HUGE discounts this time, also follow @UnityAssetStore on twitter, they like to warn people of what’s coming.
At this price i suggest everyone jumps on the substance database (usually discounted to 1K during sales iirc?)
However if they can price it that low they should really lower the normal price, i wonder how many sales they get at 4K (could be wrong but i assume rather few?)
In any case, it’s a steal, grab it guys! Bought it at 1K before and very happy!
This is great but I am reading threads that people are having issues using PayPal.
What is going on with them? This is a huge issue due to people using it to purchase with.
Update please? You are loosing sales left and right.
Yup, and I have stuff for EUR 219.26 in my shopping cart and once again cannot complete the purchase because “We are currently unable to validate the VAT number. Please try again later.”
Last time this happened, when it finally worked, the sale was over.
You seriously need to fix this before doing the next 24h sale because it is very frustrating. And as it seems, this currently doesn’t work for anyone from Germany who tries to use their VAT-ID (it’s also not working on the “official site”: Vies on-the-Web - European Commission ).
One solution would be storing the transaction (in particular the prices) but keeping it open. Then, retry the VAT validation maybe once every hour, for maybe three days. Once the VAT validation goes through, send an email to the customer with a special link to complete the transaction by entering their payment data.
In the rare case that the VAT is invalid, you could tell the customer that the VAT is invalid and let them either change the VAT before completing the transaction, or make them pay VAT if they don’t actually have a valid VAT.
This issue is super-annoying both from the customer perspective as well as for publishers who are losing sales. And you are also losing money due to this.
Why not just not fill the VAT tag? you’d be invoiced for the VAT but as long as you make a profit you’ll make it back no? Not ideal but definately should be a good workaround for this.
Nope, the problem is that I can’t set off foreign VAT. So this would basically add 25% to the actual price … so I’d end up paying almost as much as if there was no sale.
I don’t get it but i must be missing something.
You’d pay 25% VAT, but then you’d get it refunded by your local VAT by not paying it when you collect VAT yourself, sounds like it’s the same except that you advance the cash no?
Nope because foreign VAT cannot be refunded by local VAT. The reason is because the 25% VAT that Denmark adds go to Denmark. The VAT I add to my invoices goes to Germany. So if I refunded the 25% VAT that I paid to Denmark by my local VAT, money that the German terrocrats think is theirs would actually go to Denmark where the terrocrats think its theirs.
That’s why reverse charge was invented. It’s one of the few things about the EU that’s actually kind of cool. At least it was until Eurocrats created a Web service and made it a legal requirement that this service is used … but which is implemented like some kid’s first programming assignment.
The irony is that in the end, it’s all consumed be the corporate banks that are currently taking over the world … so, in the end it really wouldn’t matter whether I give the money to Denmark or Germany because in the end, it’s the same people profiting. And those are neither the people in Denmark nor the people in Germany.
But that would be a political discussion. This is not the place to solve these problems.
Fortunately, there would be a technical solution. So that kind of can be solved “here”. Only someone has to implement it 
Apologies for the VAT validation problem, from what I can see from conversations last night, it might not have just been us affected. It’s a national holiday in Denmark so updates on this may be a little slow, I’ll try the best I can to dig out info for you all
I have a better idea, stop collecting VAT on digital sales alltogether, because you don’t need to… or accept all different kinds of VAT declaration, like my german Steuernummer.
I stopped buying stuff from Unity because of these shady extra fees.
Wrong conversion rates and 25% VAT should be reason enough for anyone not to buy.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/179613-Why-is-the-asset-store-always-ripping-me-off-with-exchange-rates
I have lost a huge amount of money by buying Unity 3 and 4 with 25% and couldn’t get it back.
Oh and where is this so calles sale you spoke of? I don’t see it at the provided link. I heard about it in the newsletter, your post is 23hours old and it never appeared for me.
As far as I can tell, it was at least all of Germany (I tried going directly over the official European VIES site and got the same results - so it definitely wasn’t just you effected). I tried it again this morning while the sale was still going on - and it didn’t work.
Then I tried it again 3 hours later (after the sale) … and guess what:
Now it would have worked.
But I would have had to pay EUR 110,00 more than had it worked 3 hours earlier. I am not happy about what these Eurocrats are doing - if they legally force you to validate VAT on every purchase (why not just once in a while?), they better offer Webservices that are up 99,9999% … and not down for 12+ hours each time UT is doing a 24h sale (that’s the only times it really matters to me ).
Actually I think this wouldn’t work. In Europe, you can use the VAT-ID for going the reverse-charge route - but that’s actually the only possibility. Getting a VAT-ID is very easy, though: Takes about a week, no costs involved IIRC - anyone doing business with other Europeans should probably have one.
When I have a customer anywhere in Europe, I need to either ask them for their VAT-ID and validate it (and then we can do reverse charge, i.e. everyone handles their own VAT, no VAT added to the invoice) … or I have to add 19% German VAT. Same for UT - only that they have to add 25% Danish VAT unless they have your validated VAT-ID and do reverse charge. In that case, in the end you’ll have to add 19% - but those don’t matter because VAT is “in/out” for business people.
With countries outside of Europe (e.g. Switzerland, or Australia), I can actually write invoices without VAT … at least under certain circumstances.
Um, because we’re legally obliged to collect VAT at 25% which is the VAT rate in Denmark where the product is purchased from. If we can locate a VAT number on the EU database, then we can avoid the charge. I would dispute your use of “shady fees”. You may not like how our store works, but the fees are clear and transparent. If your Steuernummer exempts you from paying VAT, but is not included in the EU database we’re obliged to use, then I would think that is an issue for your tax office to resolve. It could easily be a mistake. Germany VAT numbers are 9-digits long and start with DE. If your Steurenummer is not a VAT number by this definition then take that up with your government representative. We simply follow the rules that are set for us, we don’t make them up.
Can you PM me something that confirms your statement that we do not need to collect VAT on digital sales. I don’t read Danish, so don’t have a hope of understanding how the Danes have implemented EU rules. If you do have something (even if it’s in Danish) then please pass it on and I’ll bounce it to our legal and finance teams.
I am sorry to hear that. Entering your VAT number into the store application should exclude the VAT from the payment if it’s confirmed by the EU VIES application.
When I followed the link that Aurore posted I get to a page with a banner “Hot Deals”. It shows me that the price of Mixamo is on special at this time. The newsletter that was sent out on 7th May described a discount on Allegorithmics, but that offer ended 0900 CET this morning (9th May). What Aurore was saying in her post was to watch twitter to get early warnings on sales.
Please finally fix the issue reported in http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/181437-Once-again-24h-Asset-Store-Madness-quot-unable-to-validate-VAT-number-quot
I understand that you have to validate the customer’s VAT number but really, instead of checking it every time and making every transaction fail that happens during one of the many times that one of those EU servers is down or giving timeouts or whatever, for people that have already had their VAT number confirmed (I believe you’re checking it when someone enters it the first time so that should apply for every VAT number in your database), if the last time you checked the VAT number was valid, and now the VIES fails, just assume that the VAT number will most likely still be valid because most likely it will be still valid.
In other words: Always try to use their service - but if the service fails but last time the VAT number was valid, just ignore the stupid service and trust your customer. In the very rare case that the service is up and tells you “this VAT number is no longer valid”, drop it from the database. Since you’re validating the VAT number when a customer first enters their VAT number, the customer won’t be able to re-enter the invalid VAT number. Simple solution that will work in almost all cases.
Dud link?
It was a 24-hour sale and link expired. You are weeks late.
Oh right, true that. heh heh
Wait for the next one?
Most of the popular assets are on sale 50% or even 90% price off.
You can hint towards some vendors to have library sales One well known library was $300 and then it was heavily discounted to $30 during the sale