4 replies to this topic

[burt]

A quick guide to the new EU Directive on E-Commerce selling:

Ensure your website has:
- Full Contact Address details
- Details of any of your Trade Organisations
- Details of professional qualifications you hold in order to perform your business
- Details of schemes which validates your goods/services
- Your VAT number
- Full price details including delivery and taxes

Ensure your emails:
- Are clearly identified as commercial communications
- Identify the organisation on whose behalf they are sent
- If sent unsolicited, are described in a way that can be blocked automatically at the receivers end

Ensure your purchasing set-up:
- Includes codes of conduct (if you have one), and how users can employ them
- If there are Terms and Conditions, put them in a form that users can download for offline reading
- Has a facility for the user to correct their order before the order is officially taken
- Acknowledges order receipt
- Says who will fulfill the order
- Identifies the languages the order contract can be made in

Ensure your marketing through Mobile Phones has:
- A website address where contact details and all the information that can't be displayed on a mobile phone because of the small display.

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS NOW UK LAW. Break any of those terms and the Customer has every right not to go ahead with the order!!

HTH

[armhoge]

I am trying to see (without to much work) if there is any future in
selling some of my stock pictures. What I really dont want to do is to register a company.. get VAT number... collect VAT etc etc

From a business point of view where is my business located ?

-UK since the site and the files to be downloaded are there ?
-Ireland since I am physically here for many months?
-USA since the money will be collected by PayPal
and used out of the Paypal account
-South Africa since I am a resident and pay income tax there ?
-Jamaica because I think its a nice place ?

What have the other users of OSC done to stay legal and at the same time minimize the pain in setting up a shop that for argument sake could fail in 4 months ?

Regards

[emanresu]

Thanks for the update. Information on this subject is very appropriate given our recent experience in testing out a new UK store.

We've had a "customer" placing an order for zero priced items and claiming he had a contract with us to supply. This was despite the warning on the front page regarding it being a test site. (They had come through a Google link and missed default.php).

To try to correct the problem we adjusted the checkout_process.php in includeslanguagesenglish to read:


define('EMAIL_TEXT_SUBJECT', 'Order Process. Please note this is a trial order and will not be processed or billed');


This means that if customers arrive on a test site and place orders thinking you are "live", the order acknowledge email will make it clear there is no contact to supply.

Perhaps the default install of OSC should have some waivers built in which can be removed once the OSC site if fully live.

[StueyB]

emanresu, just out of interest, what was the outcome with this "customer".

Rgrds

Stuart

[emanresu]

The same problem happens only occasionally now even though we make it clear we're not "live" yet.

As far as we understand it as long as you do not take payment (our CC authorisation process is off-line.) you do not have a contract. It similar to going through a supermarket checkout with a mis-priced item. Before the checkout, you can rectify it. If they have paid and you have taken the money for the shipping, then the deal is done even if the product price is zero. :cry:

I'm no expert so would suggest you might want to ask at your Chamber of Commerce or the SBS. :!: