I am a new seller, and I am having similar issues. In August I discovered that customers could not make purchases because "all payment methods for this shop are temporarily unavailable". It took me a month of working through Etsy Support to get to a root cause (a glitch on their end). In September, Etsy let me know that "our engineering partners are aware....we don't have a time frame when this issue will be resolved". It is now November. I plan to close my shop, as it is useless if no one can make payments. Some things I have learned through the process:
1. Once Etsy signs off in the customer service chat window, it will be frozen until the issue is resolved. You can continue typing, but there will be no answer. At that point, you will need to switch to email support.
2. Email customer service begins with bots. You need to reply that the canned response has not addressed your issue and eventually you will be contacted, via email, by an actual customer support person. I have been told (and it seems to be true) that every time you respond to the thread, you go to the back of the line. SO - don't keep emailing asking for updates. Wait for a response from Etsy and then reply to that. This does mean that response times will be days to weeks and so you will be dealing with a new customer support person each time.
3. There is no way for you to contact tech support directly. You will only ever be in touch with customer support. So each time you get a new customer support contact, you may need to refresh them on the situation - that it is actually a TECHNICAL issue on Etsy's end. Not something that you can act on yourself.
4. As part of troubleshooting the problem, I had a relative try to make a purchase and then had them put in a request to customer support. I learned that Etsy's response times to buyers are faster. Also, when it became apparent that the issue was not a simple one that could be solved by the buyer or the shop, Etsy did a helpful little search and shared links to similar products in different shops, so that the customer could buy something. Just not from me.
My conclusion is that a certain number of new sellers, such as ourselves, are caught up in this glitch....but there are not enough of us for this to be a high priority for Etsy to fix. Presumably they have enough sellers and feel they can afford to loose us. Also, they have no problem in getting money FROM me. They have successfully obtained my shop opening fee and my listing fees, so no problems on their end.
I'm sorry I don't have more positive information to share... I have currently opened a new support request (they closed the old one once they identified that my issue is a known problem) and I am asking for an update on timing. I am still at the "talk to the bot" stage, so it may be a few more weeks before I get to talk to an actual customer service representative....
