Suddenly german VAT numbers aren’t allowed

Hello Carles,

I hope you are well and thank you for contacting us.

some times the whole VIES() would go down for some hours, which might be what happened last time you tested.

please see this ticket to understand more:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/ms_unavailable-vat-number-not-validating/.

Please try now and let us know if the problem persists or has been resolved.

Thank you and your time,

Hi, thanks for your reply.

The bug persists in germany. I can check other countries but not german ones. I think it’s soo time down. Can you check it by yourself?

I checked throug web: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies and it validates de number!

Thanks

Hello wpcentrics,

We apologize for the persistence of the problem on your part. I will raise this to the development team to look into the problem in more detail.

thanks for your time .

Thanks.

I think VIES Germany are down. But it’s extrange: so many days?! can you check by yourself? There is a way to contact with this guys?

I digged into the log error. SOAP always fail for germany. I tested it then with CURL or Simple (file_get_contents) and always give me error, for all countries.

Digging into your code, I found this (file alg-wc-eu-vat-functions-validation.php, line 54):

    $api_url = "https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/viesquer.do?ms=" . $country_code . "&vat=" . $vat_number;

…please, check this URL, if I try to put this URL into the browser, gives it a 404 error. So I think this way isn’t available.

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But let’s back to the german VAT issue: i checked this URL, that validates VAT numbers, works fine with FR, but gives me error with DE:

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/rest-api/ms/FR/vat/23489967794?requesterMemberStateCode=FR&requesterNumber=23489967794

…the german VAT fail:

{ “isValid” : false, “requestDate” : “2024-01-23T22:57:27.002Z”, “userError” : “MS_UNAVAILABLE”,

===========

…I tested also manually into the website:
https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/#/vat-validation-result

And gives this message:
Member State / Northern Ireland service unavailable. Please re-submit your request later.

…so I think the issue is in VIES Germany, not in your plugin.

Hello @wpcentrics,

Apologies for the delayed response.

You are correct; the issue originates from Germany’s VIES system. Unfortunately, there is no specific documentation available regarding errors such as MS_UNAVAILABLE and MS_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ. These two errors frequently occur for member states in Germany.

We hope that this issue will be resolved soon.

Yesterday and today, I tested with a German VAT number in the test environment, and it was functioning well. I wanted to provide you with this update.

Regards,
Kousik Mukherjee

Thanks for the feedback!!!

It seems like a system glitch. Contact support directly or try using an EU VAT validation service or VAT Calculator to verify if the issue persists. Temporary technical issues might be causing this.

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by rodes443.