Archive for July, 2007
July 18, 2007 at 9:50 am · Filed under Etsy Communications · By Elizabeth
From this thread:
Brain-STORQUE-ing! Meeting 7/19 in the Workshop!
TeenAngster
Etsy Admin says:
Hey all,
As you may or may not know, Etsy’s online e-zine The Storque will be launching later this summer. We’re organizing content and would like to know what you as Etsy readers would like to see, as well as the kind of stories you’d like to pitch. (We’re very excited about user content!)
Soooo…we’re having a Workshop meeting this Thursday, July 19th at 7 PM (EST) to brainstorm (or brain-STORQUE) ideas. Come with ideas about what you’d like to read about, what you’d like to possibly contribute, etc.
See you Thursday!
Alison
July 18, 2007 at 9:42 am · Filed under Events, Treasury · By Elizabeth
jared
Etsy Admin says:
We’re having a challenge to turn some of the best Treasury lists at Etsy into limited edition prints.
Here’s an example: http://flickr.com/photos/generated/838351743/
Up to twenty lists will be selected over a two week period in July. Special software will take a Treasury list, combine it with the original full resolution sources and generate a high resolution arrangement suitable for digital printing. Printing will be done in-house using archival processes and the highest standards of craftsmanship. This is a one time only, limited run event. About 100 prints of each list will be made.
One entry per person please.
Two week competition begins July 17, 2007 and ends August 1, 2007.
You can read the rest of the post with details here.
EDIT by starrydesigns: Read update here.
July 18, 2007 at 3:25 am · Filed under Bills, Customer Service, Email Notifications, Etsy Communications, Payments, Site Use · By The Janitor
[UPDATE 7/23 - people might want to check their charges diligently - please read my post of 7/23 about how my bills have been altered]
Rokali says:
We are finally all setup with our new merchant account provider, which means that we’ll be running the Etsy bills on a timely schedule once again.
It’s been several months since we were able to successfully auto-charge bills (though you have been able to manually pay your bill if you chose to do so).
We realize that some people’s bills have added up over these months, and we’re here to help you sort everything out.
Our plan is:
* Bills from $2.00 to $200.00 will be auto-charged on the 27th of this month.
* Any individual bill over $200.00 will *not* be auto-charged this month. We’re going to contact every seller with such a bill and help to make sure everything works out.
* Bills below $2.00 will not be auto-charged at this time. The amount is too small to reliably collect, and we’re doing this to avoid declined charges with this as the cause.
Please note that the above amounts are *per bill* and not the total amount owed per seller. This is how our current billing system functions.
Questions? Need help? Please email billing [!at] etsy.com.
Posted at 3:15 am, July 18 2007 EST
Here is the copy of the email I received regarding my account (with all personal details edited out):
Dear soap,
This is an important email about your Etsy bill. Please read it
carefully. We have not been auto-charging Bills, which means that unless
you manually paid your bills they have not been paid at all.
Over the past several months, as Etsy has been growing, we had to setup
a new merchant account. This has prevented us from auto-charging, but
we’re happy to say we’re back on track.
Your account status is good, but please note we’re going to be
collecting on all your bills over the next 10 days. If you need
assistance with anything, please email billing@etsy.com right away.
———————————
You have a total of *3* unpaid Etsy bills:
Bill #[edited out] $[edited out]
Bill #[edited out] $[edited out]
Bill #[edited out] $[edited out]
TOTAL DUE: $[edited out]
———————————
We will be auto-charging the amounts you owe. Each bill will show up as
a *separate charge* on your credit card statement.
Want to see more details about your Etsy bills?
1. Login and go to Your Etsy.
2. Click Your Etsy Bill on the left (under Money).
3. Look in the Unpaid Bills box, on the bottom half of that screen.
4. Click the Month name of the bill, and you’ll see a full list of all
charges.
You’ll see any bills that need to be paid. If you don’t see any, you’re
all paid up. If you do have unpaid bills, it will show you the total
amount due. This is what we’ll be auto-charging within the next 10 days.
*What to do now?*
A) You can do nothing and we’ll auto-charge your bills according to the
schedule below. Please make sure your bills are correct and your credit
card is OK to accept the charges.
B) You can login and pay your bill(s) manually.
*Auto-Charge Schedule*
This schedule is based on the total amount of the bill. For people with
larger bills, we’re giving you more time to contact us and make sure
everything is in order.
- $2.00 to $200.00 bills will auto-charge on July 27th, 2007.
- Bills over $200.00 will not auto-charge this month. Instead we’ll
contact you directly and work out the best payment solution.
If your bill is under $2.00, we will not be charging it at this time.
There’s nothing you need to do for now, and you’re free to continue
using Etsy as you’ve always done. When your bill grows to something
$2.00 or over, that’s when we’ll charge it. (We’re doing this because
many credit card companies will not accept charges this small.)
If you have any questions please email us right away at billing@etsy.com.
Thanks!
Etsy
July 15, 2007 at 2:01 pm · Filed under Marketing, Privacy · By Elizabeth
In this thread, MinuOriginals asks:
MinuOriginals says:
It would be nice if you would do a monthly chart that would show Number of Sales, Number of Items Listed and Number of New Members.
There are so many threads about slow times sales, what are the good months and attracting new buyers.
I think it would help answer some of these questions and I also think it would give sellers a better sense of the growth of Etsy.
Posted at 12:15 pm, July 13 2007 EST
SarahSays, Etsy’s lawyer, replies:
SarahSays says:
Here’s some general information concerning confidential business information.
Confidential business information refers to information whose disclosure may harm the business. In practice, this information may include, but is not limited to, trade secrets, sales and marketing plans, new product plans, notes associated with patentable inventions, business trends, detailed sales, cost, and profit figures, research and development ideas or information, manufacturing processes, and information about potential acquisitions, divestitures and investments.
Etsy must protect its confidential business information. Thank you for you concern and for understanding.
Sarah
Posted at 2:45 pm, July 13 2007 EST
However, in another thread, Quirke points out the link between Etsy’s business privacy policies, and the ongoing issues with privacy issues for its customers:
quirke says:
In another thread someone requested that admin kindly reveal some of their pertinent business stats to see how Etsy is growing.
RD replied:
“We keep sitewide stats on the downlow for business reasons…”
Well, there are quite a few sellers who would like to keep their stats on the downlow for business reasons too.
So, what is Etsy’s transparency in the marketplace? On the “downlow”. Yet so far they expect their sellers *and* buyers to be okay with having their entire selling and buying history open for any random person to see, including how much money they’ve made, when they made it, when their high or low sales periods are, how often they list, etc etc etc.
[edited for brevity; see thread for entire post]
Later in the thread, Admin assures the community that these issues are being carefully considered.
The privacy issue on Etsy continues to reappear in many contexts. Etsy has said they are working on it. My opinion: sooner would be better than later.
July 15, 2007 at 1:42 pm · Filed under Marketing, Privacy, Site Use, UEN Exclusive · By Elizabeth
As we discussed in this post at the UEN, there are some serious privacy concerns involved with completely open buyer and seller history.
That discussion has spread into a situation with repeated edits/deletions to the article about Etsy on Wikipedia.org.
Looking through the history of the edits to the article, Vanessa Bertozzi, from Etsy’s PR department, has edited the Privacy section of the article to reflect more favorably upon Etsy. For example, here are two edits she made, one additive, and one subtractive:
Through feedback, a specific buyer’s purchases can be tracked. There is no option to make any part of the feedback history private again. All items, with their full descriptions, are visible to the internet at large. Etsy errs on the site of an open marketplace in which item prices and other information becomes part of the public record.
Vanessa added the bolded sentence above.
Many Etsy sellers are also buyers, therefore, the previous concerns also apply to them. Additionally, sellers are forced to display particulars of their business accounting to the internet.
Vanessa deleted the bolded sentence above.
However, someone has taken it upon themselves to vandalize the article, rather than dispute the edits Vanessa has been making. In the past three weeks, the “Privacy” section (and only that section) has been completely deleted three times. Two were entirely without comment. One had a comment about the section being “innacurate [sic] and immaterial to the article”. Requests to clarify that comment went ignored.
Someone really doesn’t like the “Privacy” section; but they have no interest in discussing how to fix it up.
Proper procedure for editing an article on Wikipedia is to discuss the edits and the reasoning behind them. Simple deletion of what someone doesn’t like will result only in restoration of the deleted sections.
The UEN will continue to follow this situation.
July 15, 2007 at 12:55 pm · Filed under Etsy Communications · By Elizabeth
We mentioned the Street Teams meeting in this post, and we just found out that CavanaghCraft was kind enough to take comprehensive notes on the first chat - lots of great work! Thanks!
July 14, 2007 at 8:12 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous, Site Use · By Kate Black
Users wishing to keep a buyer-only account had better make sure they never experiment with listing their work under that account. Once an account is registered as a seller’s account, it will always be a seller’s account.
Chillionaire says:
We have been told by our engineers that they are unable to return accounts
to buyer-only status once it has been registered as a seller’s account. I’m
very sorry, we are doing all we can to remedy the situation.
–Lori
[ link ]
July 11, 2007 at 10:51 pm · Filed under Bugs, Views / Counters · By starrydesigns
RevolvingDork says:
Many folks on the site have noticed that sorting listings by their number of views can lead to inconsistent or innacurate results.
This is due to the fact that views are only updated in the database one per day, and the database is what sorts results. During the day, the views accumulated do not factor into the sorting algorithm.
Due to the high number of views that are processed on Etsy every day, it is not currently possible to update the sorting with any more frequency.
We will most likely be removing the sort by view option from results pages, as showing innacurate data is the last thing we want to do.
Posted at 8:32 pm, July 11 2007 EST
(bolding added by editor)
July 11, 2007 at 10:47 pm · Filed under Bugs, Views / Counters · By starrydesigns
Please post in this thread so that admin can pinpoint the issue.
RevolvingDork says:
Some people have reported over the past few days that the views on some of their items have been reduced.
We haven’t seen this happen first-hand, so if you have experienced this issue please post a specific link to the listings this has occured with.
With your help, we’ll be able to track the issue down much faster.
Posted at 8:45 pm, July 11 2007 EST
July 11, 2007 at 10:46 pm · Filed under Bugs, Images · By starrydesigns
RevolvingDork says:
Some people have mentioned that they are having problems seeing images on the site. We are investigating what the cause of this issue could be, but we have not yet been able to reproduce it or find any explaination as to why it is occuring.
It is not related to load, as the images are loading quickly for most users and for all of us admins.
We’ll post more news about it as we figure it out — when we do, it’s likely we’ll ask for some information from those of you that are experiencing the issue.
Thanks!
Posted at 8:23 pm, July 11 2007 EST
EDIT
alexandersomma says:
If you are having image loading problems try to load an image by placing this in your browser address bar:
http://images.etsy.com/all_images/5/529/f91/il_fullxfull.9387373.jpg
Please document the result so that we can better understand your symptoms.
Posted at 10:47 am, July 12 2007 EST
Please document the result in this thread.
EDIT
*****I visited the chatroom several times but found no one there. I assume that the “Chat with Haim about Image Issues” has ended*****
Please proceed to this chat room for a chat with Haim if you are having image issues.
haim says:
For those who have had long term/short term image issues I’ll be sitting in one of our chat channels all day working on the problem.
http://www.etsy.com/chat.php?room_id=image_issues
If you’ve got some time please drop by and help me with the detective work.
- H
Posted at 1:21 pm, July 12 2007 EST
(Thank you, Facade, for the tips!)
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