Luna's Baublebilities

It started with growing frustration with the same items and same sellers featured on the front page over and over again.  It escalated with a low but growing level of discomfort with the tone of admin in the forums and more & more underground reports of  previously successful sellers being shut down for arbitrary reasons after publicly complaining about a problem with Etsy.

It got really bad when my sales tanked this April - worse when after weeks of rude Admins insisting that there had been NO CHANGES so we were ALL IMAGINING the drop in our exposure and sales, news of a top-secret change in search function came to light.

Then the Etsy Hacks stopped working.  (Etsy Hacks were these wonderful little tools that allowed for quick re-listing of sold items, searching prior sales, managing inventory and just generally tracking all sorts of crucial business information that was impossible to do without them.)  They were created by a non-Etsy engineer who was later hired by Etsy to make the whole site function better but the only thing that has happened is that Etsy has managed to disable all of his original tools and has completely failed to institute replacements.

Then they changed the page width and lay-out, obscuring seller information in favor of the "Etsy Brand."  They also have failed to implement any changes to protect sellers from scammers, evil games from bitter competitors and non-paying buyers.  They also fail to prevent re-sellers from taking over top search categories and have actually been been featuring them on the front Page more and more recently.
In the midst of this, they spent the  time and energy to produce an embarrassingly adolescent ad for  new coders.  This was a real "help wanted" video.  I kid you not. 

And now they have rolled out a tax tool that will basically make it impossible for sellers in several states to actually OBEY the TAX LAWS!!!

I am so totally done with Etsy.  My shop will be in permanent vacation mode beginning today.
Maybe I'll consider coming back if they fix search, bring back the Etsy hacks, create a tax tool that won't put NYS sellers at risk of audits and tremendous fines, begin to enforce their TOU in a fair and uniform manner and hire some admin who treat honest sellers with some respect.

In the meantime, you can see my supplies and sparklies over at ArtFire - right there in my sidebar.  They SHOW how much they value their sellers in so very many ways.  I'l write about that someday soon but right now, I need to go dye some Alchemy scarves and work on a Gorgeous little Purse/Tarot Card envelope.