Planet Etsy Where Are You?

Astute sellers already zeroed in on the perfect thread that points the spotlight on the bizarre goings-on at Etsy these days.
We’re thrilled that Admin posts are now highlighted!

Rokali zooms in from Planet Etsy by evading questions about Privacy Settings AGAIN with this doozie:

RK: Happy to answer this. First, can you define what you mean by "all privacy related information and features"?

And here comes lisajune with her know-it-all declaration:

lj:

Social commerce is core to what Etsy is though. It may be what you want to do, but there will be features you can't opt-out of. :/

So there you have it. Rokali doesn’t have a clue, couldn’t answer a question if his life depended on it. And lisajune (aka the Etsy Parrot) has made herself Queen of Etsy the Social Site.

Love it or leave it, lump it or shove it.

What you thought you saw on Etsy (if you can find it on Etsy) is not really what you saw on Etsy because Etsy is no longer Etsy! It’s an Outer Space Orbit of half-assed Admin comments and Announcements that get more bizarre day after day...no matter what you want to sell on Etsy, Admins are DETERMINED THAT NO ONE SELLS ON ETSY.

Be social or they’ll shove more of it down your throat tomorrow!

Etsy Caves - kinda... okay not really.

A media firestorm seems to be the only thing that can move Etsy from its handmade pedestal enough to actually remove the headphones and stop glancing at fake Chuck Norris' twitter-pretend it's listening long enough to trick you into believing it. Don't be fooled.

They just released this little ditty addressing complaints and what they are doing/have done to address them and actually eek out a half-assed apology and a half-baked fix:

Yesterday and today there have been a handful of articles reporting that purchases on Etsy are public. The articles have led to concerns by members of our community.

We want to apologize. We also want to set the record straight about how our product works and about changes we made today in response to your feedback.

Are my purchases on Etsy public?

No. As of right now, all your purchases on Etsy are private.

Were there changes to Etsy that made my purchases public?

No. The issue here is our Feedback system, which has not changed in six years. We do not directly publish your purchases on Etsy. However, when a seller leaves feedback for an item you bought, or you leave feedback for an item you purchased, we would link to the item. Our Feedback system has always worked this way; our original thinking was that it's important to know more about the transaction, to better establish trust in the marketplace.

We added the option to enter your real name when registering. Right next to this text field, it says: "Your full name will appear on your public profile. This is optional." Some people enter their name, some don't. As of right now, 25% of people (including us) have entered their real name.

It is the confluence of these two things that led us to this position: if you enter your real name, purchase an item, and the seller leaves feedback for this item, this purchase will be publicly visible via our Feedback system. Search engines index our site, which means this data can turn up there, too. It's been this way since October.

If nothing has recently changed, what's going on?

There is a lot of misinformation being spread right now. One blog post even has the outlandish title "Etsy Makes All Of Its Users' Activity Public." This is simply untrue. On Etsy, private conversations, financial information, billing data — all are now and have always been strictly private.There was an article published on ArsTechnica that made clear how direct the connection was between using your real name on Etsy, buying an item and receiving public feedback for that item. The reaction to this article has made us realize that we need to change the way our Feedback system works, and this is what we’ve already done today.

Why make any changes to the Feedback system?

The article and response highlighted for us how we've outgrown our current Feedback system. It dates back to a time when payment for items was sent after completing the checkout process on Etsy. This meant that sellers needed to know how trustworthy their buyer was. We now require payment prior to completing checkout, so this issue has basically gone away.

We believe that markets are conversations. We want people to discuss what they purchase, although this will often mean discussing it in private. As such, we have removed the link from a piece of feedback (which is public) to the item that was purchased (which is now private).

What is Etsy’s view on privacy?

We take privacy very seriously. We work with TRUSTe and audit our privacy policies regularly, notifying all members via email any time a substantive change is made.

In the future, we may provide an option to share individual purchases publicly at the time of purchase. This will be completely opt-in and on a purchase-by-purchase basis.

We are deeply sorry for any confusion and will work hard to regain your trust.

What’s next?

We have been working quickly to make changes based on your input and opinions. We will continue to work on this, for what’s really needed is a rethinking of our entire Feedback system. In the meantime, all purchases are private, and feedback doesn’t link to items.

If you have any more questions or concerns, please email support [!at] etsy.com or convo us directly on Etsy.

Thank you.
Rob (CEO) and Adam (COO)

The forums aren't buying it. Many sellers immediately pointed out the REAL issues remain unaddressed: no notification when this went live, real names going public and a deafening lack of answers for the user-base in the forums themselves.



And those "handful of articles"? Artsy Alien was nice enough to list them all here:

Consumerist - http://consumerist.com/2011/03/you-want-your-real-name-associated-with-your-etsy-purchase-history-right.html

Ars Technica - http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/03/etsy-users-irked-after-buyers-purchases-exposed-to-the-world.ars

BoingBoing - http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/15/etsys-privacy-valdez.html

MSNBC - http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/15/6273251-e-commerce-site-etsy-exposes-users-shopping-histories

Forbes - http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/03/15/etsys-experiment-with-social-could-be-costly/

Digital Trends - http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/etsy-comes-under-fire-for-revealing-buyers-names-purchase-histories/

Help Net Security - http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10746

NY Magazine - http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/03/unannounced_privacy_changes_ex.html

NY Convergence - http://nyconvergence.com/2011/03/etsy-exposes-buyers-and-purchases-online.html

Auctionbytes - http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y11/m03/i15/s02

The Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/etsy-takes-a-page-from-the-facebook-playbook-2011-3

Gizmodo - http://gizmodo.com/5782146/etsy-privacy-catastrophe-reveals-users-full-names-dildo-preferences-and-other-less-embarrassing-purchase-information

Village Voice - http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/03/etsy_privacy_policy_dildos.php

The Mary Sue (awesome new geek chick blog, if you haven't seen it yet) - http://www.themarysue.com/etsy-privacy-settings/

Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/etsy-new-privacy-policy-not-so-private

About.com - http://antivirus.about.com/b/2011/03/14/the-etsy-trojan.htm

Reputation.com - http://reputation.com/blog/2011/03/15/etsy-privacy-change-shows-users-purchase-histories/

Yahoo - http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110315/tc_digitaltrends/etsycomesunderfireforrevealingbuyersnamespurchasehistories

Salon.com - http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/15/etsy_privacy_people_search/

NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/etsy-people-search-privacy-policy-change-exposes-users-2767071.html

Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/the-circuit-kerry-hutchinson-introduce-infrastructure-bank-franken-to-propose-new-net-neutrality-bill-free-calls-texts-to-japan/2011/03/08/AB7m9gW_blog.html

Geek Sugar - http://www.geeksugar.com/Etsy-Privacy-Settings-14921901


Added: Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/15/etsy-privacy-debacle-site_n_836277.html

Added: Ars technica Update post


That more than I can hold in twelve hands, how about you?

Truth fucking hurts.

Hand over your lunch money

Since it's the weekend, Etsy admin are a skeleton crew of forum moderators and, well, that's usually about it! So when overdue notices for bills went out 24 hours early, on Saturday night, it had "FAIL" written all over it.

Paypal was released in beta and then to everyone (how ridiculous is that. We all know you just add the Paypal button and voila people can pay you, why Etsy couldn't do this is still a mystery) just this month. At the same time, and what many don't know is that they also removed the $1 minimum payment block. So if you owe 94, 60, 30, or even 7 cents you can pay it now.

And this is where the debacle starts....because Etsy even changed the wording on overdue notices and riled a lot of feathers.

"If we do not receive your payment in full, your Etsy account will be suspended."

Really? How about "nanna nanna boo boo we're gonna break your tricycle and take your helmet if you don't give me your lunch money!" or "come on fool, don't make me bust your kneecaps, hand over the dough". Those make just as much sense because the billing policies say you have to be 60 days overdue before suspension of listing and renewing occurs, then 90 days past due for actual account suspension!

And the best part of all of this - Etsy said they were going to email every seller to announce the changes before the next billing cycle, but introduced the changes this billing cycle...they want their money and they're going to weasel it out of us if they have to.

The professional thing to do would be to announce the changes with a mass email, because this affects money and money is the basis of lawsuits for companies, one billing cycle prior to implementation. Are they going to send 60 cents to collections because someone hasn't paid a static balance in 5 months under the previous system? You know, actually, this might be pretty funny to watch if they do.

Another professional thing would be to not use frowning yarn (which are worse than those damn frowny faces on the bill page) to tell us our accounts will be suspended if we don't pony up a few dimes. Yes, that picture above is the actual image from the screen that comes up at login when your bill is "overdue". Full screencap here.

Ok, a lot went wrong this time. According to the billing clarification in a Storque article bills are past due on March 15 23:59 GMT. It was, according to one Etsians calculations, only Midnight GMT on March 15, though that exact wording is no longer in the FAQ. RobWhite, who appears to be the only admin around on Saturday nights, had this to say

As it stands now, your bill is considered overdue at the start of the 15th, in GMT/UTC time (for those of you in the US, now that we're on daylight savings time, you'll likely be somewhere between 4-7 hours behind UTC time). This is the first month in which we've used all of the notices that we have in order to tell those with overdue bills that their bills are overdue.

So is this another new policy change? How did we miss this? Oh, yeah, right...no fucking email! We've been combing the Storque for the information to the point of nuasea (can you believe that the billing information is hidden amongst Rosie Live, Branding Hooray, and Guest Picks articles!).

And then there are the default settings screwing things up and sellers possibly being overcharged because of the Paypal, full balance settings. Yes, people need to be careful when hitting the payment button, double-check everything twice, especially with Etsy who have been known to double charge and not be nice with refunds or handling overdraft fees. If you back up to change one setting, the other is likely reset to default!

So, all in all, how bad was this one? Hmmm let's list the stupidity:

• 24 hour too early late notices (midnight March 15 GMT instead of 23:59 March 15 GMT, unless this has been changed, which is another issue)
• threat of suspension for 1-day late when they note in the billing policies that it's 2 months (technically 6 weeks cuz of the 15th thing)
• that stupid unapproving ball of yarn upon login
• no email notification of new policy regarding elimination of $1 minimum
• default settings that revert when backing up to change the auto Paypal setting that is screwing some people up

On a scale of 1 to 10 this is a 17...nice going Etsy. If you don't mind, can we give you a pointer or two. Umm, first, have you not been listening? Communication, clarity - these are all things we've gone over before with you. You're losing money on people paying less than a half dollar by Paypal, and less than $1 on credit cards.

Not that we care anymore about your ledgers, but you've become so greedy that you're willing to lose money just to appear badass when it comes to collecting it. And that's what you're doing - you've become one of those badass, mofo companies who are an entity that has to fight against all those it serves in order to survive - threats of suspension, harsh wording, changed policies without notice - Etsy was supposed to be different. But you're not. You're the boyfriend who consoles someone after a harsh breakup by being sweet and wanting to talk and then a little down the line once she's comfortable and loyal starts demanding a sandwich and beer when you damn well please. What's she gonna do, leave you? YES and WE ARE, and by golly we're gonna warn others about your sleazy ways.

Stop fucking it up. Your customers are in rough times - just knock it the fuck off! Yes, collect what's due you, but plan it out, communicate it, and for the love of all that is handmade stick by your own policies.

Oh, and the phone number for people to call when, say their bills threaten to shut them down on Saturday night, should probably be installed soon. Many companies move due dates to avoid weekends for this very reason. Just a little FYI, Etsy *wink*

State of the Etsy

Maria has been in charge of Etsy now for 7 months. It's been that long since she replaced dear Rokali as the CEO (because of course she wears coral nail polish). But what has really been changing?

Rob left to pursue Etsy.org, a site he said was to help artisans sell or something. We're not really sure. It's just a Pink parachute on a page and has been since he announced it almost a year ago. (hrmm "Has-been" is a good word isn't it?) Etsy.org I think was just a card trick.

But so is Rob's OTHER venture - Parachute.org, a site to ... well we're not entirely sure about it either but it's something to do with internet learning and classrooms. We've read how much he despises traditional educational standards like classrooms and paying for college, what makes this all the more confusing is that it shares the same logo and font as Parachute HiFi - Rob's high-end audio equipment dealership. (Creative ain't he? Etsy's logo is the same font as well. He's nothing if not predictable) To me those parachutes aren't hot pink – they're golden.

We did get Chad, and that seems to be the best move of all in bringing Etsy into the land of technical responsibility and internet goodneighborship with the API that is being developed. But when Etsy starts officially welcoming developers to make tools, how many of them will Etsy itself utilize? Will we do what we are forced to now, using a series of other sites and third party scripts to give us the mere shadows of the features we want and need? Will Etsy ever integrate the tools to provide them to everyone, not the ones brave enough.

Maria, our once great white hope, hasn't made any difference at all as Etsy's CEO of seven months. She still lives in DC!

She might poke her head into Brooklyn occasionally, but don't let them fool you she's working from home. It's hard to keep an eye on the kid's running the shop when you are hours away. You can't even really monitor hiring incoming employees since you are out of the loop. She doesn't have a grasp on what's going on since she's not in the stinking diesel scented air of Brooklyn - so how effective can she be? Maria came on board with a lofty and voluminous "mission statement" that has been all but forgotten. Not much has changed, and when sellers ask about those old promises, Etsy just cuts and pastes little tidbits from the original bloated treatise.

Matt has been demoted to revamping Teams, with a new incoming marketing person (who granted, might actually have experience). But we pity him that he's he latest to have DanielleXO foisted on thier department.

So many changes in seven months, but in all, not much has really different. And that's the saddest part of all this.

Who knows a bored lawyer?

I was thinking today that there might be cause for a class action suit against Etsy with their misleading and deceptive practices regarding changing the way it's search results are loaded making it largely useless without notifying users of the change, all while still continuing to recommend it due to it being a large portion of their income. Not to mention their rampant favoritism and free exposure for 150 or so sellers.

Bigger companies have been sued and lost millions for less and lost.

I'm sure the second a lawyer hears 155,000 (those with at least one item in their shops at the time of the transgressions) to as many as 339,262 (number of stores as of today) might be eligible it could make things interesting to say the least.

Content team = sucks hard + fail

The Etsy content team is doing their job - harrassing sellers about prices. Wait...what? Yes, you heard me. The dumbasses at Etsy (particularly Claire according to one forum thread) are sending out notices about sellers needing to lower their prices or have their products removed. Meanwhile the flagging system is backed up to god-knows-where. This is coming after protest price increases regarding the CPSIA.

We were scooped on this by Eclipse on her blog, and she has so many examples of content team fail that our heads are spinning.

The main points of this issue are that sellers of non-children items are getting the "lower your prices" warnings (the CPSIA was regarding children's items) and Etsy is telling sellers what they should or can charge for their items.

The main problem with this - ETSY IS A VENUE! They have no place telling sellers what to charge!

From the Etsy Terms of Use:

Etsy acts as a venue to allow users who comply with Etsy’s policies to offer, sell, and buy certain handmade goods within a fixed price format. Etsy is not directly involved in the transaction between buyers and sellers. As a result, Etsy has no control over the quality, safety, morality or legality of any aspect of the items listed, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to pay for items. Etsy does not pre-screen users or the content or information provided by users.

The official admin word on this was, of course:

This is a private matter between Etsy and a member of the Etsy community. In this case, please do write to content (!at) etsy dot com, let them know you've received this email and why you feel it to be in error.

(by the way, the seller already said they had done that, but they were closing in on the deadline for removal of the listings - there were 10 - without any word back)

Dumbasses. Read your own fucking policies! And while you're at it, make sure the items you're emailing about are actually covered under the issue, and that you email the correct sellers. The number of inaccurate emails the content team sends out is ridiculous.

If you worked for me, you'd all be fucking fired by now!

Followup: Good doggie, but no biscuit!

So Etsy dug Matt out of demoted obscurity to try to calm the most recent implosion of faith in Etsy regarding changes to the way renewals work.

Why Matt? He's the only one there who can string more than two words together in any cognizant and moderately sincere-sounding way that also doesn't manage to insult or infuriate large portions of the user base while simultaneously looking like a moron.

(We like Matt. We believe that he believes what he's saying - but you'd think after this many times he'd start to get wise that nothing is going to change and he'll be back fighting for his life after being thrown to the wolves again in a couple weeks.)

In this Dorque post he tries to talk sellers off the Cliffs of Insanity by admitting:

1: Their communication with customers (sellers) lags significantly behind other more successful methods like smoke signals, Morse Code, and pictographs written in Elk blood with a stick.

2: Plead guilty to changing how they are batch loaded now that every one has noticed, and that it gets you NOTHING for your money.

3: They thought no one would care when they admitted that had been fleecing sellers with their prolific advocating of renewals all this time then change it up on them when no one was looking. Oops.

So we'll give them a biscuit for admitting they fucked up and feigning like they want to improve - but they don't get to eat it. No, they have to stand there and look at it, dying to eat the sweet rewards of success but unable to. Just like we sellers have to when we deal with Etsy.

That fucking biscuit is gritty and bitter anyway, Matt, you're not missing much. (We've tried to eat them and never could keep them down.)

What DOES Etsy do Right?

No seriously, I'm asking. The cupcakes like to come on here and tell us we're unhappy with everything, that can't give credit when due (we have but those are few and far between) but what DO they do right? You tell us.

They aren't good at advertising. Their marketing plan was developed by a band of drunken monkeys (we WISH it was that good!) Communication isn't just bad it's abhorrent. They seem to go out of their way to ignore you exist. Programming was a clusterfuck before Chad and it only seems to have gotten WORSE. Customer service... well I doubt they can even pronounce it without gagging. They ignore bug reports and suggestions to improve their site. They can't write a helpful article in the Dorque over 100 words long. They can't spell check. They can't even keep who they feature regularly straight, let alone which sellers are in fact staff. You can't call them, they ignore emails and convos. They shun, threaten and banish their customers. They allow (maybe even enjoy) members to attack other members, threaten and harass each other on and off site. They play favorites and force thier personal tastes and concepts of hipster chic on us all. And of course, they are all too busy twittering each other across the office to care if they are actually DOING anything. And they need 60+ people to do all this to us... oh I mean FOR us.

But what do they do right? I'm asking.

All I can come up with is "Founding a mind altering cult" and "Extremely skilled at generating false hope" but you might have other suggestions, but those are mine. Let's hear them.