Australian Sellers, Serious Bug with your Location. Many are shipping from "Iowa" "north carolina"

[#1]

This bug was pointed out to me by another seller in Sydney...that my items were listed as dispatching from "iowa", his from "north carolina" - a potential buyer in Australia contacted him asking if he shipped to Australia! 

I might have figured out what the problem was - Free shipping! - turned that all off, re did all the shipping profiles...... and back to normal "shipping from Austalia" - lets hope it stays that way!!

Make sense now why there have been next to no sales in 2 weeks compared to 5-10. 

I contacted support  via chat and the response was along the lines of  "thank you for your feedback, we will pass on your ideas about the design of the site " ...I asked for the issue to be passed on to technical support........but dont hold your breath for things to change with this serious bug. 

[SpellbinderieToo]

@givemeacrown @CryzalisDesigns 

I just noticed someone else says this issue seems to affect domestic sales rather than international.  So I guess I'll have to download the buyer app and check to be 100% sure, argh!

[AnniebelloPaper]

@SpellbinderieToo the lovely @CryzalisDesigns checked my shop. They are in The Netherlands and see my Australian shop shipping location correctly. It seems only to be a problem if the app-user is in Australia, or in the same country as the shop with the problem. Obviously this is a problem for those of us who rarely get any international orders these days.

[dippeldiundscribble]

@AnniebelloPaper 

„It seems only to be a problem if the app-user is in Australia, or in the same country as the shop with the problem.“

I see Illinois in your shop.

And I‘m not in Australia

[AnniebelloPaper]

@dippeldiundscribble this just gets more and more convoluted.

Perhaps it's only visible in those countries where the sellers are also affected? 

I saw your post in the German seller forums. How did those sellers manage to put in a postcode that wasn't valid for their country? Etsy only allows me to add the usual 4 digit Australian postcode.

edited to add... I did manage to add a 0 to the front of my postcode ... sadly that listing is now shipping from Connecticut : (

[dippeldiundscribble]

@AnniebelloPaper Maybe it’s because German sellers can‘t purchase Etsy Shipping labels !?

„I did manage to add a 0 to the front of my postcode … sadly that listing is now shipping from Connecticut“
It’s possible that this postcode now actually exists in the US. Did you try entering two zeros? I gathered Australian postcodes have 4 digits. US ZIP-Codes have 5. So entering a 6 digit postcode might do the trick.

[AnniebelloPaper]

@dippeldiundscribble I can buy Etsy labels. I just choose not to because they are all parcel-post and I don't need parcel-post. I also choose to support my local post office. Never know when knowing them personally will get you out of a jam. 

[Former_Member]

ugh, says it on mine too and i don't even ship to the US! "only ships to australia from mississippi" @FunkyKoala i think you hit it on the head with the zip codes, my postcode is 3950 and that's the beginning of a lot of MS zips.

The listing also has a big yellow banner 'only ships to select countries!' and then an 'update address' button, but my address is an Australian one - I don't even have a US address on that account. Added to my cart anyway and it says 'this doesn't ship to the US' which is true but I didn't even have a US address nominated!

I don't have free shipping for Australia, tried, redoing the shipping profile, tried giving it a new shipping profile, tried adding US shipping and that at least got rid of the panic banner but I still says I'm shipping from MS.

Weirdly I have a nephew there so I guess he's in charge of my postage now LOL

Etsy you are a mess. Are you tinkering, or can we blame this one on hackers?

[CryzalisDesigns]

You are very welcome @AnniebelloPaper & @SpellbinderieToo I hope the issues are resolved quickly for those affected.

[ApogeeVintage]

What a joke, Etsy. 

I just reported it via chat and got given a ticket number.

[PillowDetails]

@ApogeeVintage  I'm in the US - on the Buyer app, I see you ship worldwide from Illinois.

[ApogeeVintage]

Thanks for checking, @PillowDetails. That is the issue in a nutshell. I'm actually not anywhere near Illinois; I'm in Perth, Western Australia.

[C20Ceramics]

@Former_Member sounds like you have tried everything.......unlikely to be hacker......Its just another example of Etsy being unable to maintain its poorly coded/written website properly and constantly introducing new "features" without testing or seeing the flow on effects. .... You don't see these sorts of issues arise on Ebay or Amazon which Etsy is trying to emulate. 

[AnniebelloPaper]

I jumped on chat again as I haven't gotten an email. I now have a ticket number too. I also asked if they could update here in the forum thread as not everyone has the buyers' app. Hopefully we get some sort of action soon : (

[C20Ceramics]

Another reason this could be happening which occurred to me....I read somewhere on here recently that Etsy did a trial of hiding the location of items from U.S. buyers so they would purchase from anywhere in the world without knowing the country of origin ...... which backfired or course....this could be connected to that somehow and now they have to try and undo the mess that was created. 

[AnniebelloPaper]

hiding where the item ships from ... how does that fit into the buyer-friendly BS Etsy is shoving down our throats. Ridiculous!

[Former_Member]

@C20Ceramics  Yes I was joking about the hackers ;0)

It's definitely them tinkering with something and breaking it as a result. We're coming up to the holiday season so they're no doubt trying to 'refine' how they present shipping times. Trouble with Etsy is the hands don't know what the ar$e is doing and they typically wait for people to complain rather than make sure they do it right in the first place. And they say they're a tech company...

[AnniebelloPaper]

@dippeldiundscribble I just added 2 zeroes as you suggested to my cat lover notebooks and it appears to now ship from Australia to selected countries. Any chance you can take a look and see what it looks like from your end please?

[dippeldiundscribble]

@AnniebelloPaper 

This listing now shows Australia.

[AnniebelloPaper]

@dippeldiundscribble thank you. Not sure if that's going to just create more problems but if I don't hear from Etsy soon, I'm changing all my physical listings to that shipping profile.

[SmudgePlant]

Can the Australian sellers add an "AU" to the front or back of their codes as a work around?

I agree with the OP, this is Etsy's idiotic way of boosting sales to other countries. "Let's make them think it's coming from Iowa."

[AnniebelloPaper]

@SmudgePlant on the suggestion of a friendly German seller, I added two zeros to the front of my postcode for one listing ... and it seems to work. I'm hesitant to do it to all of them because I can just imagine it might cause even more problems. I am in an email exchange with Etsy support at the moment so will see if they can sort it out. Not holding my breath because they don't seem to understand that it's only a problem on the buyers' orange app. 

[ApogeeVintage]

@AnniebelloPaper the fact that they STILL don't get it isn't very encouraging! I've literally just had a phone call with Etsy support and had to reiterate the exact same thing - that it's specific to the buyer's app. Even beyond opening a ticket, sending screenshots and being told it has been escalated and they're on it, blah blah. 

[AnniebelloPaper]

@ApogeeVintage and you can bet if we were US sellers, it would have been sorted by now. It's not just us Aussies either. There have been German and Polish sellers with the same issue. 

[FunkyKoala]

@AnniebelloPaperThank you for keeping us up to date - I will keep following this thread until we get some answers. I really don't have time to create new shipping profiles etc for everything I sell.

[AnniebelloPaper]

@FunkyKoala I added some words to the description of all my physical listings, just saying my stuff ships from Perth and not the US. You can use the bulk editor on the manager pages for that.

I copied my existing shipping profile (I don't have a lot of variation in shipping) and added two zeros to the front of my postcode. I just added that to my cat lover notebook listing only. It seems to be showing as shipping from Australia at the moment on the app. I'm holding off doing any more.