The trusted third party
The independent third party that protects the merchant and the consumer.
Last reviewed on
A withdrawal, without proof, is one person's word against the other's. BackToMe is neither the seller nor the customer : it is an independent third party, published in France, whose only role is to establish the facts without taking sides. And that is exactly why it protects the honest merchant as much as the consumer.
The problem
Without proof, it's your word against mine
A customer says they requested their refund in time. The merchant says they received nothing, or not on that date. Without a neutral record, no one can settle it, and it is almost always the most determined who wins, not the one who is right.
The problem is not bad faith on either side. The problem is that there was no one, between the two, to simply record what happened. That is the gap BackToMe fills.
The answer
A third party that establishes the facts, and nothing else
BackToMe does one thing, and it does it well : it records the request, acknowledges receipt of it to the customer, and archives it dated and locked. Full stop. What it does not do matters just as much :
We do not judge
We do not decide whether a request is well-founded. That is a matter for the law and, if need be, the judge.
We do not refund
The money never passes through us. The refund remains the merchant's decision and the merchant's act.
We do not take sides
Neither for the seller, nor for the customer. We record who did what, and when. That's all.
This restraint is not a limitation, it is the heart of the job. A third party that decided in people's place would no longer be neutral. By confining itself to establishing the facts, BackToMe stays credible for everyone.
The dual protection
The same fact, established once, protects both sides
Proof takes no side. A dated and locked request serves as a shield in both directions, at the same time.
The honest merchant
- An invented or backdated request does not hold up : the date is locked.
- Proof you can present on the day of a dispute or a check by the regulator, in any country of the EU.
- The right to inspect the returned goods and to reduce the refund in the event of depreciation (Directive 2011/83/EU) remains intact.
BackToMe
neutral third party
The honest consumer
- Their request can no longer be « lost », ignored or denied by the merchant.
- An acknowledgement of receipt by email, which they keep as supporting evidence.
- A dated proof they can present if the refund drags on beyond the 14 days.
It is the only point on which an honest seller and an honest customer have exactly the same interest : that the facts be established cleanly. BackToMe stands there, in the middle, and nowhere else.
Independence
Why « independent » is not an empty word
One might object : « the merchant is the one who pays, so the tool works for the merchant ». The answer lies in one fact : the merchant pays the subscription, but they have no means of falsifying, delaying or deleting a request. The record is locked from the moment it is created and remains verifiable by the consumer as much as by the authorities.
In other words, BackToMe's customer has no control over the proof. That is the whole difference between a trusted third party and a mere piece of software serving a single party. Our neutrality is structural, it is written into the way the proof is produced, not into a marketing promise.
This is what was missing until now : a player whose only business is to establish the facts, published in France, without selling anything extra to one side or the other. Neither the seller, nor the customer. Just the third party.
The proof
Proof that no one can fabricate after the fact
For a third party to be believed by both sides, its proof must depend on no one's good faith, not even ours. That is the case :
Dated and locked
Each request is locked from the moment it is received: impossible to change the date or the content after the fact without it showing. Across the whole EU, electronic proof cannot be set aside on the sole ground that it is digital (eIDAS regulation), its weight remaining freely assessed by the judge.
Verifiable by anyone, without us
A judge, the regulator, the merchant or the customer check the integrity and the date of the proof themselves, from its reference. No one needs to « take BackToMe's word for it ».
Hosted in the European Union
The data stays in the EU (Paris) and is retained, exportable in one click the day it needs to be produced, whatever the customer's country.
For the technical detail, see why the proof holds up in a dispute, and for the vision behind all this, about BackToMe.
The neutral third party that protects both sides
Install the button in five minutes: BackToMe establishes dated, verifiable proof for every withdrawal. European obligation (Directive (EU) 2023/2673). 7-day free trial, 0 € today.