Terms of service
These terms are published so you can read them. They are not in force yet, and nothing on this site asks you to accept them.
Effective: 2026-08-25 · Last updated: 2026-08-25 · Status: published for review, not in force
Where these terms stand
These terms are published for you to read. They are not in force. No page on this site asks you to agree to them, there is no checkbox, and nothing here says that using the site means you accept anything. They are here because a lawyer should read them before they bind anyone, and because publishing them early is better than springing them on you later.
When they do take effect, this paragraph will be replaced by one saying so, and the dates at the top of the page will change.
The one thing to understand
Pilebase does not sell you anything. We show you which supply yards and nurseries near you carry what you need, at the prices those businesses publish, and we pass your order to the yard.
The yard sells you the material. Your contract for the goods is with that business. The yard loads it, delivers it, and stands behind it. The yard's own ticket is the final word on what you owe and what you got. If the ticket at the counter says something different from what this site said, the ticket is right.
Prices
Every price on this site is a yard's own price. We never mark up a price and we never invent one. Where a price came from a page the yard published, we show the date we confirmed it and a link to the page it came from.
Prices go stale. A yard can change a price the day after we read it. The price you see here is what that yard published on the date shown, and it is not a quote.
Where we convert a price into a different unit so you can compare two yards, that conversion is marked as approximate and the yard's own listed price is always shown beside it. We do not convert between plants and bulk materials at all, because there is no honest arithmetic between a five gallon shrub and a ton of rock.
Ordering
Placing an order here is a request to the yard. It becomes an order when the yard confirms it, or when the yard's own system confirms it automatically.
You can cancel from your tracking link, and the site does it rather than asking you to email anyone. Cancelling stays open after the yard has confirmed, right up until the yard marks the order ready for collection or out for delivery.
Cancelling, refunds and returns: the yard's policy governs
The yard is the seller, so the yard's own cancellation, refund and return policy governs its own sale. Pilebase does not have one for you and will not write one on a yard's behalf. Some yards let you cancel free within a day. Some charge a percentage. Some give store credit rather than money. Some will not take bulk material back at all. Those are real published terms at real businesses, and they are the yard's to set.
What we do is show you the yard's terms before you decide, and never invent terms for a yard that has published none.
- Where a yard has published terms, they are on the yard's page and in the order form before you commit, quoted in the yard's own words with the date we read them.
- Where a yard's terms name a cancellation fee, we tell you the amount you will actually get back before you confirm, and the refund is recorded for that amount. Not an estimate: the same number.
- Where a yard has published nothing, we show nothing and we do not promise you a refund. You are told plainly that cancelling asks the yard and their terms decide. That is less satisfying than a promise, and it is the only honest thing we can say about a business whose terms we do not know.
- Where a yard has published that a paid order is not refundable, the cancel button says so instead of offering you something they have said they do not do, and we point you at them.
The terms that apply to your order are the ones in force when you placed it. Your order records them. A yard changing its policy afterwards does not change your order.
If you have already paid by card, the refund comes from the yard, because the yard is who took the payment. We tell the yard the same moment we tell you, and your tracking page shows the refund when it lands. Banks take a few days to show it. If it has not appeared within a week, email us and we will chase it for you.
Once the yard has your load ready or on a truck, the cancel button is gone, and it is between you and the yard from there. That is a real cost to a real business by then, and their policy applies. We will help you reach them.
Pilebase charges you nothing to cancel, ever. Our own fee comes off the yard's side and follows the same split as your refund: if a yard's terms keep a quarter of your order, a quarter of our fee stays and the rest goes back to them. That is between us and the yard and it never changes what you get.
If a yard does not answer, we may offer your order to the next nearest yard that carries the same material, at that second yard's own prices. We tell you every time this happens, before anything is confirmed, and you can decline. If nobody takes it, we cancel the order and say so rather than leaving it open.
Delivery
A delivery fee comes from the yard's own rate card or from the yard directly. Where we do not yet have a fee, the order says the fee is pending and that the yard confirms it before anything is owed. We never make up a delivery fee.
Delivery dates and windows are the yard's. We pass them on. We do not guarantee them.
Money
Today, no money moves through this site. You pay the yard, at the counter or on delivery, their usual way. We charge you nothing.
When checkout is switched on, this is how it will work, and it is written down now so there are no surprises:
- The yard is the merchant of record. The charge is created on the yard's own payment account. The yard's name is what appears on your card statement.
- We take a fee from the yard, not from you. It is 2% of the order, or 2.5% if the yard runs our full operations software, and it comes out of the yard's side. The buyer never pays a Pilebase fee.
- A refund comes from the yard, because the yard took the money, and how much comes back is the yard's own policy as set out above. We will help you get to the right person, and we can see the payment status on your order. Where a refund is due because the order was cancelled or the yard could not fill it, we tell the yard automatically rather than leaving you to chase it, and your tracking page says how much is owed and whether it has arrived. Where the yard's terms name no amount, your tracking page says so rather than naming one.
- If the yard cancels or cannot fill your order, you get the whole payment back. A cancellation fee is what a yard charges a buyer who changed their mind; nothing you did caused this one, and no yard's published terms say otherwise.
- If you dispute a charge with your bank, that dispute is with the yard, whose name is on the charge.
Tax
Sales tax on your order is the yard's. The yard, or the yard's own system, works it out and charges it. We do not set it and we do not add to it.
If a law ever makes us responsible for collecting and sending in tax on an order placed here, we will do that, and the order will show it. We are not promising that will never happen, because the law on marketplaces and tax is not ours to promise about.
Your account
An account is optional. You can order as a guest.
Keep your password to yourself. Tell us if you think somebody else has it. You are responsible for what happens under your account, and we will help you shut it down fast if something is wrong.
We may suspend an account that is being used to abuse the site, to place orders somebody does not intend to collect, or to harass a yard. We will tell you why.
Reviews
You can review an order you actually placed, once. A person reads every review before it appears. We will not publish a review that names an individual, states something as a fact we cannot check, or reads as an attack rather than an account of what happened. A yard can reply. A yard cannot delete.
What we do not promise
We put real effort into accuracy, and the site is built to refuse to publish a number nobody sourced. Even so:
- We do not promise a listing is complete or current. A yard may carry something we do not list, or have stopped carrying something we do.
- We do not promise a yard will accept your order, or answer at all.
- We make no promise about the goods themselves. Quality, quantity, fitness for what you are doing with it, and everything else about the material is between you and the yard. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties about the goods, express and implied.
- We do not promise the site will always be up. It is one server run by one person.
Limits on what we owe you
To the extent the law allows:
We are not liable for what happens with the goods. A short load, a wrong material, damage from a delivery truck, a missed window: those are the yard's, and the yard is who you deal with.
We are not liable for indirect losses, meaning lost profit, lost work, or the cost of a delay, arising from using this site.
Our total liability to you, for anything arising out of this site, is capped at the greater of one hundred dollars or what you have actually paid Pilebase, which today is nothing.
None of this limits anything the law does not let us limit, including liability for our own fraud, and nothing here takes away a right you have under your state's consumer protection law.
If something goes wrong
Email us first. Most things get fixed in a day, and a person reads it.
If we cannot fix it between us, these terms are governed by Colorado law, and a dispute goes to a court in Colorado. There is no arbitration clause and no class action waiver in this document. That is a deliberate choice for now and one a lawyer may revisit.
Changes
If we change these terms we will change the date at the top and, for a change that materially affects you, say what changed on the page rather than leaving you to diff it.
Contact
Email info@pilebase.io.