Bid Rules

Status: published. Prepared against the product as built. A version reviewed by counsel, when issued, replaces this one under its own changes section. Version: 2026-10-28 · Effective: 2026-10-28 · Registry slug: bid-rules Operator: Moretime.ai Inc., a Texas corporation ("we", "us", "OnTheList.Live") · Contact: hi@moretime.ai · Postal address: 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731, United States

1. What this page is

"You" are a sponsor: a person or business that bids, or is thinking of bidding, for a placement on a board. These rules apply to every board on OnTheList.Live. Each board links to its own short version under "How ranking works"; this is the long form. A host may add rules for their own board, but a host's rules can only add restrictions — they never override anything here, and a listing removed under a host's own rule rather than ours is refunded under the Refund Policy's row 4 (Terms of Service, section 10).

These rules are part of the Terms of Service, which say who you are contracting with and what each party owes. This page says how bidding works.

2. What a bid buys

A bid buys a placement: your listing, shown on the board at the rank your total buys, for as long as that total holds it — the rest of the current round on a board that runs in rounds, and for as long as your total holds the position on a permanent board (its page calls this all-time).

Where the board's host shows it on a screen in their venue (the board's screen view), the screen shows the top five placements only — the first with its own code to your site, the other four with your site's address written out; every placement, the top five included, stays listed on the board's page. A placement below fifth is still a placement: it is shown on the board's page, not on the screen.

A bid does not buy a rank. Rank is recomputed from everyone's totals every time a payment completes, and another sponsor can pass you at any moment. The position is the one your total buys at each instant, never one you hold by right.

Every paid bid receives a displayed placement, or is refunded: a payment that cannot be applied — one that completes after the round has ended, or one for a destination another sponsor took first — is returned under the Refund Policy, everything but the card processing. Under pre-approval (section 9) a new listing's card is held, not charged, until the host approves it, so a listing the host declines or that the round ends on unreviewed is never charged.

3. How rank is decided

1. Listings are ordered by the cumulative bid total on each listing, highest first. Rank 1 is the top.
2. A tie goes to the listing that reached the total first. Raising your total to match somebody else's does not pass them; you must go above.
3. Nothing else moves a listing — not how long it has been listed, not what the host thinks of it, not what the destination is. Nothing on this service is allocated by chance.
4. The service fee — charged to you on top of the bid — never counts, and neither does any tax. Rank uses bid amounts only. The service fee does not enter the total, the tie-break or any figure shown on the board.

4. Amounts

• Bids are in whole dollars (USD). A listing's total is always a whole number of dollars.
• A board's minimum bid is at least $5. That is the platform floor. A host may set a higher minimum bid for their board, never a lower one. The minimum bid is the smallest first bid the board accepts for a listing; what you pay is that bid plus the service fee (section 5), so a $5 minimum bid is a $6.49 charge.
• A board may run on a bid step. By default the step is $1. A host may set a coarser step — $5, say — and then every total you ask for on that board must be a multiple of it, so passing another listing always means exceeding its total by at least one step. Two things can leave a total off the board's bid step: a host changing the step mid-round, and a partial refund from the host's Stripe Dashboard, which is deducted on the whole-dollar grid. A listing whose total is off the step keeps its place and may be overtaken by less than a step.
• A raise adds to your total, and you are charged only the difference. Raising a listing from $20 to $35 is a $15 bid; the total becomes $35. A raise must take the total strictly above what the listing already holds.
• A raised minimum bid does not bind a listing already on the board. A listing below a newly raised minimum keeps its place and may still be raised by the step.
• The platform may set a maximum single charge and limits on how many checkouts one address or one board may start in a period. None is set by default (zero means unbounded); a bid they refuse is refused before any payment is taken. The platform may also set a minimum single charge, and may raise it temporarily, platform-wide, while a pattern of card testing is detected.

5. What you pay

Your card is charged the bid plus the service fee, plus any sales tax the host collects, and you see the exact total before you pay. The service fee has two parts:

our fee = the larger of 20% of the bid and $0.50

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card processing = what pays Stripe's fee for processing the charge before any tax, at Stripe's standard US card rate (2.9% plus 30 cents), so that the host keeps the whole bid

• The service fee is computed on the amount being charged — the raise, not your whole total. The smallest possible card charge is $1.85.
• The service fee is one labelled line at checkout and the only thing the platform adds. There is nothing else added.
• Sales tax is the host's. A host who collects sales tax through their own Stripe account has Stripe calculate it on the bid from the billing address you give on Stripe's page; the board says "plus any sales tax" before you pay, and Stripe's page shows the tax and the new total before you confirm.
• 20% and $0.50 are the platform's current settings. The platform may apply a lower percentage or minimum for a particular host's boards, never a higher one. The service fee quoted at checkout is the service fee charged, whatever changes while you are paying.
• The whole bid goes to the host; our fee is the platform's; the card processing stays with the host to pay Stripe. The host is the merchant of record, and the host's Stripe business name appears on your card statement, usually followed by a short form of the board's name, so you can tell what the charge was for.
• Payment is by card through Stripe's hosted checkout. We never see or store your card number.

6. Checkout, and why rank is not reserved

Starting a checkout reserves no rank. The amount you are charged is fixed when you start it: the bid you asked for plus the service fee quoted beside it, and any sales tax Stripe adds from your address; nothing else changes it while you pay. Rank can change at any moment until your payment completes, including while you are on the payment page. Before you pay, the board shows the rank your requested total would buy right now and the time left in the round, both labelled as subject to change. When your payment completes you get the rank your total buys at that instant.

Before you can pay, you must tick two boxes on our own page. Neither is pre-ticked. Each is quoted exactly as it appears on the page:

I understand bids are final and my rank can change as others bid

I am 18 or older and bidding on my own behalf or for a business I represent

Both pages you can pay from — the checkout that opens a new listing on a board, and a raise from your listing's manage page — name the Terms of Service, these Bid Rules and the Refund Policy, with their version strings, below the payment control, and link to each. Every payment, from either page, records the version string of the Terms in force at that checkout.

A checkout stays open for a period the platform sets (30 minutes by default). Two things can happen in that window:

• Your payment completes after the round has ended. It is not applied to the finished round or carried into the next one. It is refunded automatically, everything but the card processing, and we email you that it was returned, with a link to the board (Refund Policy, row 5).
• Somebody else pays for the same new destination first. Two people can both be in checkout for a destination not yet on the board. The first payment to complete takes the listing; a later payment from anybody else for that destination is refunded automatically, everything but the card processing — it is never added to the other sponsor's listing.

One thing is held, briefly: for about a minute after somebody starts a checkout for a destination that is not yet on the board, a second checkout for that same destination is refused, so two people do not pay for one new listing by accident. That hold reserves no rank, and it expires on its own.

7. One destination, one listing, one owner

• A listing is identified by its destination. One destination is one listing per round, however it is spelled: we canonicalise the address, so http:// and https://, a leading www. and a trailing slash all name the same destination.
• The listing belongs to the address that paid for it. When your first bid completes, the email address you gave becomes the listing's owner address. Your receipt and the magic link that opens your listing's manage page go there.
• Only the owner can raise a listing, through the magic link we mailed to the owner's address. Each link expires after 24 hours; going on to pay for a raise uses it up, even if you do not finish paying, and saving your listing's business name, line and tags with it does not. The manage page offers to send a new one. Nobody else can pay into your listing, and you cannot pay into anybody else's.
• A listing at $0 belongs to nobody yet — a carried row (section 8) or a house entry (section 10). Whoever pays the minimum bid first takes it. A paid listing leaves the board once refunds bring its total to $0, and its destination is open again the same way: whoever pays the minimum bid for it first takes it. When another sponsor takes a listing over, the previous sponsor's business name, short line about themselves, tags and icon are removed from it and never shown under the new sponsor's placement.
• A destination whose listing was rejected or removed this round cannot be listed again on that board until the next round, by anybody. A destination whose listing a dispute has put on hold is held for the rest of the round: nobody can list it on that board, its owner included, until the dispute returns the listing or a person reinstates or removes it.

8. Rounds, and what happens when one ends

Every board has a mode, fixed when the host creates it.

Reset boards run in rounds on a cadence the host chooses — daily, weekly or monthly. A daily board may also have opening hours: a window of one to twenty-two hours, which may run overnight. Between windows the board shows its archive and takes no bids.

A round ends when its schedule says, and nothing moves that instant. A bid placed late in a round does not extend the round, restart a countdown or delay settlement. The cutoff (below) closes bids before the end; it never pushes the end back. When a round ends:

• the final order is settled — closed, and recorded in the Round Archive, which is permanent. A settled round's standings never change afterwards; a later refund or dispute of a payment behind them is noted against the record, never applied to it;
• every total resets to zero, and the next round starts from nothing;
• unless the host has turned it off, each listing live at the end is copied into the new round as a carried row at $0, in its own place below every paid listing. A carried row is a courtesy, not a placement: it holds no money, cannot be passed and cannot pass anybody, and its previous owner has no priority over it. It keeps the business name its last sponsor gave until somebody takes it. Whoever pays the minimum bid for that destination first takes it; a carried row nobody bids on lapses when the round ends.

A host may change a reset board's cadence or opening hours. The change applies from the next round; a running round finishes on the schedule it started with.

Permanent boards have one round that never ends. Totals accumulate for as long as the board exists. There is no reset, no archive and no closing period. A placement on a permanent board has no scheduled end: it lasts for as long as its total holds the position, or until the board is closed by us — on our own decision, or at the host's request (Host Terms, section 8) — a suspension of the board that refunds every payment behind its round under the Refund Policy, row 4. On a permanent board a row-4 refund is full: there is no round length to pro-rate against. A host who stops a permanent board leaves every placement showing (Terms of Service, section 10).

The cutoff. On a reset board, new bids close for the final minutes of every round, so that a payment does not complete after the round it was meant for has ended. The cutoff is a platform setting — currently 10 minutes, settable from 0 to 60 — and the board tells you when it is in effect. Permanent boards have no cutoff.

9. Moderation, and what you see

Every board has a review setting chosen by its host — a board a host creates starts on pre-approval unless the host picks another:

• your listing goes on the board as soon as it is paid; or
• your listing goes on the board at once and is flagged for the host's review; or
• under pre-approval, your listing is held until the host approves it: not shown, and holding no rank, while held — and your card is held, not charged. The host's approval charges it and puts the listing on the board. If the host rejects it, or the round ends before the host has looked at it, the listing is rejected and the hold is released: nothing is charged; so is a hold the host or the platform releases (a suspended board's, for one). You may cancel it yourself until the host approves, from the email we send when the hold is placed or from your listing's page; a cancelled listing leaves the host's review and its destination is open to a new bid. A hold lapses about seven days after you checked out if the host has not approved it — the hold is released, nothing is charged, and we tell you. While your listing waits, nobody can bid on its destination on that board, you included: raise once it is live. A payment the host took before approving, from their own Stripe account, is refunded if the host then rejects the listing (Refund Policy row 3). A paid listing that takes over a house entry, a carried row or another sponsor's placement that refunds took off the board is the exception: the host has already approved the destination and the sponsor is new, so it goes on the board at once and is flagged for the host's review, as on the second setting — while the new sponsor's business name and line wait for the host. On a board under pre-approval, a business name or line you give or change on a listed placement waits for the host before it shows; the placement itself stays shown.

On any board, the host and the platform may hold, suspend or remove a listing. A suspension is reversible; a removal is permanent for the round. A listing removed for your own breach of the Acceptable Use Policy or the Prohibited Content Policy is not refunded (Refund Policy, row 2). Four checks are automatic: a destination containing a term on the platform's prohibited-keyword list is refused when you submit it, before any payment; a destination on a website the board's host has blocked — the site itself or any address under it — is refused when you submit it, before any payment, for a new listing, a raise and a takeover alike (the refusal says only that the host does not accept sponsorship from this website, and the list never takes a listing already on the board down); a destination added to the platform's denylist stops being linked the moment it is clicked and goes to a person for review; and destinations are re-checked at least once a day and whenever somebody reports a listing. Approval is not permanence.

10. House entries

A host may pin up to three house entries of their own. They are not bids: they sit in their own labelled section below every paid listing, with no rank and no amount paid. If you pay the minimum bid for a destination the host has pinned, you take that listing over — it becomes yours and ranks with the paid listings, and the host's pinned slot is freed.

11. Outbid alerts

An outbid is any drop in your listing's rank caused by another sponsor's bid — not only a drop from the top slot. A tie leaves you where you were and is not an outbid.

Outbid emails are opt-in: you get them only if you tick the box for them when you pay — at checkout or on a raise from your listing's manage page — and you can turn them off from the link in any such email. We send at most one per listing per hour. A carried row cannot be outbid, so it never triggers one, and we do not email you about your own second listing passing your first. An outbid email never quotes an amount to pay; the amount, with its fee, is quoted on your listing's page when you decide to raise.

Receipts, the magic link and notices about your listing's status go to the owner address whether or not you opted into outbid emails.

12. Reports, refunds, endorsement

• Anyone can report a listing from the board's "Report a listing" link. A report is recorded and reviewed by a person. It never takes a listing down by itself, and we do not promise a reply.
• All bids are final. Nothing in this document takes away a right the law gives you that cannot be waived, or your right to dispute a charge with your card issuer. Being outbid is not a reason for a refund, and neither is changing your mind — once your card is charged (a listing whose card is only held may be cancelled until the host approves it, section 9). The only refunds are the ones the Refund Policy lists.
• Every listing on a board is a paid advertisement, except two kinds of entry that hold no money and are labelled as such: a host's own house entries — unranked, in their own labelled section below every paid listing — and, on a board that resets, carried rows at $0, marked "Carried" and numbered below every paid listing: a courtesy copy of a listing from the round before, holding no money. Position is bought. It is not the host's recommendation, and not a review, a score or a measure of quality — see the Advertising and Sponsorship Disclosure.
• How to reach a person, with or without an account: Contact and Support.