Bonanza Lawsuit & Shipping Shenanigans - Should Sellers Be Concerned?

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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UPDATE 3-4-24

The case between Alloy Dev and Bonanza Worldwide has finally been officially dismissed, with an addendum made to the Promissory Note executed 2-23-24.


Bonanza Marketplace founder Bill Harding is suing current owner Quincy Faison for failure to make payments on a promissory note that was issued as part of the sale of the company in March 2023.

Harding's software development company Alloy.Dev, Inc, claims Hanson Enterprises USA, LLC and Bonanza Worldwide, LLC (of which Faison is president) owe almost $125,000 plus interest, court costs and attorneys fees after failing to complete payment per the terms of their agreement.

The lawsuit filed in Florida on October 13, 2023 provides the following Statement of Facts:

Statement Of Facts
On 3/8/23 Defendants issued, executed and delivered to Plaintiff a promissory note, copy attached hereto and hereinafter the Note, in the amount of $240,000.00, payable on the terms and conditions stated therein.

The Note matured on 6/6/23, at which time the sum of $245,917.50 became due and payable, plus per diem interest from said date of $98.63.

Defendants made one payment of $125,000.00 against the Note on 7/10/23.

After the payment described above, the remaining principal balance due on the Note was $124,270.82.

As of 9/21/23 the principal balance due on the Note remains $124,270.82 and interest due is $3,728.12 and interest continues to accrue on said principal balance at the rate of $51.07 per day thereafter.

Plaintiff owns and holds the Note.

Plaintiff has retained the undersigned's firm to represent it in this matter and agreed to pay a fee for said firm's services for which Defendants are liable pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Note.

Wherefore Plaintiff demands judgement against Defendants, jointly and severally, for principal, interest, court costs, and reasonable attorneys fees.

Court records show Faison was successfully served in this suit on October 31, but Alloy.Dev, Inc's attorney omitted filing the Returns of Service with the court until January 22, 2024.

Harding declined to comment for this article.

Faison provided the following statement: "This is not really a story.  Small disagreement on the terms of the sale.  We have settled out of court and came to an agreement on our own."

However, PACER still shows the case is currently open as of 5 PM Eastern Time, January 29, 2024, with the latest filing showing on January 22, 2024.

Those filings were to provide proof that service had been executed and to respond to the previous order to show cause. As shown in the screenshot above, Plaintiff's attorney was still actively petitioning the court to allow the lawsuit to move forward at that time.

If a settlement has been reached, it would have been very recently and it has not yet been added to the public record.

Case 1:23-cv-23911 is still open in the Southern District of Florida with Judge Federico A Moreno presiding.


Faison took over Bonanza last year with grand plans and a focus on marketing the site to bring in more buyers.

New Ownership Brings Marketing Focus To Bonanza Marketplace
Bonanza founder & CEO Bill Harding steps back as new owner Quincy Faison takes over with big plans for marketplace.

Since then, he's introduced new features and functionality like Bonanza Lending, a Diamond Membership plan, and Vercado Webstores but many sellers say they are still struggling with low traffic and low sales on the platform.

Seller sentiment has also soured on Bonanza's controversial new shipping program, which charges a $2 per transaction fee if sellers choose not to purchase shipping labels from Bonanza.

Bonanza Forges Ahead With Controversial Shipping Program
Bonanza is forging ahead with controversial shipping program requiring sellers to purchase labels from the site or pay $2 fee.

The new shipping program went into effect November 8th, but Bonanza had originally said sellers who use approved 3rd party Shipping API partners would be exempt.

However, some sellers report their settings were changed to remove their exemptions last week and their credit cards started being charged for these extra shipping fees with no notice or explanation.

Bonanza Sellers Hit With Unexpected Shipping Fees, Unannounced Change To Shipping Policy Help Page
Bonanza sellers hit with unexpected fees for labels via API shipping partners - is it a tech issue or has Bonanza reneged on exemption policy?

Bonanza General Manager, Sarah Tranum, has provided the following statement to clarify that a recent validation check found some sellers had opted out of the Bonanza shipping program even though they do not use an integrated third-party shipping service, those sellers were removed from the exemption and notified via email that they are no longer exempt.

Bonanza Shipping was launched to save our sellers both time and money. We are able to offer the lowest possible rates for FedEx, UPS and USPS to our sellers no matter the size of their business. Now, small businesses can access the same rates as much larger ecommerce businesses thanks to our community-wide rates.

Sellers shipping from outside of the US or sellers using third-party shipping services connected to our API are exempt from using Bonanza Shipping.

When we first launched Bonanza Shipping, we provided sellers using third-party shipping services connected to our API with the ability to opt out of the program in their account settings. Recently, when we ran a validation check, we found that only 1,045 sellers who do not use an integrated third-party shipping service had also opted-out. These sellers were all sent an email to notify them that they are no longer exempt.

We have also made it easier for sellers who do qualify by automatically exempting them with no action needed on their part. All sellers who were previously exempt remain exempt. Our policy has not changed. Sellers with questions should contact our award-winning support team at support@bonanza.com for assistance.

However, sellers who have been impacted by this issue deny they were notified via email and say they are still waiting for answers.

Unfortunately, those answers may not be forthcoming, as once again Bonanza has decided to delete and censor user comments on their community forum - clearly showing they did not learn anything from the debacle that ensued when they censored comments about the shipping policy announcement back in November.

Value Added Resource reader Jeff12671 commented that these latest shipping shenanigans raise questions about if there may be "something really screwy" going on, saying the surprise charges and censorship don't bode well for the company.

So far today I have not received any further responses from them. I messaged their support this morning when my $38 would be refunded and no reply.

It looks like something really screwy might be going on there with the deletion of the opt our button, surprise shipping label charges with no explanation and now the deletion of seller posts in their community forum asking questions about what is going on presumably in an attempt to try to control the narrative all together does not bode well.

I'm happy to give them a chance to fix their mistakes but if they don't try to fix them after some reasonable amount of time I'm going to have to look at filing chargebacks on my improper fee charges.

That's certainly an understandable response and he is not the only seller we've seen express similar sentiments.

Clearly, Faison and the rest of the Bonanza crew have a lot of work to do to gain seller trust - restoring the option to enter a 3rd party API shipping partner, refunding fees that were incorrectly charged, and committing to transparency about the company's current state and future plans would be a good place to start.

BonanzaLegalShippingSeller Updates

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.

7 comments
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Banned in Chat
No wonder they went to a 2 day billing period, this new guy is hard up for cash.
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None Such
It’s clear Faison has been moving to extract as much new fee revenue from sellers as possible, as quickly as possible, to monetize the existing seller base and get some return on his investment. But apparently not quickly enough to make payments due. Not a good sign.
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Jeff12671
Here is the text of the email I received from them this morning -

On January 25, 2024, we experienced a bug that affected your Bonanza account. Your Bonanza account has a current API user token with a Bonanza integrated third-party service which you use to ship your transactions. In your seller account settings, you had opted out of using Bonanza Shipping labels to ship your transactions. This meant that your account was not billed the $2 assessment fee if Bonanza Shipping was not used to fulfill completed transactions.

On January 25, 2024, a system bug caused shipping assessment fees to be mistakenly added to your billing statement. We have fixed this bug.

The $2 shipping assessment fees have been removed from your account and any charged assessment fees have been returned to your account as of January 30, 2024.

We sincerely apologize for this error and the confusion that it caused. Thank you to the sellers who notified our support team of the error. If you have additional questions, please reach out to our award-winning support team at support@bonanza.com.

Thank you for your business.

Best regards,
The Bonanza Team
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Jeff12671
So I and I imagine a lot of sellers received an email from Bonanza this morning saying they found a "bug" in their software and impacted sellers would be "credited" back the improper shipping fee assessments. By "credit" they mean they are simply adding a credit in that amount to seller's monthly bills and not processing refunds onto the sellers credit cards. So if you want the full credit of your refunds you have to keep selling. The timing of these surprise charges on the heals of Quincy's lawsuit against him for non-payment of his Bonanza purchase moving forward last week can't be ignored. The timely is highly suspicious. If true, which I think it probably is, it's a pretty sleazy way for Bonanza to treat its sellers.
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Liz Morton
Thanks for sharing that update! I completely agree that charging a credit card and then processing the "refund" as a credit to your account is 🚩🚩🚩.

I'd be contacting my cc company and the FTC, if it were me.
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DWine
I talked to a Shipstation rep that told me that bonanza is getting money for all the sellers that are joining because of this 2 dollar fine per sale
Shipstation is only free for 30 days then you pay or get cancelled
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DWine
I miss Bill Harding! He is Bonanza!
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Recent Comments
Avatar PlaceholderConcerned9 hours ago
It is Slowwwwwww and is more expensive to the buyer. In the past items I have ordered will sit at the hub for around 2 weeks. I avoid ebay unless I cannot get it elsewhere.
Avatar Placeholdermarks304713 hours ago
Hi, I have a friend who had an interesting experience recently that fell under this issue. They sold an item, packed and dispatched to the UK Ebay hub, this was midway through the period as the pause occurred. They then received a message from the buyer that they had checked tracking and discovered that the item had disappeared on ebay, no advice. It then turned out that the tracking had been fudged and the package was with them but not forwarded on to the USA. A few hours of to and fro to get the answer that it was due to the tariff dilemma. NO fault of the buyer(who had paid) or the seller ((who had been paid) and a strange response that the item could not be delivered. The buyer would be refunded in full, the seller would keep payment and the item would not be returned. Strange, Ebay must be hurting paying our both sides of the deal+
Avatar PlaceholdercwiYesterday
  1. Start building out the brand and promoting the heck out of Canadian sellers to our domestic market. Work with Federal/Provincial level governments in the push to build a strong presence here in Canada.

  2. Add other calculated shipping options than Canada Post UPS/FedEx for domestic shipping - partner with couriers nationwide, leverage agreements and software integrations with courier reseller platforms such as Stallion Express. Build out a crowd sourced network using national/regional retail locations as drop points for rural regions, leveraging transport networks to move packages to courier pickup points, akin to the UK courier model but adapted to the Canadian realities.

  3. Create a centralized international shipping clearing house to aide micro businesses with affordable shipping rates and customs clearance to avoid pitfalls and complexities (akin to US eIS).

  4. Bring features forward to the platform from other localizations, such as prepaid best offer acceptance, etc.