Bug - Etsy Deactivated My Listings - AGAIN

[thecottageneedle]

Etsy has today deactivated over 10 of my listings today for no apparent reason...the listings range from patterns to notions. The items are not prohibited, copyrighted, etc....they are cross stitch supplies. The only common thing I can see between the listings is that they may have the words "needle", "mushrooms", "God", "Christmas", etc. in the titles or descriptions. Some of the listings I can't figure out if there is a word that is flagging these possibly for deactivation

Today, however...Etsy now deactivates the listing, refunds the listing fee of .20/each and does not reactivate the listing. I am losing sales on these items even though they DO NOT violate the Intellectual Property and Prohibited Items Policies. Etsy...Any suggestions on how I can PERMANENTLY resolve this issue? With over 2,000 items in my shop I don't have the time to continually make sure they are all listed at any given time. 

I have had with this type of issue ever since I opened my shop 12 years ago with several words including "Havana (this is a color of embroidery floss)" and "Confederate Gray (this is also a color of embroidery floss)" and usually the issue is resolved within hours. At the holidays in 2021 I even had my entire shop "deindexed" off and on for the entire month of November and December...I lost thousands of dollars of income. I have opened tickets every time this has happened and I can't continue to spend so much time "guarding" my listings from deactivation.

Thank you!

[PrimFun]

The bots have been designed for widespread.

You should understand the Havana  and  Confederate gray and use brown or gray unless you want constant takedown.  And being deindexed can happen to anyone.  It's not personal.  It's computer driven.

As to the rest you will need to discuss the issue with Etsy either via email or ask for a phone call.  We are only fellow sellers here and can do nothing about the bots.

It can't be permanently resolved as long as Etsy programs the bots a certain way.  

It's just a nuisance you need to deal with.  (and others have to deal with.  Anyone can have it happen to them)

[SugarTaffySoap]

@thecottageneedle  What a bummer. Waste of time right?  Your options are to leave the platform and sell elsewhere or stay and deal with the automated system.  Unfortunately the system does make errors but a human reviews the error to see if it should be reactivated. If you believe it is the colors then you can create a new listing omitting the word or words (color) that triggered the deactivation.  It's not the best solution since you'll lose all your history, etc. on that listing but it's better than losing money/sales. And if Etsy reactivates the old listing then you'll just have two listings of the same thing. I would only do this if that items sells consistently. You should review all of your listings and make the necessary changes so this doesn't keep happening to you. 

Since we can't see your deactivated listings it's up to you to figure it out or if you can give us more info we may be able to help you further.  Let us know.

[BagmakerSupply]

@thecottageneedle: It is almost impossible to know for sure why any listing was deactivated. The best we can do is speculate based on reports (amber and ivory come to mind) and make educated guesses. Since Etsy is now also factoring descriptions in search, they along with titles, tags, and materials (and possibly even alt tags if you are using them) are all probably being checked. And the bots are also "reading" images.

We also don't know what other factors are used in the calculation, perhaps age of shop, shop sales history, and / or shop's quality rating, etc. Something like: all listings with the word "aardvark" will be deactivated but only if the store is less than 90 days old. Makes it very hard to determine the real cause(s) for specific listing deactivations.