I’ve been on Etsy with Awlmark since late 2018 and with an earlier business since 2016. As a smaller maker you pretty much have to be on there. It is one of the main destinations for the type of customer a small maker needs.

As an Etsy customer you’ve probably noticed the drop in quality of product offering. There is quite a lot of what I would call “tat”. Products that in my mind stretch the definition of craftsperson/hand made. I think I can count myself as very much different from that. I really care about producing skill fully made items for discerning clients and emphasising customer service. Etsys mission statement is “Keeping Commerce Human”. I like that phrase and think it fits well my approach.

Now for the less positive however. I can’t say I would agree that Etsy embodies their own mission statement. Certainly not in light of how I have been treated by Etsy. I have, unfortunately, had a few run-ins with them. I’m not going to catalog them all here but I’ll just cover my most recent.

So what happened? It started a little over a week ago. I received an email notification letting me know I’d received a message. I go to the seller app to find I’m no longer logged into my Awlmark account. Odd. I try to log in only to receive a message letting me know that my account has been limited due to alleged suspicious activity. Pretty concerning and not what you want to see at as busy a time as Christmas. It’s around 23:00 when I’m seeing this and when I should be settling down in bed my mind is now racing with a whole load of somewhat panicked thoughts. I start sending out emails to customers with outstanding orders to inform them of what’s going on and to let them know their orders are safe. The Etsy message on the login page requests I contact Etsy Customer Support. I do so and then try my best to get back to sleep. Not well rested that night. I don’t hear back from Etsy until later the next day. They confirm that they suspect my account had been compromised and request some information about my account activity to confirm I am who I say I am. I do this. It’s the next morning when I hear back from them. A different person at Etsy replies. They tell me they think my email address has been compromised and request I provide them with a new email address to assign to my account. I do this as soon as I wake up. 10mins later I get another message from Etsy. A different person again with pretty much the same message as the previous Etsy support member, but this time they’re asking I provide them with specifically a gmail email address. I reply letting them know I have just replied to their colleague with a non-gmail business specific email address. I let them know my preference to use a business email as it’s for a seller account but also provide them with a gmail address if they insist on one. I get no human reply. I receive a password reset email to the original email address. Strange, I thought they said they believed this email address had been compromised?! I nevertheless reset my password and login to my account. Sigh of relief was short lived. There is no seller account associated with the account! I send Etsy support another message informing them. Another 3 hour wait to hear back from them. Again, a different person replies. They have re-associated my seller account. They ask me to check that none of my financial information had been changed. I log in and do as instructed. Weird, apparently I owe Etsy $18. But for what? I check. Looks like every single product I have ever had listed, even the ones I no longer make and also the ones Etsy had deactivated (a different story altogether) are now active and Etsy has charged me a listing fee for every single one. This is where the $18 has come from. I immediately message Etsy to advise on how best to handle this. While I’m waiting, I think, maybe it’s best to deactivate this listings myself as some of them could cause me further problems. I go to the Etsy seller app. Wha? I’m logged out again?! I try to log in again. My account is now suspended!!!!?!? Why??? I can now only log in on desktop. I do this. Now all my listings have been deactivated. I can’t even look at any of my outstanding private listing orders. Orders that need to be processed imminently. I now have to trawl through messages to find specifics of these orders. I send another 3 messages to Etsy support asking for clarification on what happened. It’s now 4 days later and I’ve heard nothing back.

I work very hard at what I do. I produce a consistently high standard of work and aim to deliver a high standard of customer service to my clients. As a result, I receive a lot of repeat business. This undoubtedly reflects well on Etsy. I hope you’d agree that I “Keep Commerce Human”. From my experience dealing with Etsy “support”, I don’t think I can say the same for them. Frustrating doesn’t come close to covering it.


UPDATE: I ended up appealing my account suspension as I had received no further response from Etsy support. I received a reply to my appeal today (the 30th December). It was rejected on the grounds that my listings do not meet Etsy's creativity guidelines. I have asked for further clarification on specifically how they do not meet their guidelines but I'm pretty sure I won't hear anything back from them. I understand that some of the items I make are, let's say, homage pieces, but these are only a small number of what I offered. They are also items that were and continue to be sold by other sellers on Etsy, seemingly without issue.

It is incredibly unfortunate and it feels very unfair to say the least but Etsy is the king of their own kingdom and can do whatever they want