Sooooo close

Well, we really thought we had another kudos article on our hands. Etsy has finally unveiled the long-awaited, and much anticipated, vacation mode. But alas, after much discussion we have come to the conclusion that it sucks.

When you turn on vacation mode your shop disappears. Yes, if someone types in your address they'll find you, but searching will no longer find you or your items, no more exposure - at all. Now, Etsy knew this happens because this is from the Vacation Mode FAQ

When your shop is in Vacation Mode, your items will not appear in your shop. But if someone has bookmarked or Hearted a listing or reaches it from a link on an outside source like a blog, they will still be able to view the listing page. We'll show a notice at the top that you are away. The green "Add to Cart" button will be grayed-out until you return from Vacation Mode.

Nice, but why do we all renew so much if 'outside sources' are how the items are being found?

Let's take this example. You are going to a craft fair so you want your items deactivated. Well, the new batch deactivate/activate is very nice. To make it easier, you don't have to check all those boxes, now you can turn on vacation mode! But wait...you are no longer found in Shop Local, the very people you would want to be able to find your shop to read your announcement about where you'll be! And they can't browse your items! Nevermind losing EtsyMini that many sellers use on their main websites for sending people to their Etsy shop. Oh and that pesky grey box in favorites.

Other than the batch deactivate/activate and convo auto-reply (two things that should be available independent of vacation mode!), Etsy took none of the suggestions given in all those wonderful 'poll' threads.

Etsy was so close on this one, but they haven't yet learned to listen. And they definitely aren't yet in tune with the needs of their customers.

Too little too late?

Imagine my utter shock today when I got an Etsy email! Wait wait, no it had nothing to do with the outages and failures this week that has been plaguing the site. No, it was a completely out of the blue announcement... VACATION MODE IS COMING!

Please visit this Storque post for a sneak peak of Etsy's upcoming feature, Vacation Mode. Vacation Mode allows a seller to put her shop on hold if she is out of town, sick, or otherwise wants to take a break from selling. We'll be rolling it out soon, so keep an eye out!

When in Vacation Mode, items in a seller's shop cannot be purchased. The seller's shop will appear empty, with a special vacation announcement. The seller's items can still be viewed via a direct item link (if they are linked from an outside blog for example), and can still be Hearted (added to favorites), but will not appear in site searches or the Category Browser. Buyers can sign up to be notified via email when the seller returns from Vacation Mode. See this Storque post to read more about how the new feature works. We hope you are excited about it!

Love, Etsy

Love? That closing line always throws me. The biggest part of love is communicating, darling, something you've sucked ass at this month. I am still filing for separation. You buying me a diamond ring doesn't make up for the fact you slept with my sister, stole my car and drove me to drink.

And the timing of this sends off major alarms. You can't make up for a massive failure of communication and total disregard by tossing up an announcement that the feature we've begged for for THREE YEARS is finally coming. (And yes we noticed there was no date on that promise. We're not holding out breath for it THIS year.)

You can't apply a bandaid to a huge gash and expect it to stop the bleeding. This is a desperate throwaway nicety to buy back the love and patience of it's sellers that Etsy has forsaken all this time. It's a cheap sleight of hand, and we see that card up your sleeve, asshole.

Let's just rewrite this notice for what it is:

When we fuck up we do it big time, it's our superpower. Our SuperDickery power doens't let us bother to let you know anything you need to know to run a functional storeforont. But that's okay, instead of bothering to send out service outage notes to every one with breaking news and interrupt the office naptime, instead we'll send one out to let you know vacation notice is coming in the future!!!! You've been bitching for it for fucking years, and we're finally kind of sick of playing Rockband and making fail hammocks enough to pull it out of our asses. Don't you love us again?

Now we'll direct you to the Storque article on this empty promise, and we'll be watching the forums so you can give our rightful handjobs and bask in the super nova-like glow of our egos.

See you later fools, Etsy

Fuck you too.