Frustration of Finding Handmade Items

[OlderAndWiserVintage]

Venting: I find Etsy an utterly frustrating experience as a buyer. First there is the trying to sign in and waiting four hours for a sign-in code, but today it worked so here I am trying to find something on Etsy I can't find at TJ Maxx so I can use my gift certificate and get out. Finding a handmade jewelry box that wasn't handmade with slave labor in China is trying my patience. The search terms and exclusions that work on other sites do not work here. I am shown what Etsy wants to show me, not what I want to buy. After a long time looking I found four boxes I was interested in and marked them as favorites while I continued browsing, but the incessant popups warning me the item I have favorited was about to be snapped up were so irritating I can't stand searching for more, so I'll probably end up just getting some crap from China (Thanks for helping me know which items these are, AI descriptions) or spend my certificate on art supplies so I can get out of here and ask my sister-in-law to just write me a check later.

[CuriosityCabinet]

We used to be able to exclude items with "-" signs and use quotes to filter searches, we even had advanced search at one point years ago, but Etsy got rid of all those.  It can be very difficult to find what you are looking for now. Sometimes filtering by lowest or highest price, rather than relevancy helps a bit. But yes, search here sucks. Nobody at etsy cares what we say about it.

[SewInspiredByJapan]

@OlderAndWiserVintage 

This probably is not what you want to hear, but sorting by higher prices would probably get you true handmade items.  Ebay's search has gone batsh*t crazy too, and when I search for specific types of Japanese obis I get EVERY TYPE except the type I'm actually looking for.  This just started about 3 weeks ago.  Good luck