Archive for Payments
March 16, 2009 at 8:20 pm · Filed under Bills, Bugs, Customer Service, Etsy Communications, Payments, policy change · By GreenMamba
Over the weekend (March 15), Etsy published a Storque article announcing some changes to the billing procedure, which included the removal of payment minimums, and the implementation of both an overdue notification process and the future plan to implement the use of a collection agency for accounts 90 days, or more, past due. In the course of these changes, it was mistakenly reported that the previous 15-day grace period had been reduced to 14 and, beginning on March 15 at 12:00 UTC, overdue notices popped up during logon, and in e-mail boxes, for those sellers with a balance in any amount that had been incurred in February (or earlier) but not yet paid.
The confusion led to a series of forum threads asking for clarification, eventual corrections by several admin, an amending of the Storque article that announced these changes, and, ultimately, an official apology from Etsy CEO, Maria Thomas.
Excerpt:
Dear Etsy Sellers,
This is the kind of note CEOs generally don’t enjoy writing. Because, this is the kind of note that says, “We messed up, and we’re sorry.”
Over the weekend, Etsy messed up. We prematurely sent out notices to sellers whose bills we had identified as “overdue.” This overdue notification was a change in our billing process. We did a poor job of fully explaining this change and consistently messaging it across the site and in other communications with our seller community. In addition, the change was poorly timed relative to the March billing cycle and poorly coordinated with our recent introduction of enabling sellers to pay their Etsy fees via PayPal. Introducing PayPal as a payment option for seller fees also allowed us to accept payments of any size, so we simultaneously eliminated the $1.00 minimum payment threshold. We now ask those owing less than $1.00 USD to pay their balances in a timely manner, just like other Etsy sellers.
Regrettably, we did not lay all these messages out in an easily digestible form, and we didn’t deliver them to you in a timely and clear way.
I am ultimately responsible for this poor execution, and I apologize. I know that Etsy sellers need clear, consistent, timely communication from Etsy in order to plan your businesses. That’s our goal, and we will all work harder to be more diligent and timely with future announcements affecting all sellers.
I asked Etsy staff to roll back the changes (that is, to go back to the billing policies and process in effect prior to March 14, 2009) until such time as we are able to more thoroughly and consistently email all of you about what we’re doing and why. Let me repeat, we have moved back to the policies and process that were in effect prior to this weekend’s communications about overdue bills. Please note that sellers will still be able to pay your Etsy bills via PayPal, and you will be able to pay your bill even if the balance is below $1.00 USD.
Read Maria’s full article here.
Editorial comment:
Kudos, Etsy and Maria, for handling this so quickly and professionally, and for owning and correcting the mistakes made during the initial rollout. This is a huge step forward in Communications, and is much appreciated.
March 11, 2009 at 11:19 pm · Filed under Checkout System, Payments, Search, Seller Opportunities, Showcase, Site Security, Site Use, The Future · By JB
The Head of Etsy’s Product Team has posted an update on their progress and projects for the coming months.
Source: The Storque
Sara recaps the changes from the past several months including Google Analytics, beta testing of API, the Etsy Shop application on Facebook, and changes to the RSS feeds.
She also mentions features which had previously been promised but have now been put on the back burner, including more tools for Etsy teams, and the Super Etsy Mini.
Key points in their plans for the coming months include:
- “Search is our top priority for 2009. We anticipate numerous updates to Search throughout 2009.” (more details are available in Product Manager Sean Flanagan’s Storque article here.)
- Payments: There is currently a seller survey about payments, which Sara did not mention but that will possibly result in some new payment options being incorporated into Etsy, such as google or RME. Sara only mentioned changes which have already occurred such as sellers being able to pay their bills with paypal, and the fact that Etsy now employs a collection agency.
- Checkout: In the coming months we will be working to better clarify the functional elements of the overall (checkout) process, including introducing inline registration (i.e. letting first-time buyers checkout on Etsy without forcing them to confirm their registration first).
- Safety, Security, and Trust: No specific details are given here, but Sara says “While it may not always be possible for Etsy to disclose its fraud deterrence practices…Etsy takes these issues very seriously and thus we continue to update our infrastructure to keep fraudulent behavior off of our site.
- Showcase: In March you will see improvements to the design of Etsy’s Category pages and, more specifically, the design of the Category Showcase promotional modules at the top of those pages. …
In the coming months, we are looking to expand Showcase placements to other relevant areas of our site to provide more opportunities for sellers to gain additional exposure. (ed:this is possibly related to Sean’s mention of possibly selling paid ads on the search results pages.)
- Seller Tools: In the next month, Etsy plans to release tools to allow sellers to rearrange the items in your shop.
- Site Performance: Sara does not mention any details, but refers readers to Chad’s recent article here which goes into detail about site performance.
Sara closes with the promise of more regular updates:
I’ll be back with regular updates on what we’ve accomplished from this list and what else we have lined up for the remainder of the year.
For the full text of Sara’s article please see The Storque.
Commenting is closed for this article, but there is a forum thread open to comments.
March 11, 2009 at 7:09 pm · Filed under Checkout System, Payments · By JB
Source: The Storque
Etsy is conducting a short survey for sellers about payment options.
Click here to take the survey. It is about 3 minutes in length.
The survey closes in one week,
April 3, 2008 at 2:46 am · Filed under Miscellaneous, Payments, Profit · By quirke
We just discovered this free handy-dandy Etsy Fee Calculator!
It uses your item price, quantity, shipping charges, cost of postage, PayPal fees (percent and flat sale fee), Etsy fees (percent and listing fee) to calculate your item profit. Of course, don’t forget to subtract your materials costs and overhead to get your true profit.
The Etsy Fee Calculator also has a reverse-calculator that allows you to enter a desired profit to calculate how much you should charge to receive that profit.
The Etsy Fee Calculator is brought to you by Doug Boudreau.
March 20, 2008 at 4:59 pm · Filed under Bills, Miscellaneous, Payments · By quirke
According to this Storque article, sellers can now download their sales information in CSV format to spreadsheet programs on your computer.
Sellers who do their own accounting will be excited to hear this: you can now download your sales information to your computer in CSV format ( Here here! for “comma separated values”)!
A CSV is a type of file that can be opened by programs such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc (a free spreadsheet program). If you go to Your Etsy > Sold (orders) you’ll now see a link at the bottom to “Download this sales data as a CSV.” By selecting the month and year near the top of the page, you can download sales info from your shop for each month you’ve been in business.
Did you know CSV files are also available for your monthly Etsy bill? To download a month’s worth of billing information, click on the appropriate month in Your Etsy > Your Etsy Bill and click “Download this entire monthly statement as a CSV file.”
Comments for this article are open.
December 14, 2007 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Bills, Payments · By quirke
Some very important changes to the Etsy billing process are outlined in this Storque article:
Attention sellers! This is an important message about your bills!
In order to keep Etsy growing, we rely on the fees we collect from sellers. This is vital to the success and future of Etsy. As of January 1, 2008, a new Billing Policy will be put in place to motivate sellers to settle overdue accounts. The following is a description of how this will affect sellers who have not been paying bills.
If you did not pay your September bill when it was due on October 1st, that bill became overdue on October 15th. On November 15th, it became one month overdue. On December 15th, it became 2 months overdue. On January 15th, three months over due.
If you do not pay the overdue funds accrued in September or before, your account will be suspended on January 15th.
If you just do not pay the money from your bill that was accrued in October (overdue on November 15th, one month overdue on December 15th, two months overdue on January 15th), then you will not be able to relist items until you pay that amount incurred during October.
So, the policy goes into effect on January 1st and you should pay before January 15th, or you will have to deal with these penalties.
Please, please pay your bills. If you do it now, you will save yourself a big hassle. And you will save Customer Support many, many headaches (and time not spent helping newbie shoppers!).
You can find our previous coverage of Etsy bill issues here.
update, December 18. Edit by JB
This new Storque article attempts to clear up the confusion about bills.
Dear Sellers!
Your Etsy bill is due on the 1st of each month and you can pay it at any time. It becomes overdue on the 15th of the month, at which point you may start to notice some nagging reminders popping up in Your Etsy.
In order to clear up some confusion about billing, we’ve extended the payment grace period until 12:00 am on the 16th of each month, meaning you will not see any nagging overdue notices until then. Our billing time is in UTC (UTC is Coordinated Universal Time), so that’s midnight for folks in London and 7:00 pm on the 15th for the East coast of the USA.
And don’t forget, starting on January 1, 2008 we’ll be taking action on overdue accounts, so make sure you’re current!
The article is closed to comments.
edit Dec 24 by JB
Dec 21 Storque update:
As of January 1, 2008, a new Billing Policy will be put in place to motivate sellers to settle overdue accounts.
This is how billing works:
* Your balance from the previous month is due on the first of the following month.
* Your balance must be paid in full by 23:59 UTC on the 15th of the month.
* Accounts not paid up by that time are considered overdue.
* Accounts 2 months overdue will automatically be suspended from listing, relisting, and renewing items.
* Accounts 3 months overdue will be suspended.
The article is closed to comments.
October 29, 2007 at 4:18 pm · Filed under Bills, Customer Service, Email Notifications, Etsy Communications, Laws & Regs, Payments · By The Janitor
Unfortunately, I had to post this info here at UEN as Admin locked down a thread that was posted to call to Etsy’s attention a possible gap in their billing system reminders. Perhaps Lauren misunderstood my OP. I was not asking for specific resolution of my specific billing situation on the thread (I had already dealt with that via email via the Etsy channels). Instead, I was trying to inform both the Etsy people in charge as well as the Etsy users of the situation encountered.
In a nutshell, my account is not in arrears. I paid the balance on my account (Sept balance) on Oct 16. On October 28, I received this boilerplate email (I was not the only one to receive it):
Dear Soap-
[editorial not: one or more discretionary sentences added by relevant admin, the rest of the email is boilerplate] I’m an admin at Etsy, and I wanted to
thank you for running a successful shop on our site.
I’d like to remind you that as of October 15 your Etsy bill of $46.55
(USD) is currently overdue. It’s really important that you pay this
soon. As of January 1, 2008 we’ll be applying penalties to overdue accounts.
To pay your bill, log in to your Etsy account, then go to Your Etsy >
Your Etsy Bill > Make a Payment Now. You can even make partial payments
to incrementally pay off your remaining balance. (If you’ve already paid
this off - thank you!)
It is our driving goal to give all artists the tools and technology they
need to make a living making things. Your success is testament to ours.
That said, running Etsy costs money, and we depend on our users to
promptly pay our reasonable fees.
I’m here to answer any questions you may have about your bill. Just
send me an email.
Thank you!
[edited out specific admin name]
Etsy Admin
Emailed to me October 28. The issue? My account wasn’t in arrears when Etsy sent the above email out to me. I had already paid the balance showing on October 16, as is showing on my bill page (page 5 of 10), and consistently have a smiley-face on my account page.
As I suggested on page 2 of the thread Lauren locked down,
[m]aybe Etsy can append the current boilerplate with something like “If you have already paid your bill, please disregard this email.”
EDITORIAL:
If Etsy/Lauren doesn’t want me (or anyone) to post these sorts of legitimate issues - which I wasn’t sure was a bug (the title of the section IS called BUGS) - I gladly will take the issues off Etsy next time they occur. The OP clearly wasn’t asking for a resolution to my specific problem. The title of my thread was “Is anyone double-checking before sending out erroneous emails?” in case someone missed it. THAT was the purpose of my post.
I would think Etsy’s legal department would be concerned about and double-checking internal procedures and policies regarding billing issues. But what do I know.
UPDATE:
Someone’s comment reminded me. I forgot to quote from Lauren’s parting shot -
The reminder emails being sent were generated with info from October 15 — which is when the most recent bill was due. The email should have stated something to the effect of, “If you’ve already paid this off - thank you!”
UPDATE: edited because I missed the verbiage. “(If you’ve already paid
this off - thank you!)” is in the middle of the email in the paragraph on giving instructions on how to pay, which I skimmed because I didn’t need those instructions (already paid up), so I missed it. It might be more noticeable off-set by itself or brought to the top of the email, before people are told they are in arrears.
October 6, 2007 at 11:57 pm · Filed under Bills, Email Notifications, Etsy Communications, Payments, Site Use · By The Janitor
Read full info here.
See related UEN post here.
Your Etsy Bill
Article Header Image
Story by CustomerCare, Dillinger, RevolvingDork, TechUpdates
Published on October 5, 2007 in Etsy News
We’ve just implemented our reminder system about paying your bill. You’ll now see an alert bar just below the header and, if you have fees more than 3 months overdue, an interstitial screen letting you know.
Until the end of this year, reminders are the only consequence of having overdue fees. Starting in January of 2008, accounts with fees that are 3 months overdue will not be able to list new items, and having fees 4 months overdue (or greater) will lead to account suspension. We’ll always contact anyone with overdue fees several times beforehand to makre sure things are OK and see what we can work out.
Please see the handy chart [in the Storque article] for a reference guide to overdue-ness.
[chart not displayed here]
Once again, until the end of this year, reminders are the only consequence of having overdue fees. The text in the image above that’s light grey & italics show what will happen in 2008.
September 10, 2007 at 5:11 pm · Filed under Bills, Payments · By quirke
In this post, RD explains that Etsy’s new credit card gateway does not accept names or addresses with international characters. Sellers who are having trouble paying their Etsy bills should try removing any international letters or symbols from their credit card info.
September 10, 2007 at 3:44 am · Filed under Bills, Payments · By starrydesigns
RevolvingDork says:
Want to be a final-stage bill tester?
Join me and Haim in the chat room *right now*!
Posted at 3:25 am, September 10 2007 EST
Edit: Testing has ended. Thank you for your time! :)
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