs you −0.5 reliability (a pattern of rejected concerns costs more). A genuine concern is always safe — this only affects false or unfounded ones."
A pattern of rejected concerns costs a further −0.5 on top. Booking and bidding both need a reliability score of at least 4.0, so repeated unfounded claims eventually lock you out of new deals. Check the live post and the proof archive first.
While a dispute is open
Your account is under a participation block: you can finish anything already in progress, but you cannot start a new booking or place a new bid until it is resolved. This applies to a concern raised against you; see Your reliability as a buyer.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "You can raise a concern once the owner has posted your ad." | The order was never published, or is not in a disputable state | An unposted booking is already covered by the automatic refunds. Check the badge — a DECLINED order was refunded in full |
| "A concern on this booking is already under review." | One open concern per order | Wait for the outcome. Add anything new through support, quoting the OFPD- |
| "The window to raise a concern on this booking has closed." | More than 14 days since delivery | The window is fixed. If something serious surfaced later, contact support with the OFO- |
| "Tell us what went wrong so we can investigate." | You submitted without picking a reason | Pick one of the four reason chips |
| "Fraud concerns aren't available yet — please contact support." | The dispute service could not be reached just then | Contact support with the OFO-. Your 14-day window is not spent by a failed attempt |
| The countdown on the pill ran out | Your plan's published target has passed | Contact support quoting the OFPD- |
FAQ
The owner never posted at all — is that a dispute?
Usually not. If the accept window lapsed or the owner declined, you were already refunded automatically. If the owner accepted and the post then never appeared, the automatic non-delivery refund covers that too, after its 120-minute grace. "The post was never published" is there for the case where the automatics did not fire and the promised window has come and gone.
Can the owner and I just talk it out?
The dispute flow exists precisely so you do not have to negotiate with the counterparty about money the platform is holding. If an owner wants different terms on a booking that has not run yet, that is the separate counter-offer flow.
The payout already released — is it too late?
No. You can raise a concern up to 14 days after delivery even if the money has moved. The owner's wallet is frozen for the investigation instead.
Will disputing affect my future bookings?
An upheld concern: not at all. A rejected one costs −0.5 reliability, more for a pattern, and your reliability gates booking and bidding.
Dispute my booking because the post was deleted after an hour raises the same concern this page describes, with your words as the reason, after you type CONFIRM. What the assistant can do for you has the full list and the confirmation rule.
Related
- What you are actually buying — the two complaints that are not dispute reasons, and why.
- Escrow and buyer protection — everything that refunds you without a dispute.
- Tracked links and delivery proof — the archive a dispute is argued over.
- Your reliability as a buyer — what a rejected concern costs, and how to recover.
- Orders and campaigns — where the dispute chip and the open-dispute pill appear.