Legal and shipping
How a piece gets to you, what you can send back, what you are agreeing to, and what is known about you.
Shipping
Every physical piece is packed by hand and posted with tracking. Buying something fragile and expensive from a stranger on the internet is an act of trust, so this page says exactly what happens after you pay.
Where things go
Worldwide, in three price bands: the Netherlands, the rest of the European Union, and everywhere else. The cost is worked out from your delivery country at checkout and shown as its own line before you pay. It is never added afterwards.
Countries not shipped to: list any country you will not post to, or write "none".
How long it takes
Transit times come from the carrier and are estimates, not promises. If something is going to be late, you will hear about it from us before you have to ask.
How a piece is packed
Describe how an original painting is packed: what it is wrapped in, whether it travels flat or rolled, whether the crate or tube is rigid, whether it is sealed against water. This is the paragraph a serious buyer reads twice before spending real money, so write it in your own words and be specific.
Describe how a print is packed, and whether it ships flat or in a tube.
Each physical artwork travels with its chip already fitted. Nothing needs to be assembled and nothing needs to be activated. You tap it once it arrives.
Tracking
Every physical order ships with a tracking number, emailed to you the moment the parcel leaves. If you cannot find that email, it is worth checking your spam folder before writing in, and then writing in anyway.
If it arrives damaged, or does not arrive
Until a parcel is physically in your hands it is at our risk, not yours. That is not a courtesy, it is how consumer sales work in the European Union. So if a piece is damaged in transit or never turns up, you get a replacement where one exists, or your money back in full. An original is one of one, so for an original that means a refund.
Tell us within how many days of delivery and send photographs of the outer packaging as well as the piece. The packaging photograph is the one carriers ask for.
Customs and import duty
Orders going outside the European Union may attract import duty or local sales tax charged by your own country when the parcel arrives. That is set by your government, is not included in the price, and is payable by you. We cannot predict it, pay it, or refund it.
Returns and cancellation
If you are a consumer in the European Union you have fourteen days to change your mind about most of what is sold here, without giving a reason. This page says which things that covers, which it does not, and how to do it.
The fourteen day right
You can cancel within fourteen days of receiving the goods, without explaining yourself. The clock starts the day you, or someone you named, physically take delivery. Tell us inside that window. Then send the piece back within fourteen days of telling us. We refund within fourteen days of the piece coming back, or of you showing proof that you sent it, whichever happens first.
The refund includes the standard delivery charge you paid on the way out. If you chose a faster or more expensive delivery than the standard one, we refund the standard rate.
What it covers, and what it does not
The condition it has to come back in
You are welcome to unwrap a piece and look at it the way you would look at it in a gallery. You are responsible for any loss in value caused by handling that goes further than that. Keep the original packaging if you can, because sending an artwork back in something flimsier is the usual way a return turns into a dispute.
Who pays to send it back
Decide: does Dutchtide pay return postage, or does the buyer? Whichever you choose, EU law requires it to be stated before the sale, and if it is not stated the seller pays by default. For an expensive original, also decide whether you require insured or tracked return postage.
Paintings bought with cryptocurrency
A chip backed painting is paid for into a smart contract rather than to us directly. The money is only released when you confirm delivery by tapping the chip. If the piece never arrives, you never tap, and the contract returns the funds to you. That is a separate protection and it does not replace your cancellation right, which still applies if you bought as a consumer. The practical steps are the same: tell us, and send the piece back.
If something is faulty
Separately from changing your mind, you have rights if a piece is not what was described or is faulty. Those last longer than fourteen days and nothing here removes them.
How to cancel
Email which email address and say you are cancelling, with your order number. A plain sentence is enough. There is a standard EU cancellation form and you are welcome to use it, but you do not have to.
If we cannot agree
Write to which email address first, because most things are settled in one email. If that does not work, a consumer in the Netherlands can take the matter to the national consumer authority, and a consumer elsewhere in the European Union can go to the equivalent body in their own country.
Terms of sale
What you are agreeing to when you buy something here. Written to be read, not to be survived.
Who you are buying from
Prices
Prices are in euro. State whether VAT is included, or that the small business scheme means no VAT is charged. Shipping is shown separately at checkout, before you pay.
Paying
Card payments are handled by Stripe. Your card number is never seen by us and never reaches this website's servers.
Payments in cryptocurrency for chip backed originals go into a smart contract on Ethereum, not to us, and are released when you confirm delivery.
When the sale becomes a contract
Placing an order is an offer. The contract exists when we email you to say the order is accepted, not at the moment your card is charged. If we cannot accept an order we refund it in full.
Originals are one of one
Every original is unique, which means two people can occasionally order the same piece within minutes of each other. If a piece sells between your order and our acceptance, you get a full refund and an apology, and nothing else happens.
Editions
An edition of twenty five means twenty five will ever be made at that size on that paper, each one numbered. When the edition is finished it is finished. Artist proofs, if any, are stated on the product page.
The chip, and what it actually proves
Each physical piece carries a small chip holding a private key that it never reveals, not to us and not to anyone. Tapping it with a phone makes it sign a challenge, which proves the chip is really there. The chip's address was written into the artwork's record on Ethereum at the moment the piece was minted.
So a successful tap proves one thing precisely: this chip is the chip registered to this artwork. It does not, on its own, prove that the chip is still attached to the object it was fitted to. It is very good evidence. It is not magic, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
If a chip is damaged, or comes away from a piece, write to us.
The record on Ethereum cannot be edited
Ownership and provenance are written to a public blockchain. Those entries are permanent, readable by anyone in the world, and cannot be changed or deleted by anyone, including us. That permanence is the entire point of them. What it means for your personal information is set out on the privacy page, and it is worth reading before you connect a wallet.
Copyright
Buying an artwork buys the artwork. It does not buy the copyright, which stays with the artist, along with the moral rights that come with it under Dutch law.
You may hang it, photograph it, put it in your feed, lend it to an exhibition and sell it on. You may not reproduce it commercially, print it onto goods, or make derivative works from it, without written permission.
Resale royalty
Reselling a chip backed painting through the Dutchtide contract pays a royalty to the artist. The rate is confirm the rate at launch: the plan is five per cent, paid by the buyer. It is collected by the contract itself rather than being a promise anyone has to keep.
Things outside our control
We are not liable for delays caused by carriers, customs, strikes, or anything else genuinely outside our hands. We remain responsible for getting the piece to you or refunding you, and nothing in this paragraph changes that.
Which law applies
Dutch law. If you are a consumer, nothing here takes away the protections you have under the law of the country you actually live in.
Privacy
Your email address if you give it, and your delivery address if you buy something physical. That is very nearly the whole list. There are no advertising trackers on this site, no third party analytics, and no cookie banner, because there are no tracking cookies to ask you about.
What is collected, and why
Card numbers are not on that list because they never reach this site. Stripe handles them and we only ever learn that a payment succeeded.
Cookies
Only the ones that make the site work: keeping you signed in, and remembering whether you chose light or dark. Nothing for advertising, nothing shared with anyone. That is why you were not made to click through a banner to get here.
How visits are counted
This site counts its own page views. No cookie, no identifier, no fingerprint, and nothing sent to anyone else. Where you arrived from is reduced to a single word, direct, search, social or other, inside your own browser, so the address you came from never leaves your machine. If your browser asks not to be tracked, nothing is counted at all.
Who else handles your information
Some of it passes through the companies that host the site, take card payments and send email, because that is the only way a website can exist. They act on our instructions, they use your information only to do the job we asked them to do, and none of them sells it.
The blockchain part, which is worth reading twice
If you connect a wallet or buy on chain, your wallet address and the transaction become part of the public Ethereum record. That record is permanent, visible to anyone in the world, and cannot be deleted by us, by you, or by anyone else. There is no undo.
So if you later ask to be erased, everything held in our own database can be erased, and will be. Nothing already written to the blockchain can. Please weigh that up before you connect a wallet rather than afterwards.
What you can ask for
You can ask to see what is held about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to it being used, or to be sent a copy in a portable form. Email contact email address and it will be dealt with within a month.
If you are unhappy with how that goes, you can complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, at autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl.
Children
This site is not aimed at children and information is not knowingly collected from anyone under sixteen.
Keeping it safe
Passwords are never stored in a readable form and card details never reach this site at all. No system is perfect, and if something did go wrong we would tell the people affected, and the regulator, as the law requires.
Changes to this page
If anything material changes, the date below changes with it and you will be told rather than left to notice.