User Terms Of Use

1. Introduction

This User Agreement and the SOTA Marketplace Privacy Policy and all policies posted on our sites set out the terms on which SOTA offers you access to and use of our sites, services, applications and tools (collectively 'Services'). You agree to comply with all of the above when accessing or using our Services. For information regarding the processing of personal data, please see our Privacy Policy.

 

2. About SOTA

SOTA is a marketplace that allows users to offer, sell and buy affordable artworks under £2000. SOTA does not have possession of anything listed or sold through SOTA. The contract for the sale is directly between buyer and seller. SOTA handles the payment processing once an order is made and takes an 8% commission upon a sale. Shopify payments are our payment provider and may charge additional credit card fees (approximately 2%) which are outside of our control. While we may provide pricing, postage, listing and other guidance in our Services, such guidance is solely informational, and you may decide to follow it or not. While we may help facilitate the resolution of disputes through various programmes, SOTA has no control over, and does not guarantee the existence, quality, safety or legality of, items advertised; the truth or accuracy of users' content, listings or feedback; the ability of sellers to sell items; the ability of buyers to pay for items; or that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction or return an item.

3. Using SOTA

In connection with using or accessing the Services you will not:

• post, list or upload content or items in inappropriate categories or areas on our sites;
• breach or circumvent any laws, third-party rights or our systems or policies;
• sell any counterfeit items or otherwise infringe the copyright, trademark or other rights of third parties;
• use our Services if you are not able to form legally binding contracts (for example if you are under 18), or are temporarily or indefinitely suspended from using our Services;
• fail to deliver items sold by you,
• manipulate the price of any item or interfere with any other user's listings;
• post false, inaccurate, misleading, defamatory, or libellous content;
• take any action that may undermine the Feedback or ratings systems
• transfer your SOTA account (including Feedback) and user ID to another party without our consent;
• distribute or post spam, unsolicited or bulk electronic communications, chain letters, or pyramid schemes;
• use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access our Services for any purpose;
• bypass our robot exclusion headers, interfere with the working of our Services, or impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
• harvest or otherwise collect information about users, such as email addresses, without their consent; or
• circumvent any technical measures we use to provide the Services.

4. Abusing SOTA

Without limiting other remedies, we may limit, suspend, or terminate your user account(s) and access to our Services, restrict or prohibit access to, and your activities on, our Services, cancel bids, remove or demote or otherwise restrict the visibility of listings, delay or remove hosted content, remove any special status associated with the account, reduce or eliminate any discounts, and take technical and legal steps to keep you from using our Services if:

• we think that you are creating problems or possible legal liabilities for us, our users, suppliers or other third parties;
• we think that such restrictions will improve the security of the SOTA community or reduce our or another SOTA user's exposure to financial liabilities;
• we think that you are infringing the rights of third parties;
• we think that you are acting inconsistently with the letter or spirit of this User Agreement or our policies or abuse our employees or users;
• despite our reasonable endeavours, we are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us; or
• you fail to make, or it is evident that you are unable to make, full payment of any fees due for our Services by your payment due date

When a buyer or seller issue arises we may consider the user's performance history and the specific circumstances in applying our policies. We may choose to be more lenient with policy enforcement, and to do the right thing for both buyers and sellers.

5. Fees

SOTA charges 8% commission on a purchase. We use the Shopify payment system which may charge additional fees to credit card transactions. These will be typically 2% but please refer to the below table for all additional transaction fees. Shopify also charge for currency conversion on international transactions. If you are a seller, you are liable for transaction fees arising out of all sales made using some or all SOTA Services. You are required to have a valid payment method on file when selling on SOTA. If your payment method fails or your account is overdue, we may collect fees owed by charging other payment methods on file and retaining collection agencies or legal counsel.

 

 You authorise SOTA to automatically charge your chosen payment method in accordance with this User Agreement and the applicable billing agreement(s) you agree to when setting up or changing your payment method, for future charges and fees incurred in relation to the Services. We may display third party advertisements (including links and references thereto) or other content in any part of our Services, at our sole discretion.

6. Listing Conditions

When listing an item, you agree to comply with the following:

• you are responsible for the accuracy, content and legality of the item listed and agree to list in accordance with our values, this user agreement all other relevant policies;
• content that violates any of SOTA's policies may be modified, obfuscated or deleted at SOTA’s discretion;
• in accordance with this agreement, we may revise product data associated with listings to supplement, remove, or correct information;
• we strive to create a marketplace where buyers find what they are looking for. Therefore, the appearance or placement of listings in search and browse results will depend on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to:
  • buyers' location, search query, browsing site and history;
  • item's location, listing format, price and shipping cost, terms of service, end time, history, and relevance to the user query;
  • seller's history, including listing practices, Detailed Seller Ratings, SOTA policy compliance, Feedback, and defect rate; and
  • number of listings matching the buyer's query
• URL links that are included in a listing will be removed or altered so as to not affect third party search engine results;
• we may provide you with optional recommendations to consider when creating your listings. Such recommendations may be based on the aggregated sales and performance history of similar sold and current listings; results will vary for individual listings. To drive the recommendations experience, you agree that we may display the sales and performance history of your listings to other sellers;

8. International Sales & Seller Policy & Returns

All artists must ship to all territories as found in the artist dashboard. Please see the below template for the seller policy: 

All artworks are shipped from ‘x’. Artworks are packaged in ‘x’. I ship to the UK, Europe, US and Canada and the rest of the world via an insured shipping service. Shipping fees are calculated at checkout and involve high quality handling. Customers are responsible for duties and taxes. 

Returns are accepted if the item is received damaged in transit. In this case please email info@sotamarketplace.co within 14 days providing photos and information to arrange a return. 

9. Content

When providing us with content (including causing content to be posted using our Services), you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual (or for the duration of any copyright or other rights in such content), irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to use the content (including, without limitation, creating and using derivative works). We may in particular use your content, including any photographs you upload, for marketing and promotional purposes.

10. Data protection and Privacy

Please read the privacy policy.

11. Restricting Funds

Where PayPal is managing your payments and you are not using managed payments (as described in Section 13), to protect against the risk of liability, SOTA may recommend that PayPal restrict access to funds in a seller's PayPal account based on certain factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, selling history, seller performance, returns, riskiness of the listing category, transaction value or the filing of a case. This may result in PayPal determining to restrict funds in your PayPal account.

12. Additional Terms

Terms of Returns for the Seller

Sellers can create rules to automate returns and refunds under certain circumstances. Sellers may remove or customise their returns preferences in their account settings within their Artist Dashboard. When an item is returned, to refund the buyer, (and provided the transaction was not processed via managed payments), you authorise SOTA to request tot PayPal or Shopify to reverse the refund amount (in the same or other currency). Sellers will usually be responsible for return postage costs. The cost of return shipping for an item that is not as described is the seller's responsibility.

When a transaction is cancelled, you authorise SOTA to request PayPal or Shopify to reverse the refund amount (in the same or other currency) from the seller’s PayPal or Bank account to the buyer. Where the seller is found at fault, we will notify the seller and charge the reimbursement amount to the seller's chosen payment method, or invoice the seller for the reimbursement amount.Sellers must have a payment method on file with SOTA. Sellers may change this payment method by via the Artist Dashboard.

Correcting mistakes in payments to buyers and sellers

We reserve the right to fix any processing errors we discover.

13.Delivery Options

Delivery is fulfilled by the seller. Delivery and tracking information can be sent to the customer via the Artist Dashboard once an order has been accepted. As a SOTA seller, you agree to send the artwork in the displayed condition, with safety packaging and as quickly as possible.

14. Liability

We try to keep SOTA and its Services safe, secure, and functioning properly, but we cannot guarantee the continuous operation of or access to our Services.

We (including our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, directors, agents and employees) shall not be liable to you in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise for any business losses, such as loss of data, profits, revenue, business, opportunity, goodwill, reputation or business interruption or for any losses which are not reasonably foreseeable by us arising, directly or indirectly from:

• your use of or your inability to use our Services;
• pricing, postage
• delays or disruptions in our Services;
• viruses or other malicious software obtained by accessing, or linking to, our Services;
• glitches, bugs, errors, or inaccuracies of any kind in our Services;
• damage to your hardware device from the use of any eBay Service;
• the content, actions, or inactions of third parties, including items listed using our Services or the destruction of allegedly fake items;
• a suspension or other action taken with respect to your account or breach of our values
• the duration or manner in which your listings appear in search results
• your need to modify practices, content, or behaviour or your loss of or inability to do business, as a result of changes to this User Agreement or our policies.

You accept sole responsibility for the legality of your actions under laws applying to you and the legality of any items you list on any of our sites.

Although we use techniques that aim to verify the accuracy and truth of the information provided by our users, user verification on the internet is difficult. SOTA cannot and does not confirm, and is not responsible for ensuring, the accuracy or truthfulness of users' purported identities or the validity of the information which they provide to us or post on our sites.

Nothing in this User Agreement shall limit or exclude our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury resulting from our negligence or the negligence of our agents or employees, or for any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law.

15. Compensation

You will compensate us in full (and our officers, directors, agents, subsidiaries, joint ventures and employees) for any losses or costs, including reasonable legal fees, we incur arising out of any breach by you of this User Agreement, your improper use of SOTA’s Services or your breach of any law or the rights of a third party.

16. General

If any provision of this User Agreement is held to be invalid, void or for any reason unenforceable, such provision shall be struck out and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions.

You agree that we may at any time and without notice set-off any of the amounts held in SOTA user accounts held or controlled by you with any fees, charges or other amounts you owe us and (unless presented by insolvency law. Our right to set-off means that we may deduct such fees, charges or other amounts mentioned in this paragraph from a SOTA credit balance held or controlled by you.

Our failure to act with respect to a breach by you or others does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches. We do not guarantee we will take action against all breaches of this User Agreement.

If you have a dispute with one or more users, you release us (and our affiliates and subsidiaries, and our and their respective officers, directors, employees and agents) from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with such disputes.

We may amend this User Agreement at any time by email. All amended terms shall automatically be effective 30 days after they are initially posted. Your continued use of our Services after the effective date of these amended terms constitutes your acceptance of them. This User Agreement may not be otherwise amended except through mutual agreement by you and a SOTA representative authorised to do so. The policies posted on our sites may be changed from time to time.

No agency, partnership, joint venture, employee-employer or franchiser-franchisee relationship is intended or created by this User Agreement. A person who is not a party to this User Agreement has no right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any term of this User Agreement but this does not affect any right or remedy of a third party specified in this User Agreement or which exists or is available apart from that Act.

The User Agreement and all policies posted on our site are the entire agreement between you and SOTA and supersede all prior understandings and agreements of the parties.

17. Exhibitions

SOTA will take out public liability insurance for any exhibitions it holds in the UK. All works will be subject to our sales commission of 10% inclusive of transaction fees.  There will be no submission fees and artists are responsible for the delivery and pick-up of unsold work to and from an agreed address as set out by SOTA.