We’ve reached out several times from this email about listings from your shop that weren’t in line with Etsy’s Creativity Standards. As a reminder, our policies for selling on Etsy help keep our marketplace a destination for buyers to connect with special items made, designed, handpicked, or sourced by creative sellers.
Unfortunately, it looks like your shop has had more policy violations—so after a careful review, your account has been permanently suspended.
Now we did get one or two emails, the problem we had was the items they removed were clearly 100% handmade, by us with our own hands and tools.
After consulting with my right hand woman, we found no way to argue the point. We are very busy right now with several different issues. We thought we would get back to it in the next week or two. The first warning only came in less than two weeks ago.
Anyone Else going through this?
She is looking at appealing it. The same message is on our Etsy dashboard so it is not spam or phishing.
…destination for buyers to connect with special items made, designed, handpicked, or sourced by creative sellers…
Snippet from the permanently suspended notice. Items we do not do struck out, though allowed.
I think I get your sarcasm. I actually support Etsy, and Amazon too, cracking down on sellers offshore that list mass market items.
Everything we on list(ed) on handmade is designed and made by hand with our tools in our studio. We do have some older listings that are art tools, and that is allowed.
We will appeal, though today she was heads down on some column (Greek Style) artwork we are creating for a regional customer that has paid us 10X or more this year what we have made on Etsy in 10 years.
And when we do, the first thing I do is cancel the ads. At this point Etsy is just one of our many channels. If they do not want us that is up to them.
We have not received any notices or emails from Etsy about policy violations.
I have not yet fixed any of our images to the square standard.
We also have 11 unshipped orders because buyers have not responded.
Oldest is from 2019.
I agree, and as @papy asked could it be an art (photo) image problem possibly.
She did take the time to see she could appeal, the first two warnings were clear, they would not let us appeal, they only said if we kept it up we would loose our “star” rating.
I have to be careful, as they have a non-disclosure in every email they send out.
The warning emails title;
We removed some of your listings that don’t meet Etsy’s Creativity Standards
A snippet from the email sent on Tuesday of this week and on Wednesday of last week.
These listings may have been reported to us or flagged by Etsy’s internal systems. This means they’re not active anymore and won’t be seen by buyers—and you can’t edit to relist them on Etsy. To see which listings we removed, check your inactive items.
Again, they add a non-disclosure demand at the end so I will not cut and paste everything.
Could be they were reported by a bad actor. I will make an attempt to list the items here without sounding like advertising those same items.
More in a bit, thanks all for your comments. I wonder if I am the first to be hit and others will follow?
Or not, we are very careful about those rules. No renderings, only images of the actual product, and never a placeholder.
All our video uploaded to Etsy are actual products that we made in the video. And we make the video in house.
I do expect, more likely than not the images are used on other channels. We have several brand websites, and list as many of you do, on other sales channels.
My prejudice is to believe that losing Etsy as a channel is not a major blow to your business.
My hope is that I am correct.
My brief sojourn selling on Etsy was the worst online marketplace experience I have had.
Friends and family who sell handmade items make a tokem effort on Etsy primary to provide an easy to find channel of communication to them, and Instagram has been replacing that channel.
I cannot say that their past or present staff engender competence.
I believe they call the area of Brooklyn that Etsy is in DUMBO for good reason.
I think this is the wake up call for ALL SellersAskSellers Sellers on Etsy.
Very possibly, though I generally tend toward to maxim to avoid attributing to malice what could simply be incompetence.
But…it is especially infuriating because I clearly see Alibaba and Temu images all over Etsy’s search.
ETA: For those not aware, this is a good recap of the possible issue, shared originally by @CastleofAhhh, though unfortunately the last update is from October:
I had two listings removed for what I believe to be photo issues. I appealed but it took so long that I deleted the listings and relisted them. Then they replied that it was an error and would reinstate my listings, but I had deleted them, so no 40 cents for me. This took maybe a month. They took and gave back my star seller rating that time.
The second time that one was removed, I appealed. I didn’t really care about that one. No threat to star seller rating that time. It was reinstated after a couple weeks, but in the meantime, it was expired. They told me I deleted this listing so they could not reinstate it, a lie, it was in my inactive listings, but expired. I had to pay to renew it, another 20 cents gone.
Many Etsy shops have been caught up in the AI bot and it doesn’t matter if the art and images are original or AI generated. The bot decides which listings to deactivate.
You are correct. It is a very small slice in the big pie we would not miss the revenue we get from Etsy at all.
What we would miss are the great customers that ask us questions. For some reason Etsy buyers feel comfortable asking, “can you do this?”
If we have we say yes, if we can we say yes, if we have not, we say "lets work together to develop it! I think we have had two “failures” they did not like the artwork, that out of many hundreds of requests.
One of our products is pet related, a milestone board for pets. A Etsy customer who was a vet asked us if we could modify it for their clinic. “Sure we said, we can even and the clinic name to the board for you!”
That one idea resulted in sales of 10’s of thousands of boards to Veterinarians throughout North America.
We summited an appeal following the guide they provided. This afternoon at 1:50 EST December 13th 2024. The three notices we received have come in over the last 5 days or so. The first two were warnings, “don’t do it again” the last was the one that I started this thread with.
It (the robot response to our appeal) indicated again that we were “Permanently Suspended” yet it also indicated that if we did not appeal in 6 months we would be “Permanently Suspended”. It also indicated they would get back to us in two weeks.
The two messages in bold above look the same to me. I guess one is “more” permanent than the other.
I will post the results and appeal we used here for others to follow, or not follow depending on how it turns out.
Yep. Over a year ago.
One of our 3 etsys was taken down.
Claiming some violation we never heard of
Appealed several times. No response.
Finally found a phone number …
Got a human who was little help.
Claimed the original dress was “copied” from one worn by a celebrity.
WE SOLD IT TO SAID CELEBRITY… ON THIS PLATFORM. CHECK THE ORDER. Claimed something was wrong. BUT…
They had no understanding… and to be patient.
I have less patience than ever these days so I let it go .
6 months later I get an email saying permanently suspended because we never appealed. Which we did 12 times
We have 2 accounts running there. Who knows when they’ll come for them.
Selling there many years…
Good luck.
I think they’re all kinds of mixed up there.
