This is very annoying. Last time when there was a 24h Asset Store Madness, my purchase didn’t go through because of this same problem. The next day, there was no problem (but the sale was over).
Now, again there’s a 24h sale … same issue: “We are currently unable to validate the VAT number. Please try again later.”
Same problem in Italy too. I don’t even care for a sale, I just need to buy a specific plugin and I need it NOW. I already lost a day of work because of this issue and my deadline is quickly approaching. This is very bad for morale.
From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP/1.1:
10.5.4 503 Service Unavailable
The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay may be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response.``Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a server must use it when becoming overloaded. Some servers may wish to simply refuse the connection.
… and I can’t buy stuff worth about EUR 250,00. What a joke this EU is!
I tried it yesterday, and I’ve just tried it again - the sale still has 40 more minutes.
Can’t you store in your database that my VAT number is valid (it does work sometimes ) and if the crappy service once again fails (as it apparently does quite frequently), rely on the information in your own database? It’s not like VAT numbers are discarded all the time - if someone has one now, it’s very likely he’ll still have the same one in a month. Usually, you keep it - until you go out of business (and then you most likely won’t purchase anything in the asset store anymore, anyways). And if the crappy EU service is up and running, you can always check and if the VAT number is really unexpectectly no longer valid, store that information in your database.
This issue really ruins the fun for me when using the Asset Store. And especially those 24h sales are a really stupid idea when some people that would like to buy the asset can’t because their VAT ID cannot be validated. Right now, this applies to everyone in Germany (at least - might be other countries as well, but each country has their own service and their own uptimes and downtimes as it seems).
I resume this old thread to point that the VAT Validation issue is present at least by 7 days.
Now I cant pay my Cart with the current product on 24 hour sale .
I lost the May madness sale due this issue (post here).
… when I go via 
) and if the crappy service once again fails (as it apparently does quite frequently), rely on the information in your own database? It’s not like VAT numbers are discarded all the time - if someone has one now, it’s very likely he’ll still have the same one in a month. Usually, you keep it - until you go out of business (and then you most likely won’t purchase anything in the asset store anymore, anyways). And if the crappy EU service is up and running, you can always check and if the VAT number is really unexpectectly no longer valid, store that information in your database.