Heratio Help Center article. Category: Marketplace.

Marketplace — Reservations & Holds

Reservations let a buyer hold a fixed-price listing for 12 hours while they decide. They are a softer commitment than Buy Now and a cleaner alternative to "I'll send an offer for full price".

What a reservation does

Marks the listing as on hold for you for 12 hours.
Other buyers see "Reserved" and cannot Buy Now while the hold is active.
When the hold expires, the listing automatically goes back to active.
Buyers who paid for a reservation upfront — none. Reservations are free; the trade-off is the per-buyer cap below.

Limits

To prevent reservations being used as a denial-of-stock tactic:

Limit	Default	Operator setting
Active reservations per buyer	2	`marketplace.reservation_max_active`
Reservations per buyer per rolling 24 h	2	`marketplace.reservation_max_24h`
Hold duration	12 hours	`marketplace.reservation_hours`

If you hit the cap the system shows: "You can only hold 2 listings at a time. Cancel one to reserve another."

Buyer flow

Reserve

Open a fixed-price listing.
Click Reserve for 12 h next to Buy Now.
Confirmation flash: "Reserved for 12 hours. Hold expires at YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM — Buy Now to complete the purchase."

Endpoint: POST /marketplace/listing/reserve/{listingId}.

Track and cancel

Reservations show on My Following with a countdown. Click Cancel reservation to release immediately:

POST /marketplace/reservation/cancel/{reservationId}

Cancelling counts toward your daily cap (you can't burn it for free), but freeing the slot lets you reserve something else right away.

Convert to a purchase

Inside the hold window, click Buy Now as usual. The system bypasses the listing's stock check (your hold guarantees it) and sends you straight to PayFast.

Seller view

Sellers see a reservation as a held state on the listing:

The listing is hidden from the front-page Browse counters of "available".
A small Reserved badge appears on the seller's /marketplace/seller/listings view with the holder's username and the hold expiry.
Sellers cannot accept offers on a held listing — the hold blocks all other paths.
If the buyer doesn't convert, the listing returns to active automatically at hold-expiry.

There is no override: a seller cannot revoke a reservation they've made. Operators can in extreme cases (fraud, abuse) via admin tools, but that's not exposed to sellers.

When to reserve vs. when to offer

Situation	Use
You want to think for a few hours, no negotiation	Reserve
You think the price is too high	Make an Offer
You're 100% sure	Buy Now

Reserving and then making an offer on the same listing is allowed but not encouraged — the hold limits other buyers but doesn't get you a discount.

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