Etsy Sellers Furious Over Store Closings and Etsy's Handling of Buyer Disputes

[mandy]

Etsy.com calls itself "your place to buy and sell things handmade" and is a pretty cool website that we personally enjoy. The sellers who use the site, however, are getting all riled up after several stores were shut down without notice due to simple, easily-resolved complaints from buyers.

Reader Elizabeth writes:

    Over at Etsy.com, there have recently been a rash of insanely unprofessional events, most importantly, the closing of several stores without notice and for no reason given, but clearly violating Etsy's own written standards about the very stringent requirements in place before such a drastic thing should happen...

and:

Forwarding routine complaints (or threatening to forward them) to the FBI seems to be a theme at Etsy:

full article: http://consumerist.com/360889/sellers-gr...sm-at-etsy

response on the Etsy forums to the Consumerist article: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5488619

a thread on forced store closures:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5429569
another one:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5423683

[BellisimaJ.]

The sellers who use the site, however, are getting all riled up after several stores were shut down without notice due to simple, easily-resolved complaints from buyers.

They shut down stores for two reasons:

1. They screwed up. Some stores were shut down accidentally, and their accounts were muted in the forums.
2. They shut down stores when buyers complained of not receiving an item, even when the buyer had not ever contacted the seller, and the seller had 100% positive feedback.

To make matters worse, they consistently locked forum threads where this was discussed, claiming that they did not wish to violate the privacy of the sellers. The sellers who were shut down were themselves attempting to discuss it in the forums under other ids, so I don't think that privacy was really the issue. They are simply not liking the criticism.


Etsy has no clear policy on what constitutes proof of shipment, which has created a lot of confusion. And, like ebay, they seem to have forgotten who their primary customers are........as in the sellers, of course.

[mandy]

Etsy's response:

Dear Buyers & Sellers,
There has been concern in the community for the past couple of days regarding Non-delivery complaints and how they are handled by Customer Support. I have created a FAQ list below (feel free to post more questions in the comments below). I would love to hear from both Sellers and Buyers about what you think Etsy should do about Non-deliveries, and in what ways the Support Team can improve communication with our members when there is a concern. We are going to be making some changes over the next year to the system, and maybe even our policy.  We are toying with some big ideas, and we'd like our community to weigh in!...

Why would Etsy ban a Seller in a Non-Delivery case?
If after the process described above,
- Seller has not refunded a transaction as promised
- Seller has not delivered goods as promised
- Seller has not responded to our emails
- Buyer has reported that there is no update on the transaction problem
- Seller does not work with the Buyer to create a solution

When does a Seller get banned?
We try to wait at least 24 hours before closing an account after we have sent the Suspension Notice as a last ditch hope that a Seller will respond. This Suspension Notice usually arrives least a month after the Buyer has filed the complaint.

the full FAQ: http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsy...y-co/1299/