Stars?

[#1]

How does everyone feel about the stars as reviews for their shop? If you haven't seen this, go to your shop home page and look where the reviews were.
I can't decide how I feel about it!

[SnarkFactory]

That is true, BeaG. I'm not aware of their track record when it's come to changes. What changes have been made in the past that have been for the worse?

[heartsabustin]

Shall we start with the "experiment" they ran this past weekend to take PayPal away as a payment option for new buyers? I know for a fact I lost sales because of that decision. They didn't let us know, therefore we had no option to opt out of their little "test".

And they always, always pull this crap RIGHT before the holidays.

Not only did they pull this test out on us, unannounced, but the flat out LIED in the forums that it was a bug, and they were checking into it. THEN, after nearly 36 hours, one of the Admin came back and admitted it was a TEST they were pulling on us.

[Former_Member]

Erin, that is awful!

We have to remember etsy allows all the mass produced junk to be sold on here too, damaging the credibility of honest, crafters and artists.

When money talks, integrity walks I'm afraid!

[Former_Member]

I agree that the neon yellow stars are ugly. This is Etsy, maybe we could try to incorporate something a little more artsy and visually appealing. But that is not a huge concern.

Although it was terrifying before of getting a negative feedback and having it screw up your entire feedback percentage, I don't know that I like the stars either. As others have pointed out, some buyers will be completely happy with their purchase, comment on how great it is and how wonderful the customer service was and still give you 4 stars...and think they are helping you out, when it will in fact drop your percentage.

As a buyer, when I am shopping on Ebay or Amazon, the first thing I do is look at the sellers feedback, and if it's not 100%, I am extremely hesitant to purchase from them. So those 4 "helpful" stars may end up hurting us as sellers when they are not intended to.

And I have been saying this forever, but here goes again, especially if we are not allowed to give feedback on buyers anymore - Etsy needs to allow the sellers to comment on feedback they have received. There have been way too many posts in this team about threatening buyers and the sellers bending over backwards, remaking and sending items at their own expense just to avoid a negative feedback. And in many cases, the buyer is upset just because they didn't read and understand the shop policies and the seller did nothing wrong. We should be able to defend ourselves if necessary even if it's something as simple as "Shop policies stated that the item would ship within 5 business days, which it did."

Hopefully, if these stars stick around, Etsy will also be putting in to place other options that will help protect us sellers. Because if we end up losing sales over this, Etsy is going to lose money.

[Former_Member]

But going back to the thread theme. I'm not too unhappy with it, I think the star system is good for ratings, compared to the positive, neutral, negative check boxes. I do not like the bright yellow stars, they cheapen the look of the site and they immediately draw my attention away from my items and others.

Sellers should be allowed to give detailed feedback to buyers also, like I said, some buyers need to come with a warning!

To sum up, why fix something that is not broken?

[heartsabustin]

Don't EVEN get me started on resellers. 8 million pieces of jewelry on this site in the handmade category, and fully half of them are reseller crap you can get from Ali Baba. Those bubble necklaces in the Browse category literally make me heave every time I see them. And that's just the jewelry. Let's not get started on the Admin I see hearting factory made clothing on a daily basis.

*deep breath*

Last year, they rolled out relevancy search right before the holidays. Now, even then, I had no problem with relevancy search. Recency search was outdated and the people who had the most money to spend on renewing (read: resellers) were always at the tops of the searches. Relevancy evened the field out a bit, so now you actually have to have good SEO to do well in searches. It was their timing that threw everyone off. Right. Before. The. Holidays.

Curious, Bea, are you one of the unholy ones not allowed upstairs anymore, as well?

[TheRoamingPeddlers]

I don't like some of what's going on either, but come on. Etsy is a service for us sellers. If you guys hate it so much, why are you still on here?

Personally, I am grateful for an online venue that encourages and promotes handmade. I'm grateful for a community of cool artists to connect with. And I'm grateful that the coordinators are always looking for ways to improve Etsy, even though some of those ways (like this one) are bound to flop.

It shows that they are progressive and constantly striving for better, which I believe is good for business. I mean, if we had just left our products in the prototype stage, our business would never have succeeded like it has.

No, I don't like the stars. But hey, onward and upward. Maybe the next change will be better. One thing I do know is it's depressing reading all this negativity from other sellers. Chin up guys, I'm sure there's something good ahead. And if it's still not good enough, maybe you should consider selling on e-bay or the like.

[SnarkFactory]

Krystal and Mark,
Excellent points! If etsy is vicious to you, then leave. But don't spread infinite amounts of negativity while still soaking up the benefits of this site. "if it's not broken, don't fix it" is not a good business model. You've got to take a good idea/feature/product and make it better, that's what makes a successful and engaging business. I do agree that the stars could be more pleasing to the eye. But, it's still in testing, so perhaps they are making sure all parts work and then will work on smaller details.


AND,
if etsy went around deactivating shops that were accused of being resellers, they'd be called tyrants. They have a process in place that gives the shop owners a chance to defend/explain themselves. Everyone deserves to have a voice.

[heartsabustin]

I'm not being negative - I'm being realistic. I don't hate it here, I've just been here long enough to see what's going on. That's all. Full stop. They like to pull this stuff, say that they "conducted surveys", and then stop listening to us at all when we try have an opinion. It's true - it's their site, and they can do whatever they want to.

But they have to remember (and I'm not one of them, thankfully) that some people on this site rely on their income from Etsy to LIVE. The PayPal thing this past weekend? That was amazingly stupid.

They've released credit card info before. There was one day when the Treasuries displayed publicly the real names of everyone on the site that were in a Treasury. There are some ladies here who were outraged - they have real, live stalkers who scare the crap out of them, and they shouldn't have had their names out there for all to see.

I don't mind striving for better, but when they announced the FB change, there were sellers in the Forum BEGGING them not to do this. I can't be one of them, because I disagreed with them one too many times, and I'm not allowed to play upstairs anymore. No big loss, but this my business they're messing with.

Fortunately, I do have stand alone sites. My eggs are not all in the Etsy basket.

[Former_Member]

What I like about Etsy is that it DOESN'T look like E-Bay!

Now we have neon yellow stars.. yuk!

[Former_Member]

Seriously, you think if Etsy finds that the new feedback system doesn't work in attracting buyers and sellers they won't revert or improve? They aren't a malicious corporation trying to beat you into submission, they're a corporation trying to attract buyers and sellers to make more money. And if they succeed, we make more money. If they don't, they revise because that's what every single successful business does.

I can't believe the cynicism and sensationalism going on all over Etsy over this. If a buyer tries to hold your feedback "hostage" REPORT THEM. And then if Etsy does nothing, take a bad review. It's not the end of the world and will barely affect your overall rating. Change is not always terrible, settle down.

[Former_Member]

Wow! How did this turn into a personal slanging match?

People are entitled to their opinions, but lets not actually start being personal in our opinions with the attitude if you're not happy with etsy then just leave. That's not a constructive comment.

Agreed Gina, etsy isn't ebay and hopefully etsy won't go down the ebay route of feedback.

This is my full time job, and I am thankful that that PayPal issue didn't effect my shop, thank goodness!

[Former_Member]

I want to quote an Etsy admin here from the discussion forums, because I think it addresses a huge concerns for people:


"Exactly what recourse do shop owners have for being left unfair bad feedback?
Will there be some type of "review" process that will be implemented to protect the shop owners?

______

This is on a lot of minds! Reviewing buyers proved to not be an effective way of protection against unfair reviews. Buyer feedback scores were rarely checked, and most buyers we spoke to didn’t care about their “score”, and many didn’t even realize they were being reviewed.

Although we’re eliminating buyer reviews, Etsy will continue to take action on buyers who are in violation of our policies. In cases of non-payment we have our Seller Protection Policy, and if buyers show a record of non-payment issues, we close their accounts. Note that since we’ve implemented Direct Checkout, and riskier forms of payment have declined (such as checks and money orders), occurrences of non-payment have reduced significantly. In the case of a buyer using profane language, or disclosing personal information, the seller can flag a review for violating our policies. For “not-as-described” cases, we review the information provided in the original listing as well as the perspective of the buyer and seller, to resolve the case.

If we see buyers who show patterns in non-payment or in leaving violating reviews, their membership will be terminated. For not-as-described, the cases are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The question of “unfair” feedback is extremely subjective. Unlike the above areas (non-payment, policy violation, and not-as-described), Etsy can’t create standards around buyer satisfaction and their perception of quality, what they like, etc. This is really a human issue - there are some you just can’t please. Buyers get this, and if they see one lower review amongst a sea of high reviews, they will understand it’s not the norm. Keep in mind that low ratings will drop off your shop score after 12 months, so they don’t weigh as heavily as the past “negatives” did.

We added editing to reviews so that you can work with the buyer resolve the issue, as much as makes sense within your shop’s approach to customer service. This is much better than KAMU, is easier to find and clearer to use, so we believe resolving poor feedback will be a much smoother process going forward."

[mossycreekstudio]

I got mine last night and I LOVE it! I think this is a much better representation of my shop than before. The total feedback including my feedback for purchases is gone... just 157 reviews from customers.

I think this is much better. Yay!

[Former_Member]

I hate it totally! Its really unfair for shops like us because we can't leave feedbacks at all!!! and to be honest there are some really picky customers here. It didn't happen to me but to my sister in law, she has a shop here. One of her customers bought some accessories for her but her items did not arrive and my sister in law made a refund to her plus re-send her orders but in the end she gave my sister in law a negative feedback after receiving a positive feedback from my sister in law. With the old feedback system, it is already so unfair for shops. I am sure with the new system, etsy is totally biased.

[Former_Member]

I just got my stars, kind of excited!

[mossycreekstudio]

I should have said I like the stars except for the BRIGHT YELLOW.... ..

[SnarkFactory]

Katie,
Things that are being said here are not constructive and are totally personal.
Allow me to copy and paste some examples directly from this thread:
-Etsy would never implement a system that is BETTER than what they have now.
-Etsy didn't think this one through all the way.
-Etsy doesn't seem to realize that OUR seller fees are what pays for their site.
-And trust Etsy? Nope. Not gonna happen.
-I've been selling here for over 7 years and believe me, they often make bad decisions and even big mistakes. And no, after they have made a change for the worse, they never return to the better system. They just shut up members that complain (muting them for life from the public forum).The fact that there is no proper competition (yet) does not mean Etsy is wonderful. To the contrary.
-Etsy allows all the mass produced junk to be sold on here too, damaging the credibility of honest, crafters and artists. When money talks, integrity walks I'm afraid!



I take this personally because I'm proud of this site and I like being a part of it. It's promoting closeness and getting away from the mass produced, cheap and poorly made market that's ravaged the economy. The things that are being said over this (arguably, pretty minor) change are cruel, over exaggerated, and flat out rude.

[heartsabustin]

Katie, thank you. Very much. The personal mudslinging thing is not my favorite. I did not sling mud at anyone else. I simply stated why I have concerns, and until my fears and concerns are assuaged, I will continue to voice them.

I was not cruel. I was not rude. I know the limitations of the site. I love my shops here very much. I'm very proud that I'm able to make my own money and not have to leave to go out and find a job. I can be home for my kids.

People on this site who know me well know that I'm a pretty nice person.

[Former_Member]

Erin, I don't believe you have turned anything personal in your comments. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but when it turns into a slinging match I don't bother reading them after a while.

"How dare you Erin have your opinion about etsy and how they have treated you!!!!" Hilarious really.

And again, I will say, leading back to the theme, I am indifferent about the feedback, I just don't like the yellow stars.

"How dare I not like the yellow stars!!!!!"

LMAO

[heartsabustin]

:D Thank you again, Katie.

I believe I will bow out now. I've been on this site for five years, and I've seen a lot. My experience here means nothing, so I wish you all a lovely evening. I've got a ton of homework to do - first day of school for kids means homework for mom.

[SnarkFactory]

There's a way to voice your opinions about a specific feature without knocking the entire site and the intentions of the admin.

[Former_Member]

Stars suck.

I cannot see mine yet.
But others have told me that I am at 192 with a five star rating..........wtheck? Everything from 2008 through 2012 doesn't matter!

Supposedly, customers will still eb able to read old fb to see that I pride myself on customer service and quality handmade products, but they can also only see what has been left for my shop in the last 12 months.

Write/convo the admin you feel you have a connection with, tell them this is not what we asked for. Those surveys.......they didn't even pay attention to what we asked.

I need a tall chocolate milk shake right now!

[PPennee]

After reading many of the comments here I am surprised there are sellers that seem to be defending Etsy's most recent debacle of a new system that A. does not protect sellers at all- there is a 60 day wait period before your report of an unsavory customer to be resolved- can we say - lots of lost sales during that time? B. does not give you any opportunity for relationship building with new customers by leaving them very positive feedback and encourage them to keep coming back to you- yes, there are convos, but it's after they have the item in hand that counts. C. To add insult, as an example, my over 1200 positive reviews are now worthless? Any seller who has done well here now looks like the average good seller for that year. A good analogy- if you are shopping for a large appliance and you look at Consumer Reports for Reviews- do you jump on the newest thing out there with 5 stars or do you look back a bit and see what got consistent 4-5 star ratings over the last 5 years? I for one resent the heck out of losing 5 years worth of solid 100% positive feedback that I worked hard for. Any customer shopping high end jewelry wants to know you have been there a while , done loads of different things and everyone has been happy.
Etsy looks to me like they are headed for an IPO and nothing more- it's all about them and that's fine, it's their site- as long as it doesn't hurt my sales I'll be here- but I won't call this an improvement and I certainly never for a second think they are doing me any favors- I pay fees and they make a bunch of money off every one of us that sells a product or service. First rule of economics- take care of your sellers, they will take care of their customers and everyone will make money. Right now, I do not feel taken care of at all.

[Former_Member]

And there's a way to voice your opinions about a specific feature without declaring everyone whose opinions differ is wrong.

I'm out too, got dinner to make.

"How dare you have an opinion!"

Lmao!