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Etsy is updating the Dos and Don'ts. In case you haven't seen it, the beta is available for preview. A synopsis of what Etsy thinks is important is in the Dorque. They say it's available for a week so members can provide feedback on the proposed changes, though no thread is linked to and commenting is closed. You have to wander over to the forum to get to Stella's post with a link to a discussion thread and her comments/answers.
We here at EB are currently going over them and will likely post more about it at a later date, but feel free to vent here.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Proposed changes to the dos and don'ts
Posted by The Righteous One at 10:18 PM
Tagged: dos and donts, Etsy, fyi
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32 Comments:
did I see something about the death of Weekend Deals? if so, there are a buncha good folks to thank for that!! (and they are not Etsy employees)
My vent is I'm more confused now then the previous DD's and the constitution and when v2 went into effect all in one.
I need a cheat sheet.
Oh, and Michelle has been busy in the forums. I wish she'd stick those DD's somewhere. I think half the threads she's closed had no reason to be closed.
wrong vent. Sorry.
Oh, I see...it's a DO as I say, DON'T think for yourself kind of thing. Not surprised.
QUOTE: An Etsy account may not be used for the purpose of redirecting traffic to another web location. This includes shops in Vacation Mode. Please contact Support to have your account closed if you are no longer using it.
Ah nuts, they found me out!!
i call bullshit
The seller must ship the item(s) to the shipping address submitted by the buyer. The seller should communicate with the buyer if shipping information is unclear or inconsistent.
bullshit. it is the buyers responsibility to make sure their shipping address is current. why drop it on the sellers lap? besides the seller must ship to the address in paypal or have their seller protection invalidated. as most sellers see 90 to 100% of their sales via paypal, etsy doesn't need to confuse the issue with some badly written dosh about shipping to whatever address is submitted by the buyer.
if it is paid for with paypal, it goes to the address in paypal.
etsy doesn't need to give scammers a stupid shipping rule to use against sellers. especially one that goes directly against paypal rules.
Um, hello? Unobservant much? There's a link at the end of their blog post right to the discussion thread.
Look, I'm all for you calling out shenanigans, but at least get it right, bitches. You're so sloppy, it really discredits what you say.
It's even more important for sellers to stay on top of the new D&D's because "proposed" means something VERY different in Etsy-lingo. It usually means "DONE DEAL" just like all the site tweaks that suddenly appear on Monday mornings with NO ANNOUNCEMENT, NO TESTING (and buggy), and CLOSED TO SELLER FEEDBACK. (Example: The SEO issue is still outstanding and has not been resolved.)
Sellers have to wonder why Etsy has decided to issue NEW D&D's with new and expanded rules right at the start of the holiday selling season. Do they think sellers don't have anything better to do? How many more obstacles-to-selling can Etsy come up with? Seller SUPPORT? my ass.
It's a bunch of vague, poorly writtem, useless crap,as usual. I cannot believe the part about collective shops and how everything has to be made by someone in the collective. Yet, they had the woman who made baby things as a Quit Your Day Job featured shop, and she contracted out all her sewing to other people. How can that possibly be OK? WTF?
I've only been on etsy for 6 months, but it is clear it is a losing battle to get them to follow their own rules.
I think the mission statement change is very telling.
Their choice of words match with what they choose to highlight in the GG's, FP and the Storque. They are now matching in words as well as deeds that they are not a 'handmade' venue for shops all over the world, but a 'handmade/vintage' boutique with a very specific theme. They can't afford to become a juried site at this point, both from a financial standpoint and a pr standpoint.
The write these things all vague-y on purpose, so they can enforce it, when the feel like it. There is no accountability from them. The language is not clear cut.
I feel horrible for the sellers they may begin to target. I feel awful for Etsy sellers in general, I wish everyone well.
Did anyone else notice that right now in the Halloween Costumes Gift Guide, there is a "Where The Wild Things Are" costume that for ITS VERY FIRST PICTURE uses a still from the movie?
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33103954
Copyright violations, anyone?
The other pictures in the listing show the actual knock-off garment the seller is offering, but the primary image, the one that shows up in the Gift Guide, is of an item that is clearly NOT the seller's own original (or own unoriginal) work.
This isn't a simple matter of a seller using a copyrighted image without Etsy's knowledge, since, to quote Etsy itself, "The Gift Guides are hand picked by Etsy staff from hundreds of thousands of items available."
And to repeat, it is the very FIRST image of the product. There is no way Etsy admin did not know what they were doing when they selected this item for the Gift Guide!
This sort of blatant ripoff should not be allowed on Etsy at all. But to put it in a Gift Guide is beyond belief.
This is a clear endorsement on behalf of Etsy of a seller infringing on a copyrighted image taken directly from the movie.
So, from this we can conclude that trademark theft, design theft and image theft is a "Do" on Etsy!
RRobinsaid:
"Did anyone else notice that right now in the Halloween Costumes Gift Guide, there is a "Where The Wild Things Are" costume that for ITS VERY FIRST PICTURE uses a still from the movie?"
Wow. Oh Etsy, I grow more and more disenchanted with you by the day.
fk...
when I was gathering the links I didn't see the link in the italicized disclaimer, I looked in all the other places where it talked about having a discussion. But the dorque article does not link to Stella's post in the forums where she pulls out her responses, and that's what we linked to.
Openly pushing their own style on sellers makes Etsy a retailer who orders items to promote in their storefront but refuses to pay the suppliers for their goods. No wonder their profit margins are what they are.
All sellers are paying Etsy for access to the site, but Etsy is only displaying a few in their "style boutique" ----- so they've set up a marketplace that not only discriminates, it CHARGES MONEY TO sellers while making it impossible for them to sell. Sound fishy to you?
I think it's something of an improvement, I guess, in that right now a lot of the rules are both ill defined and scattered across multiple pages. Like, the tagging rules are buried in a few different places that are linked off the current Dos and Don'ts, and some of them appear to be rules that aren't actually written down anywhere official. So at least now they will all be in the same place and actually written down.
Although since odds are they still won't enforce them, what's the point? And they've succeeded in adding a bunch of bullshit, like the shipping address thing, that just makes things more complicated and stupid.
Besides the fact that the proposed changes are sloppily written and so vague that only the most seasoned of sellers can grasp what they actually 'might mean'.......?
And now, thankyouverymuch, Etsy has decided to find ways for it's sellers to spend money instead of finding ways for us to earn money. http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6326245&page=1
Flabbergasted by some of the proposed dos and don'ts. Social media is all interconnected and cozy - and artisans are putting it to great use to market their wares.
To tell sellers they can't link to a page that may link to a page where you sell the same items on Etsy is bunk.
"You may not post links/URLs to other venues or provide information sufficient to locate the other venues where you have the same items for sale that are listed in your Etsy shop. This may include your personal website if there are items for sale."
For heaven's sake - you can link to Etsy, Twitter, Blogger, Flickr and more directly FROM your items in ArtFire.
How short-sighted (and fearful) can you be?
I remember when one of the more aggressive butt sniffers was defending the Etsy brand by comparing it to an art gallery.
*snort*
"Yeah, and if you don't like Etsy's beige enhanced aesthetic, you can just find someplace else to set up shop. You wouldn't tell an ART GALLERY to change its image!!"
Riiiiiiight.
A lot of time has definitely gone into drafting this, but I would prefer that sort of time be spend on creating new features or improving the existing ones.
I agree that a lot of this is vague, and how it'll be enforced is unclear. What does "reasonable" mean to Etsy? Does it match with my definition of the word?
I also am curious about the shipping address bit that monkeybuttpowder referenced. Even if Etsy is purely a marketplace, it would help everyone if they became more familiar with the primary payment method used on the site. That payment system comes with its own policies and rules, and they need to work together.
After my initial WTF moment, I think it's pretty safe to say that this is really much ado about nothing.
Just like anything else on the site, they tweaked certain things so they can have more control in their selectively enforced rules.
Essentially what they've done is give sellers MORE work to do. You don't honestly think they are going to police this stuff themselves do you? No, they'll rely on us to find and flag infractions and then decide whether or not they want to enforce it.
And we'll still sit there wondering why blatant tag and category abuse isn't acted upon, why resellers continue to sell there, why certain 'personal' charities will be allowed and other not, why some can post links to places they sell the same stuff or use Etsy simply as a holding place to advertise their own website.
Just a clever distraction from the fact that they don't have any real plan to market for the holidays (again) and would rather spend time finding sellers "deals" rather than finding them buyers for their wares, and the SEO and google mess will probably not be cleared up in time for the holiday shopping.
I laugh at all these rules. I have, like, 50 accounts. I guarantee you as long as I'm buying and sellers are paying the fees, Etsy truly doesn't care what happens or what you do with all your shops, whether you list all your shops or not.
Hell, the admins have secret shops that they don't disclose. I don't listen to ANYTHING the admins say.
These rules are just for shareholders. Etsy's all corporate now so everything has to be written on the site somewhere. That's what corps and VCs and stuff want, they write a 1000 page document to prove they're official.
Etsy should be very worried. Ebay's numbers are dwindling and we thought they would last forever, they are now almost totally irrelevant. Everyone who sells on Etsy, I believe, should have their OWN website and use Etsy for portfolio purposes (if you absolutely MUST be on Etsy).
My 2 pennies.
One of my favorite quotes is in the opening: "...alas, we do not control the universe, or even the rest of the Internet."
If Etsy controlled the universe, I would kill myself.
In the "Listings" section, Etsy says that "Listing prices must be reasonable." Huh? Who determines what is reasonable? And what if Maria or some other incompetent decides a price for an item is "unreasonable", what will they do, change the price?
Also notice that the following regulation is repeatedly broken by Etsy favorites:
>A listing must not be conditional upon the purchase of another listing in your shop (for example: saying "this item may only be purchased along with another item in my shop" is not allowed). This includes listings for item upgrades, shipping upgrades and gift wrapping upgrades."
I see listings for upgrades all the time on Etsy-approved stores, and however much I actually like toybreaker's ties, and though listings for upgraded packaging are supposedly against Etsy-policy, I doubt Etsy will actually enforce this rule.
Etsy favorites break the rules, and Etsy breaks their own rules but nothing is done about it. Have one of us non-fav sellers break the rules and all hell breaks loose in the process.
RRobin said...
Did anyone else notice that right now in the Halloween Costumes Gift Guide, there is a "Where The Wild Things Are" costume that for ITS VERY FIRST PICTURE uses a still from the movie?
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33103954
Copyright violations, anyone?
........
Even worse, that's the third time it's been on the FP.
lessa says:
"They are now matching in words as well as deeds that they are not a 'handmade' venue for shops all over the world, but a 'handmade/vintage' boutique with a very specific theme. They can't afford to become a juried site at this point, both from a financial standpoint and a PR standpoint."
I think in someways Etsy is a juried site. They pick their favorites who buy into the 'etsy brand' and promote them all over the site and ignore the majority of unique items that don't fit their cutesy style. This way they get all the fees and the stores they don't pick get buried.
*sigh* said...
RRobin said...
Did anyone else notice that right now in the Halloween Costumes Gift Guide, there is a "Where The Wild Things Are" costume that for ITS VERY FIRST PICTURE uses a still from the movie?
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33103954
Copyright violations, anyone?
........
Even worse, that's the third time it's been on the FP.
..........
That's a new low even for Etsy, and ALL of the pictures in that listing are terrible. The one stolen from the movie is blurry, and all of the others are plain and simply awful. So much for the claim that you need good pictures to be chosen for the FP or GG. I don't know WHAT you need exactly, but whatever it is, good pictures and integrity ain't it.
That seller is also actually ripping off a company that's had LOADS of press lately for those suits - the second image in the listing is swiped from their product photos:
http://www.refinery29.com/the_goods/where_the_wild_things_are_insp.php
Sigh, the D&D's are another way for Etsy to jury the site and get rid of sellers they don't like. Which reinforces the way Etsy operates these days - making it impossible for most sellers to sell.
Are other shoppers as turned off by the flip Etsy attitude that oozes all over the site?
Thank goodness I can find most of the 100% handmade I want to buy on other sites!
Kyuuketsuki said...
however much I actually like toybreaker's ties, and though listings for upgraded packaging are supposedly against Etsy-policy, I doubt Etsy will actually enforce this rule.
LOL - someone posted about the seller who had been on the front page 113 times in the last 224 days this morning. Took about 5 seconds to figure out it was toybreaker. And if you follow the url in their Policies to their own website, it's hard to believe that's not a small company with a bunch of employees.
Etsy's all time favorite rulebreaker
I'd buy from Toybreaker if they advertised as a sheltered workshop, just out of the goodness of my own heart.
Anyone can be taught to whip out silkscreened ties using captured graphics: unique? Not. Not even artisan.
Who are they paying off??
Yeah, looking at their employment page indicates they use 'long term' interns and other help year round. Not sure how kosher that is with the dnd's regarding the artist needing to do the bulk of the work per piece.
"You may not post links/URLs to other venues or provide information sufficient to locate the other venues where you have the same items for sale that are listed in your Etsy shop. This may include your personal website if there are items for sale."
That's what they used as justification for closing my account - even though under the old TOS it was permitted, if you weren't selling the same things in both shops (and I wasn't).
WEll. Oe staff person "clarified" that by saying it was okay if it was once removed-- say, your website links to another site where items are sold.
I have a feeling, however, that they are not going to do that-- they are just going to slap us down for having anything leading anywhere.
So now I have to take down a link to my wesite, evern though I don't sell there.
I TRUST THESE PEOPLE TO DO WHATEVER THEY CAN TO FUCK US UP.
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