Variation based pricing disappears from the existing listings and replaced with the lowest price

[Dexcy]

Variation based pricing disappears from the existing listings and replaced with the lowest price from original variations

First, I noticed that issue, when I created new listing by copying an existing one, just because I did it for many years and was only redacting the listing description and title, because the pricing should stay the same and it was based on the "size".

When I created that listing, I just decided to go and check if I need to improve title etc and notice, that there is only 1 price: the lowest price was listed in my original variations and the "price  vary" is turned off.

So, I originally thought that Etsy ppl again did something "NEW" and  it doesnt work for new listings when copying old ones...

And then, it turned out that even if I go and edit my listings, it turns off my "price vary" option and removes all my prices for variations

The weird thing, is that not all my listings affected by that bug...

Contacted support and no help.... I was told that if it worked before, then it should work now... which I already thought and thats why I did exactly the same as always do lol...

After not able to provide me with any answer, "tech" from the chat just said it will send it to the "team" and stopped responding...
and noone even contacted me...

Not sure if it's kind of shadow-ban or something... because additionally the are no sales for a week or so... and etsy not even showing my ads...

and, also, I just switched etsy plus, hopping they will give me sales, since they were limiting sales more and more lately, and were moving my listings further and further back to the search results...

So, the question:
1)Anyone else experiencing the same problem with their listings while editing and/or copying them to create a new listings?
2) if not, that probably means, that Etsy targets my shop specifically... So, did anyone experienced anything like this? Does it mean I need just close the shop and leave etsy?

PS:
1) Yes, all my Ads tags optimized, titles and descriptions as well. 

2) On etsy visibility tab it says I'm all good,

3) I'm a star seller

4) Contacted a support through chat a month ago to raise my concerns about limiting my shop in visibility and sales, while I see competitors stuck in the top of search results in all related and unrelated tags and it says they are getting tens of sales a day... and the "Rep" checked everything and said that there is no any restrictions on my account nor shop, but would they even tell you if those restrictions are not based on something else, not on the open to public policy...
5) After contacting that "Rep" a month ago or so, I created few new listings, optimized them as much as possible, used all the relative tags, new style for description and titles... new style for listing images... with no luck... Etsy not even showing my listings to anyone


So, the question is:

Is it a technical issue and it affects my shop's listings "technically" and affects my shop's exposure as well
or they just doing it on purpose to limit my sales and limit my abilities to operate the shop by creating all those troubles for me?

I'd really appreciate any advice from the real people, not the etsy's staff that pretends to be regular sellers here lol 


Thank you

[cindylouwho2]

There have been several reports of variations - both price & photo - being messed up. Check for the other threads. 

"they were limiting sales more and more lately, and were moving my listings further and further back to the search results..." the fewer sales you make, the further back you will move. That is how the algorithm works here. If your quality scores drop, your ranking will drop. Doing things to improve quality score and drive sales will help with that. 

[Dexcy]

"Doing things to improve quality score and drive sales will help with that. "

I'm sorry, but Everyone just repeating the same thing over and over, without any clear explanation of what it means and how exactly it should be done... I guess, noone even knows how to do it, because it all depends on etsy now... and on their willingness to allow sales to your shop, or ban it from sales whatever you do.. lol

How do you improve "quality score" and "drive more sales", if etsy limits sales to my shop lol...

Or you mean I need to pay for google ads separately (in addition to etsy offside ads and etsy standard ads), to bring more buyers to Etsy, so etsy would have more buyers and I should pay for it out of my pocket?

And as I mentioned before, I'm a star seller, with 5 star ratings  etc etc etc

Which, should mean a "great quality shop" by itself, am I wrong?

and most of the sales I'm receiving now are only from my repeating buyers..., because etsy doesnt allow sales to a new buyers for my shop, I guess... 

and it happened a while ago, when they just started limiting my sales whatever I do and even after me starting to use ads and increasing my ads budget...

Probably it was mistake, because for them it was a sign, that the more they limit my sales, the more I'll pay them for ads?

If you know how to "improve quality score and drive sales" I would really appreciate your advice...

and how do you even know your "quality score" and where you can see it?

Thanks much

[cindylouwho2]

@Dexcy Etsy explains its search and other algorithms here: https://www.etsy.com/legal/policy/search-advertisement-recommendation/899478564529
and also the seller handbook on search: https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/the-ultimate-guide-to-etsy-search/366469415790 

Driving sales means doing it yourself instead of just relying on Etsy algorithms - ads, your email list, social media etc. Every business should have a plan to bump sales up a bit temporarily, but it will be different for each. 

I agree that it's better to drive traffic off of Etsy where you pay less fees, but you are asking about improving your Etsy quality scores, so I am answering you. 

"Which, should mean a "great quality shop" by itself, am I wrong?" yeah, that is wrong. You could have Star Seller and still be missing some elements of both shop scores and individual listing scores. Star Seller is a very narrow evaluation. 

This is the Bugs forum, so no one can make suggestions about your shop, but if you want a critique, try the critique forum. There are probably some things you are missing (I know my shop is missing things; I just don't care about selling on Etsy that much any more LOL)

[BagmakerSupply]

@Dexcy: With the current state of Etsy organic search, it appears that a shop needs to continually drive their own traffic and sales so that the algorithm "remembers" that people want what that shop is selling.

While not meeting Etsy's standards (Customer Service, Star Seller, image quality, etc) may downgrade a listing's score (and therefore search visibility) it is hard to believe that how much that listing will contribute to Etsy's revenue is not a substantial factor in the search algorithm.

[Dexcy]

lol

[DragonflyDreams1]

@BagmakerSupply "With the current state of Etsy organic search, it appears that a shop needs to continually drive their own traffic and sales" This is incorrect. 

I feel it is hard for a new shop on Etsy to be seen. I feel a new shop needs to get some momentum in any manner they can.

Existing shops do not have to work very much at being seen. My social media is non-existent (my husband is a transplant patient, there is no way I have time for that). I have been on Etsy for a while, I throw a couple dollars here and there at Etsy ads. That's it. Would I like more sales, a bit...yes. I think most people will always say yes. 

I guess what I am trying to say is this. Have good products, reasonable prices, good customer service, ship on time....etc etc and a shop can grow organically by just doing what is right. The issue is that it might not grow as fast as the shop wants. I change some titles and tags - but my focus is making the best items I can and getting them out the door on time - that's it.

[DragonflyDreams1]

I have experienced this with a few of my listings. I can tell you without a doubt that it is nothing that I did. My impacted listings had previously sold. I was able to locate previous orders for these listings and the variation pricing was correct. I have recent orders that the variation pricing is just gone, reverting to the lowest priced variation.

For me, the first instance of variation pricing disappearing was April 9 for one listing, and April 14 for another. The April 14 listing was correct on the 9th, so there were two instances in my shop that removed variation pricing.

[GlassyFields]

I have a lot of listings with variations and some seem like they've been messed up from time to time, losing the photo links or worse.

And listings do seem to have a memory ... e.g. variations will show old prices and quantities that may or may not be correct.

I pay special attention to variations now. I check, publish. After publishing I open and check again.

I've also noticed that listings with the same price will sometimes show a lower price after the first save. 

Annoying, but just tells me that I have to be conscientious when creating or editing listings.

[DragonflyDreams1]

But I neither created or edited the listings during the time there were issues. They automatically renewed when sold. These are listings that I have had on Etsy for some time, with previous sales. I can tell the last time they sold at the correct variation prices and the first time they sold with no variation prices. I have to emphasize, I never touched the listings. Not a tag or title update. I do not double-check the prices that items sell for, I don't have that kind of time. It was only because of a post last week - that when I had a larger order sell for what seemed like a small amount, I noticed. And to top it off Etsy hit me with an offsite ad fee too for that specific order. 

I stayed up for hours last night rifling through my listings as fast as I could. I found additional listings that had not sold (they also had variation prices missing - changing to only the lowest cost being the for sale price)

[Dexcy]

Thank you for the information.

But why would you do all that?

Isnt it better just to go and find another place to sell your stuff instead of suffering all these unnecessary pain that etsy creates for the sellers and even intentionally limits their sales to force them to pay for etsy ads or else?

I just dont have that much time to mess with all those bugs that etsy creates, i dont know,  intentionally or not...
But I'm sure theyre trying to do something new(new rulles, new algoritm, new something for sellers 100%)  that will result in catastrophic consequences for many sellers... and, by some reason,  it never affects those that at the top of search results, from what I noticed... 

[cindylouwho2]

@Dexcy "Isnt it better just to go and find another place to sell your stuff instead of suffering all these unnecessary pain that etsy creates for the sellers and even intentionally limits their sales to force them to pay for etsy ads or else?" Most serious businesses have more than one revenue stream. While my biggest channel is my own website, I keep a small presence on Etsy because it is fairly easy money for me, all things considered, and because I can't sell to the UK on my website since I am not registered for UK VAT. It's unlikely most of what I sell here is going to go over well on eBay, and Amazon is even harder on its sellers in terms of poor support, holding money, etc. 

"by some reason,  it never affects those that at the top of search results, from what I noticed..." Items that sell well keep selling. Again, that's how the algorithms work here. 

[GlassyFields]

@Dexcy as you point out, going elsewhere to sell is an option but most of my listings work reliably most of the time and I suspect that all systems have nuances.

@DragonflyDreams1

I'm not sure what I'm seeing is exactly what you're seeing but here are a couple of things:

Sometimes when I'm editing a variation, I think information is missing ... it can sometimes seem to take a few seconds for the variation fields update. 

Sometimes I get the red pop-up when trying to publish the edited listing. I notified Etsy as instructed by the pop-up. The response said to try removing all the attributes and then publish. When I removed the attributes and the variations the listing published. I then readded all the information.

I suspect that changes to the listing template/code makes listings created with older listings templates unreliable and that variations are particularly susceptible. Refreshing these by removing and readding information seems to fix the listing.

[Amaradorn]

@Dexcy  just a couple of points:

I just switched etsy plus, hopping they will give me sales - subscribing to Etsy Plus will not directly increase your sales. Using Etsy ads might help but again there is no guarantee.

The issue which is making your listings show the wrong prices is not limiting your sales, in fact if all your prices appear cheaper than they should be, then theoretically that should have a neutral or positive effect on sales.

I doubt Etsy is targeting or suppressing your shop specifically, unless you have issues which would affect visibility such as listing removals for IP infringement or creativity standards violations.

[Dexcy]

I guess you didnt understand the actual issue...
Its not showing my prices differently...
its removing all my actual (original) prices from my listings when I try to edit them...
When I tried to contact hem by email they sent me an automatic email that, kind of " it looks like there is some kind of issue where you need to remove attributes from the listings blah blah blah and then do all the work again and then save it, but it may not work if you have imojis in your descriptions, or if you have upper case letters in the titles etc etc etc blah blah blah"

and they they added, that "they are not going to fix the problem", but "will make those error clearer for sellers" lol

absolute nonsense... so they say because you used capital letters or emojies etc, we will remove all your prices from variations "as a punishment"???

They still didnt respond, (excluding that automated email), and now they dont respond in the chat either...

So, not sure if you say they cant target my shop, but there is not much ppl experiencing the same issues... looks like some, only very small qty, of shops experiencing it, and who knows if those shops are targeted by etsy (for some reason) or not...

So, its not only me, of course... But my shop is one of few...

will see if they will fix it...
but as of now its still all the same

and there is no sales or visits to my shop for a week, and before that sales were down like 99%... and almost all my sales were from repeating buyers only...

and no, I dont have any IP infringement...

My shop is for custom made vinyl decals... where buyers select the font, color and provide their own text they want to use for their decals... 

And if you'll google it, you'll see that some shops experiencing the same... like sales stopped completely with no explanation... and then bunch of comments from Etsy sponsored account about shop quality, SEO optimization and tags with link to the same pages that Etsy staff always referring to (where you will find no data at all, except the "disclosure, that theyre manipulating with search results using their algorithm, and wont tell you anything about that process, since they  are keeping it in secret from sellers(I guess not from all the sellers, but from most of the sellers)"

And again, I still see my competitors, still getting sales... so its not "economy"

and they specifically pushing one particular shop to the top of all the search results for all the relater search terms...

[KaisClosetCo]

I’m Actually Dealing With The Exact Same Issue Right Now. Thought It Was Just A Glitch On My End, But Seeing Your Post Confirms It Might Be Bigger Than That. Every Time I Edit Or Sell An Existing Listing, The Variation Pricing Gets Wiped And Only The Lowest Price Shows. ‘Price Varies’ Gets Turned Off Automatically. Even Some Of My Active Listings Got Affected Just From Minor Edits, Some Were Affected By No Edits At All. I’ve Combed Through Over 300 Listings Having To Set Price Variations Again. Contacted Support Too And Got The Same Copy-Paste Responses. It’s Super Frustrating, Especially When Visibility And Sales Are Already Low. Definitely Doesn’t Feel Like A Coincidence. 

[UpcyclingWithEmma]

Exact same thing has happened to me, 30 listings with 20 different price variations on each listing, all completely wiped!! I only realised when someone ordered a large item from me for half the price it should have been. I had been selling a lot the past few weeks and since they got rid of my price variations and I had to redo them, I’ve sold nothing!!! Coincidence or more to it than that?? So frustrating as it took me hours to go through all my listings and redo the price for each one!

[funkydreamsmosaics]

I subscribe to Etsy Incidents and just received an email that they see this issue.  And they actually said what the issue was for once!

[ZehOriginalArt]

I got that email just now too.

[funkydreamsmosaics]

The link:

https://www.etsystatus.com/incidents/01JSPVW17XH5KJ7JTT25FQ3R3F

[YKmade]

Lately I have noticed many problems and I think these issues have been affecting my sales.

1. Some of the variations were suddenly unavailable. Such as quantities and prices when there are more than 1. It showed as available to buyers but once they tried to check out it would show as unavailable.
I had to go through most of my listings and fix this.

2. Photos of variations had disappeared.
This seems to happen regularly and I have to link the photos to variations again whenever I can.

3. When buyers try to filter ship from location it does not work.
eg. Put ship from filter as 'France'. The  message shows as ' Hmm. Something went wrong'.

I am really hoping all these issues will get solved. 

[Dexcy]

Hi, was you able to resolve it somehow?

I'm not sure if its the same problem, but when I try edit my listings the variations with prices disappear

and there is 0 sales since it started

[WorldOfWoodenbyAlp]

Hi,

For the last 2 weeks, on Fridays, the "Prices vary each dimensions" button has been deactivated in some of my listings even though I have not made any changes and customers can buy even the largest products at the lowest price. There is no problem on the listing homepage. The price range seems okay but when I enter the listing, I see that the "Prices vary each dimensions" button is active.

One of the customer is expecting me to process the order and will probably leave a low star review if I cancel it. I'm worried my store will be negatively affected.

I could not reach anyone from Etsy chat or the Help request. If an admin reads this, please contact me.

[BagmakerSupply]

@WorldOfWoodenbyAlp: Other threads about this https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Variation-based-pricing-disappears-from-the-existing-... https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Help-all-my-prices-were-changed/m-p/148161707#M915701 https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Many-of-my-variations-lost-their-pricing/m-p/14819324...

Just so you know, even if Etsy Support or the Help Pages sent you here this is a seller peer to peer forum, and should not be considered a way to contact Etsy, if that is your hope (although Etsy moderators do sometimes read and reply to posts).

[WorldOfWoodenbyAlp]

Thank you for your warning. I know this but I have tried every other way. There is another problem with the chat and it has become impossible to reach Etsy. I need a solution ASAP and need to reach a live person from Etsy. As a last resort I decided to try this place.