Archive for Miscellaneous
September 29, 2008 at 3:40 am · Filed under Events, Miscellaneous · By JB
On Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 2pm EDT, Etsy will have representatives from the United States Postal Service (USPS) join then in a seminar to answer questions about holiday shipping options.
Some of the areas they will cover:
Time saving techniques
Overnight and expedited shipping options
How to save on international shipping online
Where to order eco-friendly boxes
How to print postage online
Walk through the USPS shipping assistant product
The seminar will be conducted via an off-etsy web-based conferencing site, meetingplace.net. It won’t be in the virtual labs. The conference has a capacity of 100 people. If you want to participate, register at shippingrsvp@etsy.com. Etsy will then send a confirmation to the first 100 emails and send their regrets to the rest. If you aren’t included in the first session, don’t worry, USPS has offered to conduct an additional seminar (date TBD).
Please see this Storque article for more details.
September 11, 2008 at 2:44 pm · Filed under Listings, Miscellaneous, Site Terms, Site Use · By GreenMamba
Today admin Matt, together with the Community and Customer Care Teams published an article in the Storque addressing the very hot topic of resellers on Etsy. It outlines the company’s plan for combatting the influx of infringing shops and goods, which will focus on the point-of-entry - or shop set-up - stage.
Dear Etsians,
With the exception of properly tagged commercial supplies and vintage, Etsy does not permit the reselling of items not made by the seller (see the DO’s and DON’Ts on Selling). We take this rule very seriously, and we share your frustrations when we see resellers intent on listing here. We know that this has been a growing concern of late, and we are addressing it as such.
So, what are we doing?
Creating Measures at the Time of Shop Creation and Product Listing
To a large extent, we created this issue for ourselves by defining in great detail what is and is not permitted for sale on the site, but at the same time establishing few, if any, barriers to entry to setting up a shop on Etsy (simply put a credit card on file). There is no doubt that more emphasis needs to be placed at the first point of contact with new sellers. Our focus must be on keeping these products from ever reaching the site. To this end, we have created an internal team that is focusing on developing and building these safeguards, as well as clarifying and highlighting our policies to new sellers who very well may just be confused. We have been following the many good ideas that have been raised in the forums and sent to community@etsy.com, and we are including them in our planning. We appreciate your input, and ask that you continue to share with us.
This will take some time. So…
In The Mean Time
We have also more than doubled the number of our employees who are trained to properly investigate and remove those in violation. The expanded team is already at work. Furthermore, we have taken steps to make sure that banned resellers are blocked from creating new accounts.
Flagging:
A far more robust flagging system is also already underway and will be implemented in the weeks to come. We are confident that it will allow us to handle flagged items and moderation more quickly and succinctly.
We do ask that you do not use the forums as a place to call out members as resellers (see the Community DO’s and DON’Ts). Oftentimes, these individuals are simply confused. Etsy admin need to treat each and every case (which often involve both buyers and sellers) as a private matter. Furthermore, many cases are not nearly as cut and dry as they may seem at first glance. This sometimes means that shops will not always be removed as quickly as we all would like.
Please continue to flag items that you feel do not belong on Etsy. We do fully investigate every flag, and this takes some time. I know this can be frustrating when it seems that there is inaction on the part of our Content Team, but we assure you that flagging does work. Can it be improved? Yes. Are we improving? Yes.
All of these steps are just the beginning. We will continue to work tirelessly to maintain the integrity of our marketplace. Tomorrow September 12, the Chatt with Matt will be on this subject. Please join us in the Treehouse room of the Virtual Labs at 1pm Eastern time. In anticipation of this discussion, we have closed commenting on this article so we can follow all your comments and suggestions in this forum thread
September 3, 2008 at 8:45 pm · Filed under Categories, Forums, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
A plea from a frustrated polymer clay artist brought a lightning fast admin response and resulted in a new sub-subcategory under Supplies. See this thread for details.
Editorial comment follows:
I’m going to take this opportunity to ‘call out’ admin HeyMichelle. She entered the fora this evening and has been super-busy answering questions and moving relevant threads into Ideas from other sections, to give them the exposure they deserve.
So, !Kudos Michelle! for a job very, very well done! Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and are much appreciated!
August 19, 2008 at 4:13 pm · Filed under Etsy Communications, Miscellaneous · By JB
In this forum thread stellaloella says:
Hi there–
Some of our sellers will be receiving letters like this from a third-party firm that is helping Etsy. We are performing a standard internal audit to be sure our records are accurate. Nothing to worry about and definitely legit!
If you have concerns or questions, please email support [!at] etsy.com.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Posted at 3:44 pm, August 19 2008 EST
The thread was started by a seller who received an email claiming to be from Etsy’s law firm, but not sent from an Etsy address, and the email contained an attachment. Etsy had not announced anything about the audit before it started. The recipient, and most users who replied, thought this sounded like a phishing attempt. (we are always told never to open attachments from people we don’t know)
But Etsy now says the emails are legitimate and safe.
Stella explains further here
stellaloella says:
The information requested is very basic. The letter just asks for a seller to confirm their balance was a certain amount (contained in the letter) on a certain date, to verify that it matches our internal records.
I will check with the rest of the team to see if there is a way we can get more info out about this to those who will receive letters.
Posted at 3:54 pm, August 19 2008 EST
and here:
stellaloella says:
I don’t know all the details of this process. Our in-house business team is coordinating with a third-party accounting firm. The outside accounting firm is sending the letters.
As I said, we will try to get more information to those who need it. In the meantime, if you receive a letter and have questions, please contact Etsy Support. Thank you.
Posted at 3:59 pm, August 19 2008 EST
and here
stellaloella says:
Yes, Dingo is exactly right (on page 10).
And our hope was to provide a way for members to verify this was a legitimate inquiry and understand that this is about helping Etsy *before* the letters went out, so members could verify.
We are communicating with the third-party firm to get a clearer picture of the current situation regarding when and how the letters were sent.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Posted at 4:08 pm, August 19 2008 EST
Marymary adds this
marymary says:
Hey guys,
Just to help clarify a couple questions, you are not obligated in any way to open or answer the email if you received one. While we encourage you to do so, there is no obligation.
Additionally, if you did not receive this email already, you most likely will not be receiving one. As Lauren said, we are in contact with the third party firm to confirm that the sampling of emails have all been sent.
We’d like to apologize if this has caused any of you any inconvenience or confusion and will continue to keep you updated.
Posted at 4:15 pm, August 19 2008 ES
Matt has added this comment:
matt says:
Dear Friends,
We are indeed in the process of undergoing our first independent audit. We are contractually obligated by our financiers to have independent audits performed each year. We do these to prove that our accounting practices are accurate and valid. Just to clarify, this is in no way to related to any acquisition of or by Etsy.
The facts: Less than 50 randomly-selected members of our selling community were contacted by Etsy’s independent auditing firm via email and, though they might not yet have received the letter, via USPS. The email and address information of these sellers was used only in connection with our obligatory financial audit, the auditors will not store or retain any personally identifying information. They were only seeking independent verification of the fees the sellers owed Etsy as of December 2007. This is a standard and common feature of the audit process.
Everyone selected has already been contacted, and no additional members will be contacted.
Furthermore, we have now reached out to these sellers to confirm the validity of the emails they received from the auditing firm.
If you received an email from an auditing firm, but not a secondary email from us, please email me directly at matt [!at] etsy.com.
Just to clarify, those who receive the email/letter are under no obligation to respond. At no point will you be asked for credit card, password, or other sensitive personal information. If you receive something that seems suspicious, please contact abuse [!at] etsy.com.
I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
Thanks, Matt
Posted at 7:10 pm, August 19 2008 EST
August 14, 2008 at 10:44 am · Filed under Listings, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
In this Storque article, and this companion forum thread, Etsy announces a tiny change to the left sidebar menu in Your Etsy > > Items:
Dear Sellers,
We wanted to inform you of a text change you will find in Your Etsy. The text link, Expiration Dates, has been changed to Renew Items. The line of text highlighted below now reads Renew Items:
“Renewing” has become the common parlance among sellers. It became clear to us that “Expiration dates” line of text was not catching the seller’s eye. The text change should make the feature more user-friendly for sellers and more obvious to new sellers.
No other changes in functionality, pages, or text have taken place and you will still find all of the same information on the newly named Renew Items page. Looking for your upcoming expiration dates for your listed items? They will still be right there where they have always been, just with a new name.
August 2, 2008 at 11:38 pm · Filed under Chat, Down Time, Features, Miscellaneous, Treasury · By GreenMamba
In this Storque article, jared announces another Etsy server upgrade, this time for the Treasury, Chat and Virtual Labs.
Good news! The Treasury, Chat Rooms, and Virtual Labs are getting a significant server upgrade. The change is being made to address a number of key performance issues caused by record high usage. If the old server was a Honda Insight, the new server is a Tesla Roadster. Yes, it’s quite fast.
In order to make the change, we are temporarily suspending the creation of new Treasury lists. This will allow all the current lists to naturally expire in about three days. After all lists have expired, the server change will take place. The change itself will only take a few moments. If all is successful, the creation of new Treasury lists will once again be enabled, and we can all enjoy the performance boost.
With the current expiration schedule, the server change is looking like it will take place early Sunday morning, August 3rd. The exact time may change.
The Chat Rooms and Virtual Labs will also be moved to the new server at the same time as the Treasury. Both applications will experience about 60 seconds of downtime. All user created Chat Rooms will need to be recreated.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Find the official Etsy companion thread here.
July 23, 2008 at 5:17 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous, Site Maintenance · By GreenMamba
Here’s the official Storque announcement:
Dear Etsians,
Etsy will be conducting site maintenance at 2am EDT (e.g. early Friday morning eastern time U.S.), July 25, 2008.
We are not anticipating any issues — in fact, we hope you will not notice the change at all — but we want to give members a heads up. Should you experience issues and are unable to post in the forums, please email support [!at] etsy.com.
Thank you for your patience while we continue to improve the site!
July 18, 2008 at 12:44 pm · Filed under Bugs, Convos, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
Although there’s no official announcement in either the Etsy fora or the Storque, members have verified that the e-mail auto-reply system is finally up and running. Now, when members attempt to reply to a convo through the duplicate e-mail, they will get a warning message via immediate auto-reply.
Thanks go out to dottyral for the heads-up and for providing the content of the auto-reply message:
dottyral says:
This is fabulous! Thank you admin!
I like that it explains just how to reply. This is the auto reply I received right away…
__________________________
Oops! You tried to reply to an Etsy conversation via email.
To reply you’ll need to go to Etsy, login and click Conversations (in the upper right).
The message you sent was *not received* by the person you tried to send it to.
Thanks!
Etsy
Quoted from this thread.
July 14, 2008 at 3:42 pm · Filed under Features, Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
In this Etsy forum thread admin marymary introduces the latest new feature.
marymary says:
We are pleased to announce the addition of an Invite a Friend feature to Etsy. Registered Etsy members can now send an email to a friend or contact, inviting them to check out Etsy. Eventually, this new feature will tie into a referral program. For now, please help us by telling all your friends about Etsy in a quick and easy way and watch the number of referrals that have become registered Etsy members because of you grow straight from Your Etsy!
You may have noticed a few changes to the look of the top right of your Etsy screen! We have added an additional text link between Help and Logout called Invite.
Once you select the Invite text link, you will directed to the main Invite a Friend feature where you can enter in up to 3 unique email address at one time.
You might also notice some changes to the Your Etsy page on the left hand side bar. You now have an addtional heading in Your Etsy called Promote which houses the following shop administrative features: referrals, showcase, and Etsy mini.
When you select the referrals text link, you will be directed to a page that looks like this where you can see how many registered users you’ve helped bring to Etsy since the launch of this new feature.
FAQ:
Q. What if I enter in the Wrong email address?
A. You will receive a confirmation screen alerting you to the exact email addresses you typed in so you can resend the invite if you typed in the wrong address.
Q. Can I invite more than 3 friends?
A. Sure! Invite as many friends as you like; however, you will only be able to enter in 3 unique addresses at one time.
Q. What if I forgot if I sent an invite to an email address and type it in again?
A. No worries, Etsy will remember which email addresses you have already sent invites for and will remind you that an invite has already been sent if you type in a duplicate at any point.
Q. Can I enter in my own message to my friends?
A. Yes! There is a space for you to enter in your own unique message to your friends or to just go with the preset message from Etsy.
Q. Will my referrals be kept track of?
A. Yes! We will be keeping track of all the new registered members that sign up for Etsy from your invites starting from the launch of this feature. You can even watch the number grow from the new referrals section of Your Etsy.
Q. What happened to all of my previous referrals; weren’t you keeping track of those?
A. All referrals will start fresh with the implementation of this new feature. Unfortunately, we were not able to recover and transfer previous referrals into this new system. We appreciate all the help you have sent our way thus far and hope you will continue to refer your friends to Etsy moving forward.
Please see the official announcement about this new feature in the Storque where you can see some screen shots of how it looks: http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/etsyNews/article/tech-updates-invite-a-friend/2178/
We hope you enjoy this new addition and that is makes spreading the word about Etsy a little easier.
Posted at 3:22 pm, July 14 2008 EST
The Storque article referenced above has graphics to demonstrate how this feature works and looks.
UPDATE by GreenMamba 7.14.08
Inputting a personal message is not available at this time. marymary corrects herself here.
marymary says:
Hey guys!
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for writing that one could enter in their own message, when in fact this is not currently an option. I jumped the gun in posting that possibility and for that I am sorry (maybe it’s cause I really want that feature, haha).
At this time, you cannot enter in your own message, but if this is something you are interested in, let me know here and I will add it to the list of user requested ideas.
Thanks again for helping me catch that mistake and I sincerely apologize. I have since edited the Storque article to reflect the correct answer to the FAQ.
Mary
Posted at 3:39 pm, July 14 2008 EST
June 10, 2008 at 1:12 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous · By GreenMamba
This afternoon, Etsy admin RevolvingDork announced (in this thread) a significant Etsy milestone:
RevolvingDork says:
Today, at 10:27am EDT, Etsy had its 1,000,000th user complete their registration. Etsy is now a community more than a million strong!
It’s just a big round number, but it feels like a pretty huge milestone to us. Thanks to everyone in the community for helping us grow so quickly!
Here’s to the next million! ;D
Posted at 12:34 pm, June 10 2008 EST
WooHoo!
Edit by quirke 06-14-08:
In this Storque article, admin clarifies that the “one million” members actually refers to accounts, rather than individual people.
*(That number includes multiple accounts from one member as well as accounts that may have been closed. In other words, members have gone completely through the registration process 1 million times.)
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