Why is buying blocked until my VAT number is verified?

Cross-border sales between VAT-registered businesses in the EU are invoiced with reverse charge — 0% VAT on the invoice, with you accounting for the VAT in your own return. A tuner may only invoice that way against a VAT number the EU's own register (VIES) confirms, so some tuners require a confirmed number before they sell to you at all.

When that is the case and your number is not confirmed yet, checkout shows a notice instead of the payment step. Nothing broke and nothing is wrong with your account — there is one requirement left to satisfy.

What the portal does automatically

• The moment you save a VAT number — at registration or later under Account — the portal asks the register to confirm it. Most numbers are confirmed within seconds, and buying unblocks on its own.
• If the register is down or slow (national registers behind VIES go offline regularly), the portal retries every ten minutes until it gets a verdict. You do not need to resubmit anything.
• The result is kept with your account and shown on the checkout notice, so you can see whether you are waiting on the register or on a correction.

What you can do

• No number saved yet? Add it under Account — the check starts immediately.
• Number marked invalid? Check for typos, and make sure it is the VAT number for this legal entity (not a local tax id or chamber-of-commerce number). The prefix must match your country.
• Register outage? Nothing to do — the portal keeps retrying. If it stays blocked for more than a day, open a support ticket.

Businesses outside the EU are never blocked this way: VIES only administers EU numbers, so there is nothing your registration could be checked against — your tax id is stated on the invoice instead. See invoices-explained for how the treatment shows up on the document itself.