Reserve is killing my business

[#1]

Good evening,

I'll try to keep this short and to the point.

My shop sells greetings cards. 6x6" square folded card, so obviously we post them as letters via Royal Mail 1st Class, which is an untracked service.

Etsy placed a payment reserve on our account on the 20th May 2023, over a month ago.

The only way to get our funds is to provide tracking information. But how?

Signed for letters cost £2-3 and our product ranges from £3-4 so this is impossible. We have over 50,000 sales but are now going to be forced to close our shop unless given a solution.

We've survived over a month with the reserve but are now at breaking point where our bank balance has reached £0 and we're unable to cover our Royal Mail business account payments, so the account has been frozen. Not to mention as a corporation that is VAT registered, we have quarterly VAT bills and other tax affairs to take care of.

Is this a major oversight in Etsy's reserve system?

[PrimePrintsUK]

Thanks for letting us know, I have added a privacy policy and enabled the 14 day refund policy.

[theMugHermit]

Don't worry about your Royal Mail account being frozen. Contact them, or answer the phone and say that you are having difficulty paying your bill. You can pay it over instalments.

Start using Etsy labels and post everything on time! I don't believe that tracked services are necessary. As long as you use Etsy labels, they will be happy.

Answer your messages. Customers can be difficult to face when everything is in a bit of a mess.

The reserve will be lifted once you reach star seller status, you can qualify every month, but you need to avoid the negative feedback by getting stuck in.

Alternatives? Start listing on Amazon...it takes forever though. Open a new Etsy shop and start listing new products. The reserve will last three months, but at least your feedback rating should be better this time.

[MaggieandRose]

It isn’t the tracking that’s the problem, it’s that Etsy refuses to recognise Royal Mail tracking. I opened a second shop and sold a postcard to the US, on Royal Mail international tracked. It has been delivered, I have screenshots of the Royal Mail website to prove it. I only ever send international tracked. They still slapped a reserve on me. I am planning closing the new shop to avoid more money being wasted.
People jump all over me when I say the following solution, but it works- for UK sales type ‘not required’ in the tracking box. 

[MakeItPersonalCoShop]

I feel your pain with also the cost of living the money is needed even more 

what happened to supporting small businesses if a customer picks  standard shipping why are we getting penalized for that 

what happens to our bills staff wages etc come on etsy help us out