Hi,
Over the last couple of months I’ve received a number of orders on my Etsy shop that are immediately followed up with a message from the buyer saying that the order was placed by accident. The verbiage used by the customers ranges from the usual, “didn’t mean to get this” to the bizarre, “the partner has reported that this application is no longer functional” (which was left in regards to an art print they’d ordered).
Looking around I found someone back in March asking if anyone had seen similar interactions, and a later comment on that discussion from a different seller in May reporting the same thing.
This is not a normal thing I’ve had to deal with over the years, and suddenly I am having to cancel out orders at least once or twice a week.
I received two cancellations back to back today that made my growing suspicions blossom into concerns. This is because both orders were for the exact same print: one that doesn’t sell often and, when it does, it’s usually in a smaller size or different format. I sell it frequently in person, which is why I keep it available, but the last time I made a sale from the listing was over a year ago.
I did recently update my print listings based on some SEO suggestions that Etsy’s dashboard link had suggested, so it’s possible that this bumped up that particular listing’s visibility, but this has more often been happening to listings that I haven’t touched for a few years, but remain popular in their categories.
Does anyone know if there’s something different with the checkout process or if there’s a known glitch that only certain browsers or phones are experiencing? Can people buy directly from Meta Ads now? I have a personal account that I use to make purchases through occasionally, but I’ve never accidentally placed an order on it, on either on my phone or my desktop.
I'm not sure if this is a bot trying to train itself on how I respond to cancellation requests, or if someone is trying to fudge with my or Etsy’s metrics in some way, but I’m growing increasingly frustrated with the frequency that this has been happening, especially since my sales numbers have been in a slow but trackable decline since 2016 and some of these orders are the only ones I see coming in for that week.
Any insight or camaraderie would be appreciated.
