Etsy Plans New Program to Beef Up Buyer Protection

by: GetAGrip

Etsy will just copy Ebay and he end will be a disaster just like the Ebay policies.  Look no further.

by: Snapped

“… most sellers will work with the buyer to make it right.”

This is the part they will ignore.

“But not always”

And this is the part they will always assume.

There will be no benefit of doubt to sellers.  There will be no ‘investigations’.  There will be no due process.  Sanction will be swift, harshly imbalanced, unappealable and hypocritical when it is seen how kickbacks will erase accusation.  There will be no accountability or consequence to buyers who abuse or defraud through falsified claim.  

Anything else will cost money.  An investment.  There will be none of that, either.

by: ShortSeller

Buyers aren't buying from Etsy because of a lack of buyer protection, more so because it's a literal Chinese sweat shop of subpar crap, 3d printed junk, and very little resembling the actual missional goal the site started with. Josh has to be the biggest fraudster out there, peddling this crap.

by: I_Fix_Dolls

They already refund the buyers from the seller's funds without even letting the seller know. What they don't have is any regard for sellers! Calling the "churn" and acting like sellers are out to cheat people is ridiculous! Is it any wonder places like GoImagine and Bonanza are actively trying to get Etsy sellers to try them?

by: postbuster

Protection from what?

Canceled orders to just rake away a few cents for a non-sale?
This was the most recent problem and they just head the other direction.

Now etsy wants to copy ebay (again) and railroad sellers to usurp the profits.
These corporate fakes have already crossed the line far past the dangerous levels of a healthy economy, and now they are looting whatever they can for more money they never needed.

by: Queen of the Jungle

Every time I see another one of these Etsy "innovations" I cringe because all it means is that they've come up with a new way to screw the sellers.

In fact, it's not the buyers who need protection- it is the hard working SELLERS.

They talk about investing in the "product"- WHAT PRODUCT??

ETSY DOES NOT MAKE ANYTHING.   ETSY HAS NO INVENTORY.

They have a platform.  They are like a landlord in a mall except much much worse. A landlord doesn't take a piece of every sale you make.

Plus tenants are protected under the law.  ETSY SELLERS HAVE ZERO PROTECTION.

We are at the mercy of corporate greed.

by: The End

This isn't Etsy.
It's some mangled up mess.
Euthanize it.

by: NYSteve

I hope that doesnt include refunding packages that show 'delivered', but the customer claims they never got!

by: LDWCallsOut

Etsy's customers are the SHOP OWNERS, and handling buyer complaints without involving the shop owners is unacceptable.

The idea of Etsy corporate being involved in protecting buyers is a joke.  Etsy is the venue that forces retail boutique shops to create deceptive listings for their products, claiming they are handmade or vintage. when they are nothing of the kind.  The majority of listings active on Etsy are deceptive in this way.

The sellers who are old school Etsy shop owners, designing and crafting their wares, or searching out authentic antiques and vintage, are impacted much more when Etsy simply refunds a buyer's claim with no involvement of the shop owner.  A retail seller/reseller can just write off the loss of a unit when a buyer makes a bogus claim. It cost them just pennies on each dollar of the listing prices, and there are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) more just like it available in Asia.

Etsy's corporate culture is based on deception.  It might be past time when these corporate talking head announcements carry any weight with investors.  Anyone can look at what's listed on Etsy and find the mass manufactured fast fashion ''stuff'' and counterfeit items on there.  

Etsy should take a break from their nonstop CYA posturing, and revise the site to honestly incorporate the reseller shops (it's not rocket science, as the saying goes), while working to improve relationships with its SELLERS.

by: epuise

FEEDBACK tells you if a SELLER is "Honorable" & provides great Customer Service... Too many 'negs' ? Suspend the Seller.
Too bad BUYERS can't get ratings.

by: iheartjacksparrow

I don't understand why these marketplaces believe buyers need more protections than they already have. Sellers are the ones that need protection since a buyer can claim anything and the venues won't offer any support to the seller.

by: ShortSeller

Because they know the percentage of chinese junk they sell and the percentage of customer complaints about it. It's always been about instilling trust in buying chinese garbage.

by: Rexford

Little eBay lives.

The buying scammers' ears just perked up.

by: Sierra

@LDW - Etsy should get the reseller crap off the site and return to its roots where ONLY handmade, vintage, and craft supplies (not supplies for every event under the sun) are allowed to be sold on their site. And then enforce the f*ck out of this policy.

by: LDWCallsOut

@Sierra :  I would love to see Etsy return to its roots with handmade, vintage, and supplies.  But that ship has sailed.  

More than half of Etsy's shops are reselling items that, according to the House Rules, shouldn't be listed on the site.  Etsy is now a publicly traded company, and their investors would not be happy if the site lost more than half of its listings overnight.

It would not be hard to incorporate retail/reseller listings.  The process for listing an item needs to be changed a bit.  After that, if a reseller item gets listed as handmade (or vintage), gets reported, and is verified to be new mass-made not designed by the shop, the item gets recategorized for the seller AND THEY GET A WARNING.  If the same seller tries it again, they lose access to listing items as handmade (or vintage if that's what they're pretending) permanently.  They can still sell on Etsy.

This system would be a lot better for buyers and SELLERS than the empty text Etsy uses now to say that vintage has to be 20 years old, and handmade has to be at least designed by the seller.  Items listed as handmade, or as vintage, would be those things.  Like old school Etsy.  And shoppers who wanted to buy the same reseller junque they are buying now, could keep doing that.

Etsy has to acknowledge the massive presence of resellers and incorporate them into the site.  And stop the deceptive listing practices in use now.

by: Sierra

@LDW - It might not be hard to incorporate the crap, but I don't want to see the site go in that direction. Who would enforce the rules you're proposing? Etsy hasn't shown much interest in enforcing their current rules since at least 2013!  

by: Ophelia1

by: I_Fix_Dolls:

Bonanza trying to get Etsy sellers over to their site? How?
Because there is nothing going on there, it's crickets and tumbleweeds.
Etsy sellers need another outlet, but Bonanza?  it is just changing one set of problems for another.

by: Sierra

@Ophelia - I agree! Although I've never tried selling on Bonanza, I haven't heard anything good about it. eBay has tried (I think twice) to get a serious handmade section going; I participated in one of those adventures, but wasn't impressed. It also didn't help that eBay did nothing to promote that they were featuring handmade things (like they do these days with sports shoes, trading cards, etc.); they know how to promote those things, and they could have put similar effort into promoting handmade ... and maybe gotten somewhere!  

by: AnotherTime

I think I'm going g to cry.... left eBay for these very same kinds of reasons of hurting sellers over and over.  Etsy is killing itself!