How an order works, from basket to delivery

Anyone buying on a platform for the first time wants to know what happens after pressing the button, and the answer has a few steps worth knowing beforehand.

Search runs across every seller's catalogue at once. Looking for a material brings up the available offers from different suppliers, with the price net of VAT and the availability.

Prices are shown net because that is the correct way to compare them between businesses, and because between sellers in countries with different rates a gross figure would produce a distorted comparison.

A basket can hold products from different sellers, and in that case the order divides. Each seller receives their own part, prepares it and ships it themselves.

It follows that parcels may arrive separately and on different days. That is how it is meant to work rather than a mix-up, but it is better known before waiting for a single parcel.

At checkout the system calculates the VAT treatment for each line. It knows the seller's country, the buyer's, and the state of VIES verification, and from these determines what applies.

If buyer and seller are in the same country, domestic VAT applies; if they are in different countries and both verified, no tax is charged.

If the VAT number does not come back verified, the basket flags it before payment, stating how much more is about to be paid. That is the point at which it is worth stopping and sorting out the VIES position.

Payment is handled by Stripe and does not go straight to the seller. Card details do not pass through the platform's servers and are not stored.

After confirmation the order appears in the history, which is single across all sellers. From there you follow the status, find the prices paid, and reorder a previously bought item without searching for it again.

The seller issues their own invoice to the buyer, as they would with any other client. The platform does not resell, so it is not the platform that invoices the goods.

If something goes wrong, the channel to use is the platform's rather than the telephone, because those communications are recorded and matter if the issue is not settled between the parties.

In summary: search covers all sellers at once, a mixed basket produces separate shipments, VAT is calculated at checkout knowing both parties, payment goes through Stripe, the history is single and enables reordering, and the seller invoices directly.