Getting tired of Etsy disabeling legit products or changing store to vacation mode. Is it bots/AI?

[NewtsGames]

In the past couple of months I've become very frustrated with Etsy either putting my store into forced vacation mode or now they are slowly, one by one, turning off products (that we make) because Etsy says they are not "handmade". Since we've been selling for a few years with no issues, I'm guessing it has to do with the new bots or AI they implemented. The items are made by us on a variety of devices from UV and 3d printers, to hot stamp and standard printer machines. Yes, we may buy a blank tin and then print on it with our UV printer. Or we buy pieces of wood, cut them down, sand, stain and then print on them with a UV printer, but those are still made by us. And somehow we are being penalized? We only sell products that either we designed, make, personalize or are vintage.

When you send support a message, all you get is a generic reply that is probably from another bot telling you that you have broken one of an abundance of rules. None of which apply to the products. Again, I'm assuming they are using AI/bots. If it is a real person, then it is sad that they don't take the time to read the tickets and fix products their system messed up. Oh, and they take 7 days to reply to a ticket? The sad part then is it's a generic, tells you nothing reply!

I also tried to call the other day. While the support person was super nice, they too suggested that I just relist the item. I told them I will not and should not have to. Etsy needs to fix their mistakes and stop doing this to legit sellers.

Then to top it off, in the last couple of months views of products have tanked, and the search seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Which of course results in lower sales.

So why list legit products if Etsy is going to wrongfully put your store in vacation mode or turn off products that break no rules? Why pay their listing fee and then have to pay it again because they turned something off that did not break any rules?

Why am I posting this in the forum? Who knows? Here we are a week before Thanksgiving and Etsy is either playing stupid games or they are letting some rogue AI/Bot hurt sellers on their platform. It is very frustrating and, quite honestly, is making Etsy a very unreliable partner to sell products on. We were listing many of our new products just on Etsy, but now we've started making sure they are on our website and other platforms.

[dayspringcollectible]

Etys's bots take down millions of listings.  By Etsy's own figures, 95% of these are taken down wrongly.  Only 5% end up in removed listings.

[NewtsGames]

Does Etsy admit this some place on their website or in the forums? Or was it in an interview.  If everyone had to relist and pay an additional .20 cents to do it, that would be hundreds of thousands of fees that Etsy wrongly charged sellers.

[dayspringcollectible]

It was in their last transparency report.  As far as I've heard, when they take a listing down wrongly, they put it back up at their cost after the review...no relisting fees.  Out of 36 million listings reviewed, less than 2 million were removed from the site, just a shade over 5%.  95% of the flagged listings were taken down by bots, only 5% reported by the community.  So that means the bots deactivated tens of millions of listings wrongly.

[ArtDollsbyJD]

Chances are this is happening because of the use of the name.  It gets deactivated for using an iconic name for counterfeit but upon review by a human it is found that the trademark for the game is dead. 

You can ask Etsy about the listing.  Ifthey give the okay the listing is then placed back up.  No need for additional fee.

Calling or chat can be very limited.  They are usually staffed by people reading from a script and may not know everything of how Etsy works.

Now the buckeye card, did you check with the state office about using the image and Ohio flag?  I don't know if they would have a say in the use of.

You may want to change the license in such a way that no one can mistake it for a real license. 

If you have licenses from people like the photographer to use his works it would be a good idea to add that information.

Your about page is where you could show actually making the items.  It's one place to showcase this.   

[NewtsGames]

Just had another item deactivated by Etsy bots. So happy our products are not only listed on other platforms, but on our own website! We "were" making items to just sell on Etsy. Not any longer.

[NewtsGames]

Six weeks after I sent a trouble ticket to Etsy and right after the Christmas rush is over, Etsy decided to reactivate 2 out of 3 of my listings that were wrongfully shut down.  Yep, 5 days before Christmas, they turned back on 2 of my popular items.  No apology, no reason, other than to say...

"Occasionally listings that meet Etsy’s policies mistakenly get caught up within the systems that we have in place to protect the safety and security of the marketplace. While we’re unable to share further details, please know we are continuously working to improve the accuracy of these systems."

While I understand that a mistake may have happened, I do not understand taking 6 weeks to fix the error, and then they actually still have not fixed all of it because 1 of the items is still deactivated.

Etsy, please become homemade yourselves and throw the BOTS AND AI IN THE TRASH! At a minimum, answer trouble tickets in a timely, accurate, human manner.  It is kind of ironic that the company who wants us to sell handmade items, doesn't even have the courtesy to use REAL PEOPLE when something is screwed up.