Hello everyone,
I want to share my extremely frustrating experience with Etsy's support system, hoping that someone here might have advice or has gone through something similar.
My account was initially suspended and then deleted because my tax and personal information supposedly could not be verified. After almost four weeks of unsuccessfully trying to get help from the support team, I turned to the forum. Thanks to the assistance of @thatregina, my account was eventually reinstated – thank you for that!
Unfortunately, the nightmare continued:
- Tax information re-verification: Despite uploading my tax documents twice, with a green checkmark confirming their acceptance, they were later deleted, and I was asked to re-upload them for a third time. My initial suspension had already been resolved because I entered this information correctly and it was validated. The constant deletion and repeated demands for re-verification are completely baffling.
- Sale with no notification: During this chaos, I made a sale but received no notification – neither via email nor through the app. I only discovered it seven days later by chance while checking my dashboard. I immediately prepared and shipped the order that same day, reaching out to the buyer to apologize – all due to an error entirely caused by Etsy.
- No support resolution: I contacted support about three urgent issues:
- Why do I have to repeatedly re-verify my tax information?
- Why did I not receive any sale notifications?
- What would happen to my seller rating due to the delayed shipping caused by this issue?
The chat support offered no answers to any of these questions but promised to escalate the case to “experts.” Knowing Etsy’s track record, I saved the entire chat transcript. One week later, I received a generic response suggesting I ensure Etsy emails are marked as “safe” – an absurd and unhelpful reply. My other inquiries were completely ignored.
Before going on vacation, I placed my shop in vacation mode. Upon my return, another shock awaited: My shop remained locked in vacation mode due to “missing” tax information. My most recent order was canceled, and the payment was refunded to the buyer – even though the item had already been delivered. This left me with a negative balance because Etsy arbitrarily refunded the money.
To make matters worse, I was unable to open a new case as my account was trapped in an endless loop between the German and English support pages, with no way to actually contact support. What kind of company treats its business partners this way – offering no means of communication and leaving them stuck in a loop?
I am deeply disheartened by these practices. What rights do we sellers have on Etsy? How can we run a business under these conditions? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading!
