Etsy sellers are reporting more problems resulting from “the great bill charge of 2007” (see UEN’s coverage here and here), including double charges and overdraft fees.

Sellers should check their credit card/bank statement to make sure their Etsy bills were not charged twice (see forum threads here and here). If there are duplicate charges, email billing@etsy.com

Sellers should also check to make sure their Etsy account is not linked to a closed bank account/debit card, because this could result in massive overdraft fees (see forum thread here).

EDIT by Soap:
People are posting about replies they received from billing@etsy.com:

Missbluebirdandoscar says:
Well apparently admin doesn’t believe there is a problem, they emailed me back saying they only see one charge at their end. They tried to tell me that it was an authorization charge, which makes no sense because the first charge went through yesterday and today there is a second charge of the same amount.Why would there been an authorization charge after the first one was completed???? Arrghhhh…

[source]

and

SakinaNeedles says:
Billing told me that the problem was on the bank’s end, and I should talk to the bank. I called the bank, and it turned out Etsy sent through the authorization and the actual charge on two separate authorization numbers, which is why it showed up twice on my bank statement. The bank reversed the second set of charges and refunded the overdraft fees. But definately check your statements ASAP. With each month’s bill being charged separately, I got a $31 overdraft fee PER ETSY CHARGE. If the bank hadn’t reversed those I would be reeeeaaaally grumpy right now.

[source]

Read the rest of the thread - people are posting about what their banks and PayPal have told them.

EDIT by Soap : LATEST UPDATE

A couple days ago we began to collect unpaid bills from Etsy sellers. It had been several months since we ran auto-charges, owing to difficulties with our old merchant account. So, we finally got our new merchant setup and after a substantial amount of time testing everything, we began our bill collection.

As we collected bills, two issues came up:

1. Charges appeared twice on some people’s cards.
2. Your credit card company called you and asked about charges from Etsy made on your card, and if they were valid.

Let’s talk about each of these issues in turn.

1. Charges appearing twice

If you used a debit card (this included a PayPal card), the charges may have shown up twice. This is due to the way our new merchant provider processes debit card payments. They separate it into two halves: a request for funds and pulling the actual funds. Some banks show these as two separate transactions, deducting the amount twice (!) from your account. We’re working to figure out why on earth they did this.

We promise, we will not charge you twice. If we have to, we’ll walk over with cash in hand and pay you back.

2. A call from your credit card company

As we have just learned, if we attempt to run more than one charge on someone’s card in a single 24 hour span, the credit card company’s fraud alert system goes off. This means they call you and ask if the charges are OK to pay. Unfortunately they may have asked something like: “Did you make purchases with this card on Etsy yesterday?” And of course the charges on your card are not for purchases, but are the fees we charge for our service.

If you dispute the charge, it can end up in a chargeback, which is rather bad on our end. If your credit card company did call you, it would be a huge help if you could call them back and let them know that the charges are OK. (If you have any questions about the amounts, of course, please contact us first at billing@etsy.com.

What we are doing now

Because of the two issues, above, we have stopped running the auto-charge. We got about 1/2 the way through all sellers with unpaid bills before we stopped. If you look at your credit card statement and see no charges from Etsy, you were likely in the non-billed half.

It’s super important to us that we get this all sorted out, and every seller is treated fairly. We’ll get through this! We’re sorry for the confusion, and we now have a dedicated billing team to answer your questions. We’ll be providing phone support as well at (718) 855 7956. Please save phone calls for extra urgent support, because we only have 1 phone right now. We’ll be here from 10am - 6pm EST.

Love,
Etsy

ps. This blog post has been emailed to everyone whom we auto-billed.

(all bolding added by Soap)