It's a workaround and not a very satisfactory one but I've found that renewing items that have expired or sold out that I want to refresh either because I've retired the design or have re-done it with updated info, I have to publish it as it to make the changes stick. Then deactivate it, clear up the Etsy whoops stuff and activate it. And even then about 20% revert back to the original price. Annoying.
I plan on listing anyway so the 0.20 is moot but it's a real pin in the butt.
Also found that if you take an older listing and refresh and renew, it does not go to the "new items" sorting if that is what you use. I do since I've never understood taking the time to carefully arrange things. Buyers rarely enter through the front door. We sellers do : ). It sort of wants to go back to where it was when it was deactivated. I'll admit that I had deactivated a particular item that was too close to someone else's product so I reworked it into something else but used the old listing. I think that may be why.
I'm used to the new form but still don't like it. Too much scrolling. I used to love the feature where inputting tags, you could see the title without having to go all the way back down to the bottom. I am neurodivergent and while most things can make sense to me, that is one that does not. It's time suck.
Variations are a whole other can of squiggly worms. The single most used feature in my shop so I'm still wrapping my brain around why it's so difficult when before it was super easy to use.
And just as an aside to keep an eye on, I sell mostly personalized items and have a no return policy on them. Ready made or simply made to order, I have refund policies on those. I was recently freshening up my shop and categories by low performing category sections and EVERY single one of them had a 7 days return policy attached to it despite me having set it as no returns due to it's personalized nature.
I was only made aware of this as a client wanted to send back an order where she bought the wrong size. It was personalized with a few custom changes. I didn't accept the return and figured let the chips fall where they land but it got me into looking and low and behold, most of my personalized items ALSO had returns accepted. Which they are most certainly not. Unpersonalized, sure, there is no reason to not accept returns and I do, though I've never had one.
The new listing form is a head scratcher. It's not improved, but other than the weird set up for variations, that I use a lot of, and the strange back and forth to get to certain sections, it's serviceable. Mostly.
I've rolled with a lot of changes since I started selling online when AOL was the only game in town so I've weathered many changes across the internet as it grew up but those changes/challenges at Etsy are so frequent it's like a merry go round!
I suspect we'll all (grudgingly) get used to it like we did the last time they revamped. At the very least, it's not several pages long so that a check in the plus column.
Seems it is much more of a hassle for vintage sellers whose packages vary in size and weight. I use shipping profiles since I've been doing this long enough to know where I may have a bit left over for self-insurance or have to kick in a bit because the order is larger than usual. It averages out.
And finally, my biggest gripe. New listings aren't shown right away. It could take anywhere from 15 min to hours. I used to be able to list something, it'd show right away and typically got a sale fairly quickly on same. Not so anymore.
Wondering if this is their way of scouring the millions of items listed for infractions and stopping them before they pass go. Just a tin-foil theory.
That was a lot of words to suggest activating the listing you are working on, deactivate it quickly, finish what you started and then publish. : )
Workarounds suck lemons but that's the name of the Etsy game, they play and we scramble to adjust.
Until they change it all again!
