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Yeah, they fucked up our feedback.. Fuckers. Seriously, with all that has been said and done lately, who in their fucking right mind would remain cupcakes?!?
See here for the thread clusterfuck.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
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33 Comments:
WTF this makes no sense! Why are they making pointless changes when they can't even get the necessary changes done right?
I've been avoiding this like the plague, because I just kind of don't care...
Why on earth did they change my feedback so that it now shows feedback I left for buyers? What the hell kind of sense does that make?
People could just click before on the feedback I leave for buyers, instead of it being right there when they click on what they assume is feedback that was actually left FOR ME by other people.
It's backwards now, what the hell?
And the site had "hiccups" for 24 hours for this — because again, instead of being forthright & telling us sellers that they were pushing through an update — they just did the damned things and let the forum threads accumulate in bugs with the usual non-helpful responses from clueless forum admins about how they're looking into it. No, idiot motherfuckers — the site is having issues because your engineers are rolling out an update unannounced. It isn't fucking rocket science.
Can't someone on one end of the building pick up a tin can and connect to the plushie phone on the other end of the building?
*head desk*
What a mess. I'm all for buyer privacy, but the new feedback layout is just one hot mess.
At the very least, couldn't they have separated it by feedback received and feedback left? Obviously it won't differentiate between feedback you got as a buyer or seller, but a popular way to build up your feedback is to make a few purchases, especially recommended to new sellers to instill buyer confidence.
Of course, I would have preferred they left the layout as is and just blocked the names and pictures of purchases.
According to Sean, this current layout is a prelude to some kind of conversational feature surrounding each transaction. I like that even less, and it will be totally useless for private transactions.
While this intermediate roll-out is laying the groundwork for what is to come, and might even make sense when it's fully finished, it's haphazard and makes little sense without actually knowing what the end product is going to be.
The usual Etsy M.O.
I've said it from the very beginning, over 4 years ago: "Be careful what you wish for" because when Etsy does address a need that sellers have vocalized, it's never what you expect.
Now we can't leave negative or neutral feedback for bad buyers without it appearing on our account as us leaving bad feedback for ourselves.
Suddenly I feel like I need a vacation all over again.
All those employees and not one interaction designer? Or, you know, just anyone who's ever used a website before? Mind-boggling.
Never, ever, do Staff OP a thread and pay any fucking attention at all to anything anybody says. UNLESS it is to shut-the-fuck-up close it.
That is the most bizarre thing I have ever seen.
Why does Etsy constantly feel the need to re-invent the wheel, into a shape that doesn't roll?
Pretty much a case of them thinking they are streamlining things, but being so utterly devoid of insight, thought and apparently talent (or bare aptitude) for their jobs that they miss the realyl obvious points.
From the sort of things I work on, I'd be FIRED if I made such stupid mistakes and then only figured it out after I released the project. It's really obvious to anyone that 'feedback from this shop to buyer' should be really separate from 'feedback from buyer to this shop'. BUt they just throw it in there as 'blahbalh says' with NO DISTINCTION.
Yeah, yeah, mind bogglingly incompetent move #1006 from Etsy. Another day, and another dildo. Whatever.
They think this was an improvment, a simplification, from the way they had it before. Nope, it's just melting it together like Rob Kalin on the floor with fingerpaints, making his new Road Map for the Etsy Empire.
SalutingWonderWoman has just posted a reverse of this bizarre, unasked-for-change to the feedback section "as a public service announcement" and barks at sellers to "start another thread" with their "other concerns".
Is that dripping with enough contempt for sellers? I don't think she could have been more clear.
It is true that sellers made Etsy. It is also true that sellers can unmake Etsy. When you go, take your customers with you. The more of us who leave, the sooner it will happen.
It's a very crucial time of year. Even setting up for 3 months on a site that charges a monthly fee will put you in a much better position to sell between now and January.
Feeding the Etsy ego-money machine will just make them more arrogant......if that's possible! (Who really wants to read another insincere post from HeyMichele?)
This would be funny if the continual fail wasn't so frightening.
You can also get on the front page and in 1000 treasuries. Just make what etsy wants you to make, tag it with etsy key words, throw originality out the window.
Like lemmings the newbies flock to the thread.
What is in the water in Brooklyn and who are these etsy employees?
Aaaah - the bliss of a permanent Etsy Vacation.
I cannot begin to express the satisfaction I feel in being able to trust that if I spend my time and $$ building my own website and ArtFire shop, some lame-o engineer hired through that disgusting farce of a help wanted ad isn't going flush it all into the sewer with one brilliantly idiotic tech change.
I'm so over Etsy. I'm letting my listings expire one by one, and at the moment, have no intention of renewing them or listing anything new. I don't know if I'll be able to stick to my guns, with the holiday shopping season upon us, but I'm really going to promote the hell out of my ArtFire shop and try to move all of my buyers over there. Most of my repeat customers have already followed me over, but not everyone.
Typical. First Etsy messes with something that was working fine just for the sake of keeping those poor tech guys at work (how many have they got now? 60?) and then they don't bother to test it before putting it live for the world to see.
I have to say that I was rather surprised to see that it got changed back this quickly, normally it's a case of 'just deal with it, we don't care'.
But hey, it's already September. Let's see what else Etsy can mess up before the holidays!
@makeminevanilla - yes, she really is that stupid. And so is everyone else there. 5 years into it, you'd think they'd be a teeny bit buttoned up. Not even close.
And don't get me started on feedback, and the fact that anybody is allowed to leave feedback (even non paying buyers, or people that don't like to pay customs fees and want you to lie on customs forms so you can go to jail). Dear me, if left to my own devices, I could rant forever.
hidden in these post gems is that ridiculous how to be in 1000 treasuries post.
My goodness, how many newbies falling all over themselves to thank the OP, who will never land on the front page. SEO, that's ridiculous. How many people are going to click on your treasury embedded in your blog? 2?
The more treasuries there are, the more the lazy admin will continue to pick ththe same faves.
Quality trumps quantity every time. One *good* engineer is worth more than 25 fuck-ups any day. Given the lame-o recruiting video they came up with and these continuing beta-quality roll-outs, I have to wonder at the quality of their hiring practices.
They definitely need to hire a good usability expert. Preferably one with some real-world ecommerce experience and not some neo-hipster dude who knows how to make pretty graphics but not how to make a usable workflow for navigating the site.
They ought to use some of the stringent hiring practices of Amazon and Google. That will filter out the wheat from the chaff in no time. Hell, I had to do 3 interviews (with homework that required actually writing code) just to get hired as a contractor for a few months at Amazon. Hiring permanent employees there is even more involved.
Seems like Etsy doesn't set their standards very high if they can't even get the simple things on the site right. In this kind of poor job market, you'd think they would have a nice big pool of real talent to choose from. But maybe they're too busy playing with fake mustaches and plushie toys in their little playpens to actually do real work.
Today is my shop's 6 month anniversary of being stocked... and I'm putting it into vacation mode tomorrow. I'm done with this complete and utter unprofessionalism and ignorance of what the users - not just the buyers, but the sellers, too - want in the site.
I don't care how many pretty bells and whistles they throw at us, just make the site work for everyone. And that's why I'm going to get my own site up and running... my way. No resellers, no favouritism, no useless fixes and changes.
At least I'll know that if I continue to not make sales on my own site, it'll be my own fault, not the fault of a bunch of moustache-loving, cowl-wearing hipsters.
All that's bee done *lately*?? All that's been done in the past 5 years should be enough to make most of us homicidal.
Moved to Artfire yesterday. I'll see how it goes. I'm getting less and less impressed with Etsy from July on, even though I've made some sales, and that's when I started selling.
Well the hell does anyone need to see the feedback you left??? I know none of it is private anyway but why put it out there. Does everyone need to know what kind of FB you give. It really makes no sense at all
Feedback, really? And now changes to the home page too? Whateveah..none of it matters for sellers if your items aren't seen, and they aren't.
In 2008 I averaged 8 sales per month. In 2010, it's been 1 sale per month. Etsy is just not viable as a venue unless you are operating in a very narrow NYC trend-tard oriented market.
My website is set up and items are being transferred there - I think I can manage 1 sale per month on my own thanks. (And BTW, sorry Artfire, but $15.95 per month doesn't cut it when the free account has yielded low views and no sales in 9 months).
The de-valuing and death of Handmade is thanks to you etsy. Your pie in the sky message is a lie. Your in-crowd mentality is destructive.
Most important, your failure to provide a viable venue for real, genuine, high quality handmade - all while pretending you do just that - is a textbook case of bait and switch.
Oh, and I forgot to say that the new feedback layout makes me look like I'm brazen enough to shill my own shop, with my own name.
@makeminevanilla I loved that how to get into 1000 treasuries post, an excellent self promo by the OP
and all those posters who will never get on the front page thanking her, yet in the first 3/4 of the year, she's been there 200 times.
It fits right in with the etsy credo, let's get more and more sellers on the site.
Don't even get me started on Sean and that feedback fiasco.
Tula said...
Quality trumps quantity every time. One *good* engineer is worth more than 25 fuck-ups any day. Given the lame-o recruiting video they came up with and these continuing beta-quality roll-outs, I have to wonder at the quality of their hiring practices.
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I interviewed at Etsy and the experience was about what people on this site would expect. It was like being interviewed by a high schooler reading a script written by a moron. There are several very good reasons why they don't seem to be able to fill all their positions.
One is that the company doesn't appear to be stable. I have a family, and the CEO saying this is Etsy's year to succeed to crash and burn or whatever makes me pretty nervous about committing to moving to NYC to work for them.
Two is that the recruiting staff appear to have no experience. I don't know why a company with $50 million in funding and an established business still considers themselves a 'startup' and only hires 24 year olds with no experience to do important jobs.
Oh, and to respond to Sark - go look at Chad Dickerson or Joh Allspaw's twitter. They congratulate the company on the number of code updates the make per month. Unnannounced? Hell, apparently they made 370 'deploys' in August. Any Etsy tech can apparently deploy new code to the live site.
Living on the cutting edge is great - when you don't have 50,000 people depending on you for their professional image and livelihoods. Something is seriously wrong with the company culture at Etsy.com.
I was in the forums yesterday where they were discussing statistics on top sellers on Etsy. People were pointing out that the top overall sellers were suppliers/resellers and even the top handmade sellers were offering items that were basically factory produced. Someone got huffy and told those of us who make and appreciate handmade items to "get over it" and that many people don't care if their items are handmade or not.
Wow, I guess I should pick up my hand tools and retreat to the 19th century where I belong.
It was like a particular poster was chiding anyone who pointed out the obvious: that if you sell handmade your chances of being a top seller are pretty minimal. This same poster was lecturing everyone that the list only included number of sales and that there were "plenty" of sellers who aren't in the top list who "make a living." Duh- as if we don't understand how to read statistics- of course we know that the top list only includes cumulative sales. That's not the point- the point is that we should be seeing handmade artisans in the top handmade category!!! Not items looking like what you find at Michaels or Hobby Lobby!
The denial continues...
Sorry to go off the subject, but I just had to share this bit of fuckery:
Did you see our lock-happy idiot lisajune close sean11's Announcement thread?
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6624122
lmao
So, it seems they rescinded it.
Just as with the checkout tax fiasco.
Is anyone keeping track of how many times Etsy has rolled out these half-assed "improvements" and then rolled them back up within a week or so?
RRobin, yep, I too am glad they rolled back both these recent snafus relatively quickly, but it took a united effort of "bitching" (even by peeps who normally do not complain) to get it fixed/reversed.
So much for the BNA crowd who likes to say complaining never changes anything.
Even though I am thankful they reversed these 2 horrible changes (feedback and their "simplified" checkout with unusable sales tax settings), I don't understand how either of these changes ever made it to the live site. The glaring design flaws should have been noticed in the development process. These were not buggy features, they worked as designed. They were just very BADLY designed!
How do these things that are so obviously non-functional that we can all see it and headdesk the moment we see it, how do they pass through every stage of development and get greenlighted at every phase, without one single person at Etsy saying "Ummm guys? This won't work."
Or maybe someone there is saying that, and they are just brushed off and ignored?
I know from experience that sometimes developers will push something through and say "let's just wait and see what happens", when when they are warned by other staff that something won't be functional or popular.
But it's generally the sign of a poor dev process if you have to repeatedly roll back changes shortly after releasing them. It wasted a LOT of man hours and resources to do all the work for a poorly designed feature, then have to roll it back, redesign it, etc. That time & resources could have been spent on something that people actually ASKED FOR, like coupon codes or organizing my favorites.
I think their dev process itself needs to be redesigned if this type of clusterfuck keeps happening. There is more to a good release than making sure it's bug free, it also has to be a good usable feature that's better than what as there before.
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Chris said...
Hell, apparently they made 370 'deploys' in August.
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I wonder how those deploy dates match up with all the "hiccups" lately?
Thanks morefuckery for the Etsy-guffaw of the day. lisajune, so dizzy with her etsy-ness is so slap happy about posting nonstop (& she does love those thread shut-downs, doesn't she?)that she tells sean11 to contact abuse@!!! Yahahahahahaha
Ya coulda just deleted your 2 stupid posts in the wrong section, but that would mean you read your own TOUs.
What I wanna see, is, does lisajune get an answer from abuse@? Or does she have to wait 6 weeks to find out?
They rolled it back, indeed.
Chris, thank you for your inside insight on interviewing with them.
@more fuckery
It's pretty pathetic that a forum admin can't just DELETE a comment like that. The admin side of their software obviously sucks as much as the user side.
No problem Amenhotep, I'd love to share more, but I don't think it would be appropriate to do so in public. The people from Etsy were decent, just not as professional as I would expect. The experience didn't make me confident that I could rely on Etsy for a career.
You never know, they could sell out to someone next week who decides to cut the staff by 25% (which would actually be a good idea). The place just doesn't seem stable. The CEO just doesn't seem stable.
I feel like my initial comment about the interview was a little harsher than it needs to be, by the way :)
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