Hi everyone,

To answer some of your questions about commission:

- You must pay commission on all sold items dating from June 1st 2008. We set this date so that you would have less fees to pay since we are only now launching the billing system for paying commission fees.

We have stated from day one that the commission fee on DaWanda is 5% on sold items. We never said it was free commission until such and such date. We are very sorry if this was not clear for you, but you owe commission on ALL of your sales to date with the exception that we are waiving the commission you owe from before June 2008.

If you need to cancel a sale please contact us about it, this is no problem.

- If you need to pay your invoice in instalments, please contact us directly at to this email address: invoice-en@dawanda.com, and only if the amount is above €200

- all sellers (regardless of where in the world you are) who use DaWanda pay VAT, because DaWanda is a German company and subject to European laws and taxes. VAT is NOT an extra fee to be paid on top of your commission, it is already included.

VAT is relevant for members of the European Union, because as a PROFESSIONAL seller in the European Union, you do not pay VAT. That is why we ask for you to choose your status between Private or Professional so that we can offer you the service of receiving your bill minus the VAT. (Professional sellers should have VAT id numbers).

The 19% VAT amount is visible on your bill and it is a legal requirement that it is clearly stated on your invoice.

To repeat: VAT is not an extra fee, it is included in the commission fee.

Thanks for clearing up some things Elizabeth :)

One more question: If we cancel a sale that's already on the bill, will it dissapear automatically? And what happens to sales we cancel that were on a previous bill that we already paid? Will we get a refund for that? Sometimes it takes my buyers a long time to pay (if they have problems with the international bank transfer), so I don't like to cancel sales too soon...

Thanks Elizabeth!
Your waving commission fees on items sold before june 2008 is a real bonus and a nice surprise, much appreciated, thank you!
I second Tizz on her questions, it would be nice to know what to expect in case of sales cancelled...

Thank you so much Elizabeth ^^ fortunatly you are here for claring the situation :) beacause in France it's the silent complete ^^

Thank you Elizabeth :D Can you explain us please how we can pay by paypal? because on my invoice it was written my bank account details as the pament method, which I don't want it to be in any case.
Thanks.

As the invoice page says when we receive our invoice bills there will be a link in the email to pay with paypal

Are we going to get a separate bill for each month?

My bill is large, but not over €200, so I'm not given the option to pay in installments.

I'm going to repeat what I said on the other thread that was closed ~ surely you could have handled this better!!!

Thank you Elizabeth for clearing things up. =)
I just wish we could pay in instalments no matter the amount of our bill. Mine does not reach 200€ but It is still a huge bill and I wasn't expecting It to arrive all at the same time and having to pay It in such a short period of time. =S

Oh I just noticed something in my bill: The sales I made today were added to It. So my question is I pay my bill and some of those sales end up being from non paying buyers. Do I get my comission back? Also isn't supposed the bill to 'stop' once It is charged? Because If It keeps adding new purchases a lot of this situations may come up.

hmmm, I am not convinced that since day one you said there was a 5% commission on sold items. I would love to see the terms that I agreed to when the English site was launched. I was aware that at some point a commission would most likely be charged but that we would be notified when that began. I assumed it would correlate with an increase in traffic.
The English site did not have any traffic when I first started listing on here. I would NEVER have agreed to a 5% commission on a site that had no traffic.
I'm upset because I have put a lot of time into my shop here, but I feel really burned by this. There was a major lack of communication.
I would love to hear from other sellers that have been here since June of 2007. Were you all notified of the 5% commission? Maybe I did not get the email?

ChocolateAndSteel - there was an approx 6 week promotion when we offered free commission til the end of September 2007 if you signed up by the previous date August 12 2007. (you can see the blog post about it here,

http://blog-en.dawanda.com/2007/07/30/special-new-membership-offer-on-dawanda/

This promotion was offered before the cut off date of June 2008, so you are not paying any commission for this period anyway.

Aside from this temporary promotion, commission was always stated as 5% on sold items, since DaWanda began in 2006. I'm sorry if you feel that this is unfair, but the commission price was included in every invitation email that was sent out in the beginning, has been clearly stated on the fees page since day 1, posted in the forums, included in answers from customer support and so on. Not to mention that nearly two years of commission fees are being waived, from end of Sept 2006 to mid 2008, and sellers have been using DaWanda with free listing fees for over two and half years now.

Bijunea - your final invoice will be calculated on February 23rd, including sales up to February 20th > Please check your notification email again: "Please check over your invoice items up to the date 20th February 2009." and "We will send you the final bill on 23rd February 2009, calculated from your remaining invoice items."

Tizzalicious - YES any cancelled orders will not appear on your invoice page. and YES you will receive a refund (in the form of a credit on your next bill) if you paid commission for an order that ends up getting cancelled.

If you need to contact us about any order on your invoice page the best thing to do is please click the "Any questions or concerns..." link for the respective order on your "Invoices" page.

Nice to get refunds on late cancellation for non paid orders on the next bill :)

Thank you Elizabeth. =) ***

Thank you for your answers again Elizabeth. That makes me worry a lot less :)

So what is the plan for moving forward? When we will get our invoices in the future? Hopefully on a monthly basis with a reasonable payment due date. I certainly don't want another 9 months of commission dumped on me at once, with zero notice and an unreasonable payment deadline!!

Wouldn't it make more sense just to invoice us up to Jan 31/09? Or prepare some kind of reasonable and fair payment schedule ~ ie Jun/08-Aug/08 is due on Mar 1/09, Sep/08-Nov/08 is due on Apr 1/09 ..... etc etc..... This would give us a chance to get caught up and plan for the payments! And still pay the current invoices as we get them.

Feb/09 hasn't even ended and already we have to pay commissions on that month? I want to make sure that I have been paid for my sales before I submit a commission payment to DaWanda ~ 20% of my orders result in a non-paying customer.

I am not interested in seeing a "credit" on next month's bill, once I have paid DaWanda, that money is gone from my Paypal account and it is less money for me to transfer into my own bank.

I'm also very curious to know how commissions are handled on DE-DaWanda ~ was the billing system in place from day one? What type of payment schedule are they on? Did they get 9 months worth of commissions to pay in one go?

Elizabeth: "ChocolateAndSteel - there was an approx 6 week promotion when we offered free commission til the end of September 2007 if you signed up by the previous date August 12 2007. (you can see the blog post about it here"

So, that being the first and last bit of information I received regarding commissions, do you think it is fair for 20 months later to throw a commission on me without any warning? Can you understand how the non-communication regarding commissions confused me? After 20 months of not being charged commissions I think it would have been slightly professional to send out an email saying, "hey! we are starting to charge commission as of today." That is my biggest issue with all of this. I now have to take money out of my account that I thought was mine to pay a bill that was unexpected, for a tax year that I am no longer in.

I'm really not very impressed with this. Sellers outside of the EU should NOT be paying VAT. AT ALL.

If I was to visit Germany and purchase something and be charged VAT, I would be able to have that amount refunded upon my return. So you are working under misinformation. With this situation I do not have that option.

This could and should have been handled much better.

200EUR is a high figure, the installment offer should be available to everyone. Or give us longer than two weeks notice to pay. This is beyond ridiculous and completely unprofessional.

Yes, the VAT ............ that is another issue entirely.

http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?id=2121&s=latestnews

Here's what I already posted on Etsy:

Hi everyone!

Maybe i can help you out a little bit with the "VAT-thing".

It is NOT right, that somebody outside of the EU doesn't have to pay it. Everybody, who is buying something in Germany has to pay it. And it doesn't matter WHAT you are buying. You pay it for clothes, cosmetica, food and newspapers (ok, the VAT therefore is lower but this doesn't matter in this case anyway). Ans also have to pay it for a listing on Dawanda. Dawanda doesn't keep this money, they have to pay it to the local tax office (don't know if you call is this way?).

This VAT entry is only important for professional sellers inside of the EU. eg Professionals from GB don't have to pay these 19% in Germany, they have to pay 15% (as far as i know) in GB, because the ammount of VAT differs in every european country. In Norwy you have to pay 25% for example...

I googled and found this for you:
http://www.buyusa.gov/germany/en/vat.html

i caught it this way:
You have to pay it here and then claim it back in America.

Hope this could help you a little bit... and please excuse me, if I made any spelling or grammar mistakes ;)

Any questions so far?

Sabine from Germany

Only the company (DaWanda) is located in Germany. They are providing an electronic service to non-EU customers. If I purchased a book from someone in the EU and they mailed it to me, I would not be charged VAT.

VAT works the same and the Canadian GST, anything consumed (shipped) outside the country is exempt from GST. Businesses that pay GST claim it back as a tax credit ........ exactly the same as VAT.

VAT laws are complicated especially for internet electronic services. Please see the link that I posted in my last response.