Seller agreement

It does:

It does not:

That is deliberate rather than temporary neglect. A platform that holds other people’s money owes them a great deal, and Kayu is not yet in a position to owe it honestly. Saying so plainly is better than a promise nobody could keep.

You must tell us which you are, and buyers are shown it before they contact you. It is not a formality: a buyer purchasing from a business has consumer rights that do not apply to a private sale, and saying the wrong one misleads them about what they are entitled to.

Be honest about which you are. If you sell regularly and for profit, most tax authorities treat you as trading whether or not you have registered — and at that point consumer law applies to you anyway, retroactively. Listing continuously as a private individual is not a way around that; it is only a way to be surprised by it later.

You need an account to start, but not much more: an administrator has to verify you before you can list anything yourself. That takes your legal name, your registered address, this agreement accepted, and — if you are a business — your registration number. We will usually also want the registration document itself, or identity for a private seller. Until you are verified, we can list a first piece on your behalf while you finish the paperwork — ask us.

Verification is what makes your shop and your listings visible to a buyer at all — not in the catalogue, not in search, not by a link to your shop page. It used to only affect placement; it is now what opens the door. Once you are verified, a search still answers the buyer’s question first among verified sellers: it does not put your walnut above someone else’s spruce when they searched for spruce.

Everything you upload is visible to Kayu administrators and to nobody else. If your legal identity changes, your status returns to pending until it has been looked at again.

Wood you own and hold. Not wood you expect to buy, not a photograph of something similar, and not stock held by someone else on your behalf unless you can actually post it when a buyer asks.

Species listed on CITES Appendix I cannot be listed at all and are refused when you try. For an Appendix II species, the listing stays up but shows “contact seller” instead of a delivery option until you hold a valid permit covering that species. Keeping permits current is yours; an expired permit means the wood should not be moving.

Where the EU Deforestation Regulation applies to what you sell, you are the operator placing it on the market and the due diligence statement is yours to make. We record the reference; we do not make the statement for you.

This is the part Kayu genuinely does control, and the part it will enforce. A buyer is choosing a specific piece of wood from photographs on a screen, and the listing is the only thing standing between them and a stranger abroad.

Wood varies, and photographs of wood vary more. Nobody expects a screen to match a workshop bench exactly. What is expected is that the piece which arrives is recognisably the piece that was photographed.

Grade is your claim about the whole piece — figure, grain, and freedom from defects together — and it is the claim a disappointed buyer will hold up first. Grade generously against yourself. Figure type and figure intensity are recorded separately; a plain piece can still be AAA.

A buyer’s enquiry arrives by email with their address on it. Reply to it and you are talking to them directly — Kayu is not copied in and does not see what either of you says next.

Questions asked on a listing page are public and stay on the listing for other buyers to read. Answer those the same way, and keep contact details out of them — an enquiry is where those belong.

The price on your listing is what a buyer arrives expecting to pay. Postage, packing, insurance and any duties are for the two of you to settle, and Kayu adds nothing to either figure.

Take payment by a method that protects the buyer — a PayPal invoice or a card payment through your own account. It is in your interest as much as theirs: a buyer sending money abroad to someone they have never met is doing something uncomfortable, and a traceable, protected payment is what makes it possible at all.

The invoice, the receipt, the VAT and the tax are yours. Kayu has no record of what you agreed and cannot produce one for you.

Agree a dispatch time with the buyer before they pay, and keep to it. It is the single most common reason a sale sours, and the one entirely within your control.

Pack for the journey the wood is actually making, and send it tracked. Damage in transit is your parcel, your packing and your choice of carrier — the buyer had no say in any of it, and their payment provider will see it the same way.

Export documents, customs declarations and phytosanitary paperwork for the consignment are yours to complete. Import duties at the destination are the buyer’s, and they are told so before they contact you.

It is between you and the buyer. Kayu will not refund them on your behalf, because it never held the money, and it will not decide who is right about a piece of wood it has never seen.

If you sold as a business to a consumer in the EU, they have a right to change their mind within fourteen days of receiving the goods, and a further right against faults for two years. Those are the law and this agreement does not shorten them. If you sold privately, they largely do not apply — which is exactly why buyers are told which you are.

Buyers can and do report sellers to us. We cannot settle your sale, but we can read the listing against what arrived, and a pattern of upheld complaints — wood that is not as described, parcels that never went, buyers pushed off a protected payment — leads to listings coming down and the account being suspended. There is no threshold; a pattern is recognisable without arithmetic, and at this size a percentage would be noise.

Kayu provides a listing service, as it is, and does not promise the site will be uninterrupted or that listing here will produce sales. It is not liable for anything arising out of a sale it was not party to.

Where Kayu is liable to you at all, that liability is limited to the fees you have paid it in the previous twelve months — which is currently nothing — and does not extend to lost profits or indirect loss. Nothing in this section removes a right you have under the law of the country you live in, and nothing in it limits liability for death, personal injury or fraud.

You are responsible for what you list. If a claim reaches Kayu because of your wood, your description, your paperwork or your photographs — including a claim that timber was illegally harvested or unlawfully exported, or that an image you uploaded was not yours to use — you will cover the cost of it.

Anyone can report a listing — a buyer, another seller, or a stranger who knows more about a species than either of us. Most reports come to nothing. Being reported is not an accusation that has been believed.

A person reads it and decides. If anything happens to your listing you are told by email, in writing, with the reason — not a code, and not silence. Your other listings and your shop are unaffected.

We do not tell you who reported you. That is deliberate: people who spot protected timber are often trading in the same market as you, and they would stop reporting if it were not confidential.

You can stop listing whenever you want: take your listings down and tell us. We can end it too, with notice, or immediately where there is fraud, illegal material, or a risk to buyers.

Sales you have already agreed are still yours to complete. Ending your account here does not end them.

Each version has a date, and what you accepted is recorded against it. When we change something that matters we publish a new version and ask you to accept it; you will see the request on your compliance page.

This agreement is governed by Bulgarian law, and the courts of Bulgaria have jurisdiction, without taking away any protection you have under the law of the country you live in.

Anything at all: orders@kayushop.eu. A person reads it.