There’s a spike in the number of sellers reporting that Etsy forced their shops into “vacation mode” (a euphemism for “suspended”). This is a chronic issue usually related to Etsy’s verification process, but some sellers said they received no reason for the suspension, or were unable to successfully complete the verification process.
Last fall, the issue gained a lot of attention when a prominent seller revealed her difficulties in getting her shop freed from forced vacation mode and described how difficult it was to reach someone at Etsy to help.
Some sellers can point to a specific reason when reporting their Etsy shop placed into vacation mode. Two months ago, a seller explained on Reddit that they had an Instagram post go viral. Because it led to their first sale, Etsy had them go through the verification process, but the seller ran into an issue verifying their account information and was stuck in limbo.
One seller warned colleagues that the problems don’t necessarily end once their shops are restored – “the first thing you should do when your shop is back is check your monthly statements,” the seller advised. Etsy customer service told the seller that Etsy had deactivated all of their listings when it placed their shop into vacation mode; when Etsy restored their shop, all listings were relisted automatically. “I was charged listing fees and tax for all 1,021 products in my shop – $247.04 CAD at once.”
In addition, the seller said, “When my shop was restored this afternoon, it didn’t look like the same shop it was before the incident. For example, the listing arrangements and featured products were all out of place. I couldn’t feature products or collections on my main page because the function was bugged.”
Sellers responding to the thread were eager to hear how the seller was able to get Etsy to remove the “vacation” lock on their shop. “Unfortunately, I still don’t know why my shop was forced into vacation mode – no explanation for being put in, and no explanation for being brought back,” the seller replied.
We asked Etsy on late Tuesday afternoon to confirm whether the seller reports were accurate, and if it was a compliance issue or a glitch. We also asked Etsy what it would advise sellers to do to resolve such issues, now and in the future. Etsy did not respond by publication time.
Reports of issues often garner helpful suggestions in replies on forum posts, but as usual, sellers are advised to use caution since scammers may post fraudulent links or phone numbers that purport to be Etsy customer service.
I can only guess, being an Etsy seller since 2012. Over the years Etsy had allowed millions of sellers jump the Etsy bandwagon to make quick money. Etsy has always praised itself as for Hand-Made only platform. Despite that today you see there downloadable books by various authors, bibles in any language, obviously not “hand-made”, copied and pasted listings of vintage illustrations of all kinds, visibly clear that these haven’t been even touched by any graphic editor to at least making these copied illustration a little better looking, edited, corrected etc. All these are downloadable. This type of sellers don’t care at all for their listings. They are there for easy money.Buyers don’t much care either, they save some money instead of buying same vintage illustrations as a high quality print/poster, in which the seller has invested a lot of time perfecting the old illustration. Etsy AI should learn how to ID such items and sellers behind them. There are thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands.