Nothing in Particular Thread

[#1]

It seems like there should be a single thread where team members could just gather and catch up with eachother about nothing in particular.  It's nice to have other threads to discuss a particular topic, but would also be nice to have a thread where you could go to see who's around at that moment.

You know, like a never-ending, continuously running thread.

Thoughts?

[vlmkpyae]

winner of the fora today. '

by SmudgePlant

Community Maker

23m ago

Review unto others as you would have them review unto you. '

[SewNSewSister]

A big ol AMEN!

[psych62]

Sil, I don't get it. If I am disappointed by my item, aren't I entitled to be critical? 

[vlmkpyae]

in a way. but it is better to convo the seller first, then post a complaint if the seller is rude or does not reply.

metrics are crucial to sellers. even a 4 star can knock a perfect rating. i learned all this 20 years ago on ebay.  a good seller will do all they can to make a buyer happy. exchange a wrong size/color, try to hunt down a missing package, refund for undisclosed damage, etc.

this is very different than amazon which is mostly selling mass produced goods not ooak vintage or handmade very often.

so what smudgy was saying was leave the sort of feedback that you would want left for you if you were the seller.

i will neg sellers who are really rude and unhelpful. i will tell better sellers that in all honesty i can't leave a 5 star and why. and sometimes i just don't leave anything. with one seller we agreed to pretend a sale had never happened. she could not fix things and i gifted the item to a neighbor. that got no feedback. neighbor liked it.

so the idea is always at least try to talk to the seller first. if you don't get any good response then go ahead and leave the feedback.

i'm speaking as a friend to sellers on several platforms for 2 decades so i know in great detail what they go through. i think you and i may be the only two on this team who are not sellers.  they don't allow buyers on teams anymore.  i don't like it but that was what they did.

did any of my rambling make sense?

[SewNSewSister]

@vlmkpyae 

On behalf of the multitude of ooak sellers here I thank you. Every word you said is true. It's not just the kindness of a buyer...it is the buyer understanding of a situation that sometimes a seller maybe has no control over.

If a seller really cares about being fair and wants to remedy a situation they will go to great lengths to help a buyer...and not just because of the fear of a bad review, but because they truly believe in being fair. 

So before you give us 4 stars or less please let us try and help you. And please remember...we are buyers also.

On a more personal note; Sill is the epitome of how a buyer should react when things don't go as they should. At least give the seller a chance to make things right.

Hope that makes things a little clearer Psych. 

[vlmkpyae]

thanks, mary. i try. i credit my late cajun grandfather, who was the coffee plant manager for s & w  fine foods in the 60's until 1974. i guess i grew up knowing management dos and don't and that contributes to my frustration as big corps today.  grandpa believed a man is only as good as his handshake and his word was his bond.  i miss him.

[SewNSewSister]

Sill you were truly blessed having a grandfather that taught you his admirable and humane traits. Blessings.

[vlmkpyae]

mary, he was raised by a mama, anna alina, who set a place at the table every night for a passerby who might wander through hungry. they were very poor, a warden and wife with 14 children, 2 lost to the spanish flu. grandpa was child number 7 in 1912.  he tried to save his baby sister in 1918, but couldn't.she died in his arms. he had to be homeschooled for 2 years, age 7 to 9, went to lsu at 17 as a result.

i suspect i replaced that baby to him so many years later.

i have never mentally reconciled the modern world to how i was raised...

[psych62]

Yes, what you say (Sil and Mary) makes sense. 

[vlmkpyae]

i'm glad.

[Lionfishvintage]

I'm a buyer here also. I've had a couple disappointing transactions with sellers .

I don't leave bad reviews. I could but i don't . I either never buy from them again or message them personally. 

[vlmkpyae]

lion, i have left a few, but only after actual convo battles with sellers where i tried and tried and tried for days...

and i showed those to etsy chat... they were shocked.

[vlmkpyae]

psa, rates go up oct. 2nd. ; ( 

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2022/0810-usps-announces-proposed-temporary-rate-a...

warn your buyers now...

[SewNSewSister]

Thanks for the heads up Sill. I eat more than half the postage when I mail my orders (truth). I only include HALF the postage in my pricing. This just bites the big one! I'm so tired of the po's reasons behind every single price increase. More than a little p.o.'d now.

[Abbeyoaks]

If you use Pirate Ship they are only raising some prices for the holiday rate

https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/6514432-usps-temporary-rate-increase-for-the-2022-holiday...

[SewNSewSister]

Thanks so much Abbeyoaks. I will check them out tomorrow. Hugs to you girl.

[Lionfishvintage]

LOVE Pirate Ship! I refuse to use Etsy .

[SewNSewSister]

E gets enough of my money (and I really mean that). I'd rather pay the higher postage. But I am going to check out Pirate Ship. Hugs

[GielDesigns]

@SewNSewSister 

Just chiming in to agree with @Lionfishvintage . I use Pirate Ship for nearly all my labels, both business and personal. They're wonderful and their customer service is great. The only time I use E is when I have to edit a buyer's address, but that rarely happens.

[Lionfishvintage]

@SewNSewSister  I'd heard about pirate ship for a a couple yrs before i finally decided to start an account and so glad I did.

There is NO FEE to use them. They have some kind of special deal with USPS and UPS and it's cheaper than the regular

usps rates. Their customer service is awesome.

It's all by online chat but it's not robotic. You chat with a real person.

[Abbeyoaks]

Their UPS rates are amazing! I had set up an account with UPS and my discount comes no where near theirs.

[vlmkpyae]

so royal mail has delays but not international. my brighton seller mailed yesterday and it has already cleared uk customs! but her domestic deliveries are hit and miss. etsy uk sellers say rm is processing current mail and then tackling the strike caused backlog later. how lovely. so she can get a package mailed days ago but one mailed aug. 29 is still stuck somewhere, 2 hours away from her... it could walk there faster!

[vlmkpyae]

exchange rates fluctuation question. ok, the pound and euro are rising, good for them. but i am watching listings in the uk/denmark/holland/germany/france change price sometimes daily, as well as shipping rates. yesterday i saw one change 3 times in one day! now i know the sellers are not sitting there plotting this. how does it work?

my seller wanted 46 pounds for a listing. but in the breakdown etsy put it at 49 pounds and change and she did not do that. i ended up at the end having to pay over 70 usd when i had calculated lower by using the online exchange converter tools that update constantly.

what on earth is etsy doing?

• Item Total $55.81
• Shipping $10.01
• Sales Tax $4.61
•  
• Order Total $70.43

can anybody explain it? when i checked out the pound was 1.15 to usd right then. it is 1.17 today and prices are even higher, of course.  our calif  state tax is 8.5 percent.  how did her 46 pounds become more to me? she did not do this. we've been in convos for weeks over everything from items to the queen. she put in 46 pounds. sigh.

[vlmkpyae]

why are photos not uploading to feedbacks?

[vlmkpyae]

this is really upsetting because i take pics for feedbacks and to have them not show up is confusing.

would somebody ask about this on the fora? pc, windows, firefox. can see pics just mine stopped uploading to feedbacks yesterday.