High percentage of customers now messaging me with their gift note b/c not seeing gift message box

[MeetingPlaceCoffee]

About 50% of my customers are now messaging me with their gift message because they do not see the gift note option. I have found this happens for two reasons. One, they use apple pay, and even if you check the gift check box on the cart page, when you then click on the apple pay button NO gift message box appears. Also, the gift message box is now hard to find for other customers.

Anyone else having this problem? This really needs to get fixed before the holidays.

[SmudgePlant]

This happened to one of my customers and I know it has happened to at least one other Seller. I did a test, and, like your Buyer, there was no screen for the message after checking Mark as Gift. 

I chatted with Etsy, and she said she was able to get to the gift message screen in my shop. She even sent me a screenshot.  

I don't know if it's a test or a glitch.

[WaypostPaper]

Just chiming in to confirm you're not alone in experiencing this. I incorporate the gift message into my product, so typically at least half of my orders include a message. Over the past few weeks, I'm dealing with sometimes dozens of messages a day from people wanting to add a gift message but not able to find the option at checkout! I'm adding the messages to the order manually as a private note, which of course means it doesn't show up if I print a regular gift receipt, so I had to switch to printing the packing slips as order receipts.

Maybe not that big of a deal for a handful of orders but it's basically every other order right now. I'm perplexed as to why Etsy is seemingly hiding the gift message options - but then again, I stopped trying to make sense of Etsy a long time ago.

[PrimFun]

@MeetingPlaceCoffee  @WaypostPaper  The gift box on the order page is simply for the seller not to include pricing on an invoice.  The gift message and wrapping if enabled is on the next page once they have ordered.  I believe they now have to click on the dots by the shop name to get the boxes to open.

Oh and this is deliberate.  I doubt Etsy will fix unless buyers initiate complaints. 

[WaypostPaper]

Yes, I'm aware of the "this order is a gift" box at checkout and what it does to the invoice. The issue - as you noted - is that the gift message text box no longer pops up once that checkbox is selected. Similarly, my customers are having trouble figuring out how to add gift wrap.

It must have changed a few weeks ago because that's when the onslaught of messages about the issue started. Really frustrating when you're doing 100 orders a week but yeah, I don't expect Etsy to fix it since the sellers are the ones having to clean up the mess.

[ChaiDesignsStudio]

This happens to me constantly. The long and the short of it solution is to tell the customer to make the purchase as a guest, not from their account. As a guest they will always get the gift option box and the gift message box.