> Etsy told her it "isn't able to give... [a] specific reason"<p>Sounds like it's probably some newly implemented "black box" (either AI or external vendor) solution that can't be probed or debugged. :(
My fiancee has a handmade women's and children's cloth business here in Germany where I help out with IT, software, customer support and back office. We are affected by this as Etsy is currently holding about 4000 of our Euros. I am glad we are not totally dependent on Etsy (and on this business) because otherwise it might well wreck us financially.<p>I would say that our account is a good citizen. We have been on Etsy for two years fullfilling over 1200 orders and garnering a 5 star ratings from hundreds of reviews. In all the time we operated we had a single, unjustified case against us that was quickly withdrawn by the counterparty. Not a single Etsy order was lost during shipping, and we have managed to maintain a positive account balance without any issues related to fees or refunds. Our return rate is also below the industry average for our niche.<p>Now, we are not perfect. Often we run over the promised delivery date by a few days simply because we get swamped with orders. We also don't ship single items with tracking. Rather we send it as a German Post "Big Letter" which is quite reliable and has the benefit that people can receive it in their mailboxes and don't have to sign for it. This works quite well and is "the way" that we handmade / second hand people usually send around stuff.<p>This lack of tracking is, I think, the crux of this whole matter. Etsy really wants sellers to add tracking and it states in the "reserve" that you can get your money at once if you just add valid tracking.<p>To me this leaves a bad taste. I really resent being "nudged" by platforms like this especially if there isn't even a problem. The fact that they can simply change the rules out from under you is also disconcerting. The first time we noticed that this was even happening was when they already had withheld 2000€ (1). The worst thing about it is that we raised a support request for this, for which you have to jump through really stupid hoops, and have not even heard back from them in weeks. Not even a boilerplate response. This is really a scary prospect, to have your income be at the mercy of literally a faceless entity that'll happily take your fees but CBA to connect you with a real person when you run into trouble.<p>I also want to mention that I think a "reserve" is generally reasonable. But it's not really reasonable to hold 75% over 45 days. I think if it was 25% for 15 days from shipping then, generally, seller would be able to handle it financially.<p>(1) I am necessarily not blaming Etsy here, we are all just very busy and I just expect for this stuff to keep working like it did.
Such things will always happen when the difference in power is too great. Either organize (politically, economically, or both), or suffer.<p><i>Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.</i>
Would Shopify custom shopfronts be the alternative to using Etsy ? Will custom shopfronts be searchable via Google or Pinterest - how do they submit them for indexing ?