Mars Market Reference Plain descriptions of what each step involves, what you will experience, and where it can go wrong

Mars Market addresses

Three published addresses for the same market. Copy rather than retype, and check the signature once you are through.

Address 1 marsautkudspgk6j23cxdtrk36ae4fpis2eoe7izu5y2rsksvmfji2ad.onion
Address 2 marshjhtog245vzjzcicnmv2ci6yljibvdm4pngq5kmkfvcutppboxad.onion
Address 3 marsiujka6lrsaqpnxiwvknthhzsrlmq77mnl2fi62guc4lwxif65syd.onion

This list is published, not monitored. An address that opens is not an address that is genuine, and the check that settles it takes under a minute.

Reference › Procedures

Tracking an order

The longest step and the one with the least happening. Knowing what is normal is most of what makes it bearable.

What this step is
The period between committing to an order and it arriving or failing.
How to prepare
The order reference and the delivery window noted somewhere. Both matter if this becomes a dispute.
What you will see
A status that changes rarely and messages that may not come at all. Neither is a signal by itself.
How it works
States are set by the vendor and the platform. Nothing external updates them, so a state means somebody changed it rather than that something was observed.
How long it takes
The stated window, which is usually accurate at the wide end and optimistic at the narrow end.
What you will experience
A stretch where nothing happens and every explanation you invent is worse than the truth. This is the hardest part psychologically and the least eventful practically.
What can go wrong
The window closes with nothing arriving, or the vendor stops answering. Both have pages in conditions.
Benefits and limits
Tracking tells you what somebody entered. It is not observation of anything physical.

When silence is normal

For most of the window. Vendors answering every message individually would spend their entire day on correspondence, so a vendor who has acknowledged an order and then gone quiet is behaving ordinarily rather than badly.

The exception is a vendor who was responsive and then stopped mid conversation, particularly around a problem. That is a change in pattern rather than silence, and change is the thing worth noticing. It has its own page in vendor silence.

What not to do while waiting

  1. Do not message repeatedly. It does not accelerate anything and it fills the record that a dispute panel would later read.
  2. Do not file early. A dispute opened before the window closes is usually dismissed, and the dismissal costs credibility on the resubmission that mattered.
  3. Do not accept a move off platform. An offer to sort it out privately removes the only leverage you have.
  4. Do not post the order publicly. It commits you to a version of events before the record exists and invites messages from strangers.
A habit worth havingWrite every message as though a dispute panel will read it later, because it might. That single habit costs nothing and improves your position if this becomes a dispute.

When waiting stops being right

When the delivery window has closed. Not before, not on a feeling, not because the status has not changed. The window closing is the event that makes a dispute appropriate, and it is also the event that makes one likely to succeed. Everything before that is waiting, and waiting is the correct action rather than a passive one.