Customer not allowed to purchase without contacting the seller? Is this a bug?

[DigiHandmadeDesigns]

Hello, I am wondering if anyone else has had this happen or if I need to contact Etsy directly. A customer just reached out to me saying that when she tried to place an order Etsy would not let her and she kept getting a message that said "You need to contact the seller to ensure it can be processed". Um what does that mean???? I apologized for the inconvenience and ended up setting up a custom order for her to purchase which went through without any issues. I have never not once missed a shipping deadline, all of my orders have always been shipped on time with tracking and what exactly is Etsy expecting me to do, it is not like I can go into the customer's cart and confirm yes or no that it can be processed??  Has anyone else experienced this? 

~Maggie

[CuriousityShop]

I have never heard of this one. Probably have to ask Etsy directly.

[PillowDetails]

Looking at your most recently sold item - the Can Corso keychain, presumably - adding to cart shows nothing out of the ordinary.  It might help to ask the Buyer where they saw that - at what point during checkout?  Probably a glitch.

[DigiHandmadeDesigns]

I agree it must be a glitch! Thank you so much, the order was for Tassels, from my understanding, the message popped up right when she tried to place the order so I guess she was able to add to cart but not complete the checkout process without messaging me first. 

[DigiHandmadeDesigns]

Thanks, guys, hopefully this is just a one-time bug and not something that is happening without us knowing about it. I feel like that type of message would dissuade customers from purchasing and most customers would not want to reach out to the seller, to me it sounds a bit scammy. I am going to email Etsy just to make sure.  

[DigiHandmadeDesigns]

Well, the Etsy chat feature was useless and I cannot find an email for the correct support. Hopefully, it does not happen again though we would only know about it if the customer decides to reach out to us.  

[funkydreamsmosaics]

Was it an international order?  I'm just wondering if Poplar is prohibited somewhere??  That's a really wild guess.

[DigiHandmadeDesigns]

It was in the US and was for Tassels. I stopped shipping internationally a while ago due to the long shipping time and how unreliable it was. The order was for a large number of tassels but was way less than the quantity I have marked as available so that shouldn't have caused any issues, I get multi-quantity orders all of the time and have never been late shipping an order. 

Edit to add: I suppose I can see that message making sense if a shop constantly ships orders out late and misses processing deadlines but I have shipped every order within my processing timeframe and often early so that would not apply to my shop.  I am simply stumped on this one.

[funkydreamsmosaics]

@DigiHandmadeDesigns that's so weird!  I hope it really was just some sort of glitch.