Etsy Hit with Direct Checkout Outage

by: cayenna

It is now 11:44pm CST and I still cannot see my orders in my etsy shop. There's not even an indication I have orders in my shop and yet I received verification of customers orders through my private email notifications. My customers paid using their credit cards. I have yet to receive an answer from etsy when I asked them what the cause is and if I need to be concerned about the security of my account. I was able to copy and paste etsy's url to their credit card processing announcement page into an email to customers so that they know it is not my fault their orders were not processed. I did not expect this problem to continue all day and into the night I hope it is resolved soon.

by: The End

Everything was going smooth 'til PayPal was added to the mix.
Purge PayPal and everything works again.
WHAT IDIOT ALLOWED PAYPAL into the direct checkout ?
That was a HUGE mistake.
I have many sales pending, bills to pay, and THIS SUCKS !

by: maxmad

Still an issue, we have sales showing, but have not been fully completed, as in no money, and no customer address to ship to ?

if it were not for  EcommerceBytes Blog, we would not have even known until we looked at sales history, absolutely no etsy notification was sent, thanks EcommerceBytes,

sellers check your sales history asap.

LOL, I guess etsy needs more money, again....... what a mess, not sure why we even bother with these venues, more trouble then what they are worth

by: Ann66

Another issue is emails are also not getting sent out for the processing orders.  
The customer gets the normal had clapping page congratulating them on the order stating that the order will ship in such such days.  The only way the customer know the order is processing/not complete is to go back and look at their purchases page.

by: cayenna

As of 10am CST this morning still no CC processing. I hope etsy has this issue fixed by Monday morning or all of us incl our customers will be spitting nails!
When I received the personal email notification of customers sales; instead of receiving the customers name, and address, all that was in the email message besides the customers items they purchased was etsy's message to not ship anything till they were done processing the orders. So etsy notified me in that message; but they did not indicate there was a problem processing. My first impression was my customers must have paid by echeck and that now I would need to wait for payment. But then when I went to check my actual shop sales there was no sale to be found, not even a message I had a sale and there still is not. So then I had contacted my customers and they verified their orders and method of payment. I already hate that etsy has delayed paying me from sales until every Monday as it limits my versatility of purchasing and access to my earnings. They don't allow you to see what you have earned in their Direct Checkout acct.or to even check the balance, at least I have not found a way to see it yet. The only thing I can check is my PayPal acct and my bank acct. This is why I opted to keep both Direct checkout and paypal. If I had not I would not have any access at all of my earnings through etsy to use the way I want to... I do know that some etsians are purposely turning off Direct Checkout as a protest of what's going on right now and I am pretty tempted myself. I also know that etsy started charging sellers the same fee that PayPal was so now we have been dbl charged fees. Last I looked in my PayPal acct I was majorly being charged much higher fees for a transaction than I have ever seen before. I am sick of never getting ahead because of constantly being feed etc to death by whomever... I have a website but I never get any visibility. The only visibility I get is on these third part sites which is upsetting as well. I have sales just not on my own site and this must be my 5th or 6th website I have had and I am tired of wasting money for those for nothing as well. I am beginning to think it is getting harder and harder to use the internet for sales. This year my goal will be to pursue more local sales as I have to try and make a living and if there's one thing I know for sure; I cannot make a living selling on etsy and believe me I try! It's also part due to the fact that etsy controls how much visibility each seller gets. And because they are constantly screwing around with making changes so that we have to keep going in and redoing things that do not make a difference either...It's a huge waste of time and money just like it was on eBay. I have read this is not the first processing problem for etsy, and apparently Amazon had the same problem a couple months ago...People have been successfully selling on Face Book which I plan to participate in as well, and they are successful in selling at higher prices there than on etsy. They run an auction and those that win the item send you privately their paypal email address and you send them a payment request and after payment's received you have their ship to address and ability to print their label.

by: NiciArt

While technical glitches do happen and are simply a fact of technology so to say, the glitches appear to happen more frequently on Etsy and are nearing an alarming rate. When Etsy is up and running, we sell very well and enjoy using the site actually, but its becoming harder to ignore the endless maze of testing along with other non-productive changes to search.

I really like Ina's use of the band-aid over the company name, since Etsy really is giving the impression of somehow being bruised to the point where the bleeding just won't stop on its own.

All 3 major e-commerce platforms: Ebay, Etsy, and Amazon choose to re-define and re-invest their own third party proprietary solutions which is of course understandable in business, but it is hard to ignore the endless open-source solutions creating better solutions in many cases. Magento, open-cart, woo, concrete 5, wordpress, wordpress templates, liquid templates.. all seem to allow users more flexibility and more stable alternatives for truly creating their own custom e-commerce experience. Even Shopify uses many of the open source liquid templates which allow users to produce fantastic sites with minor code tweaks. Yes, Etsy is a venue and not a standalone site, but it is hard to ignore the mature and highly functional open source solutions as well as the endless pressure of Shopify, SquareSpace, Weebly.... If the major venues do not up their game, stop manipulating search, and return to a more rational form and function approach rather than treating users as beta-testers for their unstable versions, they may be in for a rude awakening in the near future.

As of this moment, order still are not processing. Why not let users connect with their own gateways? Etsy can free up staff and focus on perhaps advertising or something else to increase everyone's bottom line.  

by: cayenna

Thank you NiciArt for a great post! I agree 100%. Thank you also for a nice list of alternatives! I feel I have been stuck in a never ending cycle; you may have just given me an opportunity to break it!
Best wishes and much success to all!

by: The End

3:33 pm Sunday; still down.
This BIG BIG BIG.
Terrorism classification here.

by: cayenna

2:30 pm CST my customers orders that were paid by CC have now been processed! I would still like to know what happened or why, and if my account has been compromised. No explanation from etsy yet.

by: The End

No, it's still messed up:
4:28pm Sunday

by: cayenna

Interesting so only some are fixed... weird. Will post here as I receive updates...
Hope this all gets resolved soon, no one should have to be going through this. I wonder what and why the 3rd party merchant for etsy had to do to cause everyone's CC orders to not be processed.  

by: chester

6:04pm (EST)
I have three orders still pending since yesterday morning. (PP payment are going through just fine...these are all DC purchases.)

Etsy sent out an email @ around 5:00 this evening, saying in part:

"According to our records, your shop may have been affected by a recent technical issue experienced by Etsy's third-party payment processor that resulted in delays confirming some of your orders."

I plan on sending out the orders tomorrow morning, but I'm sure that there are many, many sellers who don't even realize that there is a problem. They aren't receiving notifications of sales or payments "pending".

I'm not pleased with the SNAFU, but at least Etsy is acknowledging that there are problems & trying to keep sellers informed.

by: cayenna

I just received the same message a little bit ago. I would still like to know what happened which they are not saying.

by: NiciArt

I had originally posted this in the Etsy forums, but think it would be great here as well.

After the current payment processing debacle, I had to go back and reference Etsy's Chief Technology Officer's Article “Blameless PostMortems.”

codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortem
s/

I truly respect John's attitude and the culture behind Blameless PostMortems and highly suggest every seller or anyone interesting in development whether it be coding, engineering, or even expression through art take the time to read an understand this article.

Unfortunately I find myself pointing out that system failures seem to be occurring at a more frequent and perhaps alarming rate and while a culture of blameless postmortems may help engineers to learn from mistakes, re-think thought patterns that led to those mistakes, and reveal the “paramount details” related to a system failure, I am left questioning whether the entire organization is also learning from those mistakes or perhaps not even fully comprehending the underlying thought processes of why an engineers “did what they did” and “why the action made sense at the time.”

No doubt blameless postmortems advanced humankind to land on the moon and provide a culture for more rapid advancement without engineers and developers fearing retributions.

My concerns are echoed in one of the comments to the article, “Fix the problem, not the blame.” After this weekend's debacle, many sellers are ready for Salem CodeCraft Trials as the losses may very well be staggering for many of us, however my question turns back to what I'm fearing are huge disconnects leading to issues of remediation and rapid implementations of solutions. Remember after all, the ignition switch needed to fire the LEM back into orbit broke off in Armstrong's hand and was simply rectified by sticking a ballpoint pen in the hole as a simple lever. Simple improvisation by a single quick thinking individual solved the analysis paralysis taking place among hundreds of teams in mission control.

What could “fix the problem, and not the blame” actually mean? As societies advance, punishment and blame are seen as barbaric memories of long gone days, yet missing seems to be the discussion of “rewards” and “merits.” Humans have that dopamine channel for a reason, so where are the “rewards” and the “competition” to encourage not make mistakes? As John Allspaw writes “just culture means that you're making an effort to balance safety and accountability” to which I would voice the concern regarding balancing competition and rewards, safety, and accountability, in other words what is being done to re-mediate mediocrity?

Respecting a philosophy does not equate to subscribing to a philosophy.

1. “Fix the Problem and Not the Blame”

2. If you cannot understand the problem then outsource the problem to the community using an open source model such Linux, FreeBSD, OpenDarwin....

3. Communicate the problem so that everyone understands the problem including the entire user base. If you are afraid that compromised IP, then again look to the open source community for answers.  

by: cayenna

Part of the article you share states: ''We don’t take this traditional view at Etsy. We instead want to view mistakes, errors, slips, lapses, etc. with a perspective of learning. Having blameless Post-Mortems on outages and accidents are part of that.'' My comment re this is: Yes, and we are the sitting ducks that get hit by all of their mistakes from their experiments since that is what etsy seems to be; a continuous experiment. Plus where's the transparency? If they have such an open mind and of learning etc then why are we always in the dark wondering what's going on. I'm not learning anything that is productive just wasting time trying to figure out what's going on all the time when I would rather have a consistent visibility to focus on regular sales. If they want to educate then why don't they have an open forum of the engineers so we can all read about it and their experiments, etc...so we stay informed. If they are going to continue to use etsy and it's members as an experiment then let us know so we can decide if we want to continue to be a part of it. Personally I don't like wasting my time and being beat up all the time from their experiments and mistakes.

by: The End

8:42pm Sunday, still down...

by: b

Etsy's no blame, just move forward policy isn't going to appease the customers that have gotten screwed over during this debacle. There are constant glitches and issues with the payment system. This is the real world Etsy. Put on your big boy pants and fix the problems with your site. I know you realize that us sellers will stay with you because there is no other place to go but this is unacceptable! And for Gods sake, get a call center. It's so juvenile not to want to talk to your customers.

by: val2525

Didn't Esty have another checkout issue in the not too distant past? Like last 3 months or less?

by: Biglouis

Etsy pushed hard to get those of us who have standalone Paypal to integrate it with their Direct Payment system. I decided against it for a number of business related reasons. I had some enquiries from buyers over the weekend and was aware of the processing problem.

Now I am really grateful I still have a ''separate'' Paypal account that I was able to direct the other customers to. Buyers who wanted to use their card could still do so via Paypal and in two cases I simply sent the customer a money request to get around the problem.

Fortunately only one order was affacted by the Etsy outage.

by: Watching the Wheels

BigLouis, there are also those of us who had enough sense to NEVER SIGN UP with Etsy's Direct Payment.

It isn't wise to trust the mediocre with money, especially the mediocre who don't know about telephones.

This is also what happens when entities become TOO RELIANT upon computers, to the point where they no longer have the capabilities to function OLD SCHOOL.

Now, if this happens on an international scale, Hmmmm, Non Americans are less gullible and quicker to protest and fight back.