International Buyers Paying Domestic Prices

[#1]

I have different domestic and international prices set up on multiple of my listings so I can provide free delivery. About a week ago, I noticed I had received two international orders where the buyer's had both paid the domestic price. This is a major issue for me as the domestic price doesn't even cover the cost of international postage let alone the cost of making the item and Etsy's fees. 

Only one of my listings seems to be affect as others with the same pricing are working as normal, not sure why this has happened and I don't just want to create a new listing as this item has previously sold as a best seller and has multiple reviews.

I contacted Etsy on the 24/h chat about this when I first noticed it and they said they would email me back in 24-48 hours. They did eventually email me back 4 days later (when the order was then already overdue) and said they would refer it to the engineering team. I replied asking what to do with the order as cancelling it could leave to a bad review (still have had no response 8 days later)

I had another incorrect order come in a few days later so went onto the 24/h chat again where I never got connected to a worker, another one came in today and I've currently been waiting on the 24/h chat (With a 1 min response time) for an hour, still not connected and I have refreshed it 3 times

Is anyone experiencing the same problem? I feel like cancelling all these orders is reducing the traffic to this listing too.

Thanks

[BlueLilyCrafts]

That sounds terrible for Canadian sellers, it's like you're paying Etsy for them to make you wait.

And for those of us with the domestic/international pricing problem, it's like we're paying Etsy to just give our products away.

[DaysofYoreTreasures]

@cindylouwho2 Well said. It is an insidious bug that most sellers would be unaware of until they are hit in the back pocket.

[MyQueerGifts]

I think we might have to do something on our own, I’m glad I made this post so we know how widespread this is. It doesn’t seem like Etsy is going to be fixing this anytime soon, if your willing to, I think we should all post a story or something to social media to see how many others this is effecting. If Etsy suddenly start to get hundreds of emails about the same bug hopefully they will have to fix it, I don’t have a large social following but I think we really should spread to word to as many others who may not use this community.

Thanks, do you have other platforms that you could communicate with other Etsy sellers such as a discord?

[BlueLilyCrafts]

That's not a bad idea. Since this problem only affects sellers outside of the US, we get treated as a minority when it comes to our issues so we'll need to draw some attention to it to get help.

I found this thread where these unfortunate sellers reported it over 3 months ago! https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Everywhere-else-price-keeps-changing-to-Domestic-pric...

People have been losing money since then. This should be treated as something more significant.

Maybe communicate with Etsy teams that are for international sellers and see if they have members who have this problem too.

[ImagesForCrafts]

Hi @MyQueerGifts, I totally agree and I am going to talk about this in my next YouTube video, I have almost 19,000 subscribers, mainly all crafters, so there will probably be quite a few etsy sellers amongst them. I always do a blog post with every video too so that will reach even more people. I have to do that anyway as I have  deactivated all my physical listings - so I need to explain to people why I’ve done it and how they can still get my products. It’s not a massive deal to me as etsy isn’t my only source of income but this is a disaster for people who rely on etsy to live and to pay employees. Etsy used to be an absolutely brilliant place to sell - what a shame it’s come to this.

[ImagesForCrafts]

Hi @BlueLilyCrafts, I agree, they are not prioritising us at all. I am sure I found a post somewhere about this from last January. There doesn’t seem to be much point in continuing to communicate with Etsy about it because regardless of what questions I ask, they ignore them and send me the standard response they have ben giving people for ages. If everyone that this is affecting simply refunds customers immediately (which is what I did with the two orders it affected), they might take it more seriously. I know this could eventually push shops down the rankings but we were losing money anyway. Most of my sales are in the USA and so I have deactivated all my physical listings because I couldn’t stand the hassle of selling on Etsy any more. Every time something in life becomes a big hassle, I take it as a sign to look for other ways to do it differently and better. Hopefully, we will all survive this - good luck everyone. 

[BlueLilyCrafts]

Seems there's a #KeepEtsyHuman social media campaign on right now, they are raising valid issues that affect us all but we will have to be careful that our concerns don't get drowned out if we try to raise this issue at the same time.

[abravenewdawn]

Thanks for sharing your experience @MyQueerGifts. I feel rest-assured that it wasn’t my own entry data problem. 

I’ve been affected by this bug a number of times. When I first faced with this issue, I contacted the Etsy team and was told that it was affected by the way I cloned my listing and was given a tutorial on how to create domestic & international pricing. Thinking that it was my mistake, I honoured the transaction and made a loss.

This happened again and again. I tried to contact the Etsy team on live chat but no one responded to me. I am at loss. Being much convinced that this is a platform issue, I decided to turned off this function.

Now a prospective international buyer, who has an item in his or her cart, got mad at me for the increase in price and labelled me as dishonest.

As a result of this bug, I suffer monetary and reputation loss. This is a very severe bug on a fundamental function. And, Etsy should have at least inform the sellers so we could avoid using this function.

Thank you for all for you for the sharing. Now that I know the cause  of this issue. I will avoid this function. 

Fingers crossed that this bug would be rectified soon! 

[Ilumdecor]

@abravenewdawn 

Deal with the exact same issues. very frustrated.

[DaysofYoreTreasures]

It seems to me that Etsy encouraged non-USA sellers to use their domestic vs global pricing tool, then left them in the dust when it stopped working a few months ago.

From when it was first introduced in October 2021, with the aim of helping non-USA sellers offer the over US$35 free shipping guarantee to their USA customers without unfairly charging their domestic customers extra. Now it’s possible for you to set one price for all of your domestic sales, and a different price for your international sales! This will give you the chance to grow your local business while expanding globally. Plus, with Domestic & global pricing you can offer free shipping.
https://community.etsy.com/t5/Announcements/Updated-7-18-Domestic-amp-global-pricing-is-here/m-p/135...

To when they told Canadian sellers to use the same tool in June 2022 to compensate for the removal of the sales tax tool. If you have a GST/HST number on file, Etsy WILL NOT collect and remit GST/HST from buyers in Canada for sales of goods. You should adjust your local prices to collect GST/HST as part of your profit and then remit to the CRA with your GST/HST filing. By adding a GST/HST ID to your Etsy account, you’re letting us know you’re responsible for handling your sales taxes. 
https://community.etsy.com/t5/Announcements/Updated-6-27-3-Important-Tax-Updates-for-Sellers-in-Cana...

What will it take for them to
1. Admit there is a bug
2. Fix the bug
and
3. Reimburse sellers who have lost revenue because of it?

[BlueLilyCrafts]

Yes, Etsy absolutely should take responsibility for this. They haven't even notified international sellers that there is a bug - people are only finding out by having it happen to them or by finding out from reading about it from other sellers like us.

On top of those two big points that you listed for why Etsy told international sellers to use the domestic/global pricing feature, we also have to use it to cover currency conversion fees.

[BlueLilyCrafts]

This issue is still happening and they're instead distracting us with a new orange bar on the homepage.

[WyldeWolfeCurios]

Yes, I have had two items purchases from USA customers who bought at the domestic UK price. I’ll make nothing on the sales at all!

[ImagesForCrafts]

Sorry to hear this happened to you WyldeWolfeCurios - I refunded mine and asked the customers to complain to Etsy. I know there is a risk of reputation damage for our shops with that strategy but I will not allow etsy to make money on a sale where I lose. The whole situation is crazy and I just don’t get why it is still happening after months and months of them knowing about it. 

[VibeEnvy]

I know you can change your country to see how things look as if you were a buyer in that country, are people able to make purchases this way and just put in their real address? People order for other people and use addresses that don't match their account or anything, is there something that stops someone from buying if they change their country to one they don't live in to see a lower price?

[ImagesForCrafts]

Good question VibeEnvy - sorry I don’t know the answer though. Maybe someone else will.

[BlueLilyCrafts]

Would love it if Etsy could give us some updates on this. It's frustrating to have to constantly check to see if our prices get changed every time something renews.

[Ilumdecor]

@VibeEnvyI believe most buyers would not even consider entering a different address to see prices unless they were also a seller on Etsy and understood the rules of the game.

[VibeEnvy]

Not every buyer is going to buy the same way, some are scammers, some are deal hunters, some are computer savvy, some are hackers, some are just downright fraudsters, some make up stories about relatives. Some are in groups and forums that specifically expose hacks and shopping secrets. My room mate was in a group for a long time that was only for glitches (item with a decimal error charging $0.10 for a $100 item for example) with literally thousands and thousands of people in it. There are groups on social sites and forums specifically for illegal life hacks which include scamming shopping sites and things like that. If there's a way to cheat the system, it's more likely buyers will find it because buyers are literally the ones buying, someone selling isn't likely to spend time trying to figure out how to scam themselves.

[TinselUnionDesignCo]

I had this happen last week, and just assumed I'd made a mistake somewhere. It was on a custom order, so I got in touch with the buyer, absolutely mortified, and explained that I would be issuing a partial refund. She thought I was charging more because it was a custom piece, but I would never ever do that without informing a buyer in advance of any pricing differences. So I'm afraid it made me appear dishonest, and I've been quite upset about it.

[Cordialiyours]

Hi, I have also recently had this issue and have conducted some investigation into it and believe that I may have identified the problem.

I first checked with a USA customer who let me know the price they were seeing for some of my listings, and found a number that were showing the UK domestic price instead of the international one.

I checked the listing using the new version editor and it clearly had the correct dual pricing. I then opened the listing using the old version and found that it had the same domestic price for both locations! 
I then changed the International price and re-saved the listing using the old version. I then asked the USA customer to check and now it correctly displayed the USA price. I repeated this on all the  listings that had the error and they now work properly.

It appears that the fault is with the new editor, it is not passing the global pricing correctly to the the Etsy platform.

The solution is to only use the old version editor until Etsy fix the problem.

I have passed all the details to the technical team who are investigating. I hope this may help other sellers. Alison

[VibeEnvy]

If there's EVER an option of using something new on etsy or an old version, ALWAYS use the old version until you have no other choice because nothing new on etsy ever works... ever. Old stuff usually isn't very good either, but at least the old stuff has already went through the being new and broken forever after going live phase.

[Ilumdecor]

This has happened to my shop over and over again! Recently, at least four items were sold at a lower price.

[BlueLilyCrafts]

It just happened to me again too, even though I keep checking my listings!

[Ilumdecor]

@Cordialiyours I've only been using the old version to edit lists lately, so I don't think this is an issue caused by the new version, at least not in my case.