Etsy sellers say their bank accounts were emptied in major billing snafu

The fact that this happened on a Friday with a Monday holiday coming up smells extremely fishy to me.<p>Of course this is completely unfounded, but I have a gut feeling its a hack and we will be hearing more about it in the future. Most electronic heists happen at exactly these times because the banks will not reopen until following Tuesday at which time it can potentially be way too late.<p>One prominent example that I can think off the top of my head is the Bangladesh Bank Robbery [1], but I am sure there are more example to be found<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bangladesh_Bank_robbery" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bangladesh_Bank_robbery</a>

Things like this are my problem with the pull style payment systems. It would be nice for online systems if you were given an invoice, and you had to tell your bank to push the money to the other party. (or confirm the pull). For recurring bills that are always under a certain amount, he was a customer can give a business some limited amount they are allowed to pull every month.<p>In a system where we turn over our payment information to all these companies and they can accidentally pull any kind of money from your account, it just leads to problems.

The article is really poorly researched. They mentioned that Etsy decided “not to cancel the transactions”. What does that even mean? You can’t cancel a transaction where the money has already been taken out or the account and magically expect it to return. Etsy has to push the money back into the account via a refund.<p>And money refunded is never considered income, so the second part of the article is completely unfounded speculation. Unless Etsy issued 1099s it doesn’t matter how much money they push into the account, it doesn’t mean it will be considered income.

This is the kind of mistake that potentially kills the company. Or would if it still would be a small artist umbrella but it&#x27;s now only a small portion. Because after this, a lot of small artists will pull out for sure because as you very well know 40% of Americans can&#x27;t cover a $400 emergency expense so they equally can&#x27;t afford to hand their financial info to a company which might just trigger such an expense. This is a problem. I liked the small artist half of etsy. Where do you get your small artist stuff now?<p>In a way, Feltsewfantastic&#x27;s Corgi felt keychain key ring &#x2F; bag charm &#x2F; ornament is my support animal... etsy has brought me a lot of joy.

I know that there has been a lot of internal handwringing at Etsy over changes in the culture and values of the company over the past few years.<p>I imagine this will be a good chance to see how much of the old Etsy still remains in the DNA and how much has gone CYA corporate.<p>Really hope everyone affected gets made whole. Unexpected large withdrawals that persist for days can be extremely stressful, and in some cases, affect lives for a long time afterwards.<p>--<p>(I once had a case where a store charged me a ridiculous amount of times, over 40-50 for the same transaction, and then I was charged tons overdraft fees for every duplicate transaction. The store refunded my money but refused to pay for the overdraft fees, the bank refused to refund the overdraft fees demanding the store would pay, and meanwhile I was a 19 year old out of somewhere near $2000 for months and stonewalled by CorpStore and CorpBank.<p>(They eventually each agreed to cover half, which was a bit of a coup for the bank I thought)

Mistakes happen, even terrible ones. They can be fixed though. The biggest issue is the fact that Etsy is stonewalling the issue and not willing to talk about it openly.

It&#x27;s strange how the US just can&#x27;t seem to figure out sensible payment systems. Payment in the eurozone is not exactly perfect, banks being banks and all that, but this kind of thing is almost a non-problem: If there is a SEPA direct debit drawn from your account that you object you, you simply tell your bank (online banks tend to have the option in the online banking interface for every direct debit transaction) and the amount is immediately credited back to your account, with the same value date as the previous debit. It&#x27;s then the problem for the payee and their bank to sort out.

This is just their billing system, not the way sellers are paid?<p>I was very active in the Etsy community back when they start planning to implement their own payment system. At the time, I perceived them to have a record of continual incompetence paired with insensitive or hostile customer service. I was very wary, along with friends of mine in the community, of something such as this occurring to me. I certainly have never trusted them with my money.<p>The response is typical of the vague, downplaying way I remember them handling problems way back in 2008.<p>“We&#x27;re aware of a bill payment error affecting a small group of sellers which resulted in some cards being incorrectly charged. We don&#x27;t expect this error to impact additional sellers going forward.”

<i>&quot;People who sell crafts and other goods on Etsy, an e-commerce site focused on handmade and small-batch products, say they woke up to a nasty surprise Friday morning when thousands of dollars were withdrawn from the bank accounts and credit cards sellers are required to have on file in order to have an Etsy storefront.&quot;</i><p>Why do sellers have to have credit cards on file?<p>Buyers I can understand, but sellers?

Why can&#x27;t people just prepay a credit on the service, and the service provider could deduce fees from the credit? A lot of other services are doing that. It would solve all kind of associated issues with this these kinds of errors, like cancelled cards, overdraft fees, etc.

Exactly why I never connect real bank accounts to Venmo or even paypal. I only trust credit card companies lol. My Venmo is built up from friends sending me when I paid for them in cash.<p>Also if I were to connect bank accounts, I have several buffer accounts which are low on purpose

Etsy&#x27;s TOS requires mandatory arbitration, unsurprisingly, but I wonder what their reaction would be to thousands of arbitration claims over overdraft fees and other financial hardships.

This seems to be simple theft. Report it as a crime.

There&#x27;s not such a thing as a mistake, only lessons. Lessons learned or otherwise.<p>I have 1 special account for these type of things, and I keep it empty or with just enough $ to cover what is rightfully owed.<p>I am no genius. I have learned my lessopn (from PayPal).

I’m a buyer and made a couple purchase last night on Etsy. All my credit card info was saved on checkout with no verification required to use the card. Surprised me in comparison to how Amazon or other retailers typically require the full card number be re-entered on checkout. I understand this is different but seems like a bad convenience trade off.