Fun Times on Etsy
Aug. 11th, 2020 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingDuring the past 24 hours, I've received three separate Etsy orders (each for one inexpensive item) that appear to be from spambots. The email addresses associated with the accounts are strings of random characters, as are the mailing addresses they provided.
I canceled and refunded each order with a short message to the "buyer" stating that I can't mail anything to a nonexistent address. I also blocked the users for good measure. I then sent a support request to Etsy for each order to report the account and notify them of suspicious activity.
I feel like I've done my due diligence, but I couldn't find any other accounts of sellers receiving orders from spambots. What I did find were reports of all sorts of other scams and misbehavior on the platform.
Based on an hour of research, most of which was spent browsing through various forums, I learned that there are two main types of scams targeted at sellers. The first involves the sale of small items (generally crafting supplies, such as individual beads) for the purpose of stealing the tracking numbers. In other words, the buyer will use the tracking number you provided to "ship" an order they received but have no intention of fulfilling. The second involves high-quantity sales shipping to freight distributors (generally in Florida or California), which will forward the merchandise to another merchant who will then resell it. "Scams" might not be the right word for these transactions, which seem to be associated with overseas merchants from a certain country, but there's still something fishy going on.
I also learned that the knitting community on Etsy has a lot of drama. It's apparently not uncommon for someone to buy a digital pattern and then offer it for sale at a cheaper price on their own store, for instance. It's also not unheard of for someone to make something directly from a pattern they bought and then sell it at a premium without contacting or crediting the original artist. On top of that, there are people who will spend actual money to hurt another seller by purchasing a lot of inexpensive items and then using those orders to bomb the store with bad reviews and formal complaints. Even crazier, some people will order a ridiculous quantity of a custom-made listing (which generally don't have inventory limits), knowing that the seller will cancel the order and that they will be able to use the cancellation as an excuse to report the store to Etsy.
Along the way, I read a few horror stories about art and crafting commissions gone horribly awry. With two truly bizarre exceptions, every commission I've done has been as smooth as silk, and I was shocked by the behavior I read about. To summarize, many people seem to expect that, because they've paid the initial commission fee, an artist must devote endless hours to making a long series of requested changes to their work. People also seem to expect that, after this work is done, they can reject the finished piece and ask for a full refund.
In the cases involving individual people (as opposed to overseas businesses), the story generally included a lengthy lead-up in which the buyer raised all sorts of red flags in their conversations with the seller. I think there's a lot of pressure on people selling their creative work to be "nice" and "accommodating," and I think this pressure influences them to tolerate strange interactions with people who make them uncomfortable.
The take-away point from all of this is not that Etsy is broken (which is a different conversation altogether), but rather that setting clear boundaries is good professional behavior. The standard American customer service mentality that "the customer is always right" only makes sense as a social contract if both parties enter into it in good faith. If the customer is unbalanced, however, that level of accommodation is toxic, and sellers - especially young women selling their creative work - need to feel empowered to cut off communication and step away from bad transactions.
I canceled and refunded each order with a short message to the "buyer" stating that I can't mail anything to a nonexistent address. I also blocked the users for good measure. I then sent a support request to Etsy for each order to report the account and notify them of suspicious activity.
I feel like I've done my due diligence, but I couldn't find any other accounts of sellers receiving orders from spambots. What I did find were reports of all sorts of other scams and misbehavior on the platform.
Based on an hour of research, most of which was spent browsing through various forums, I learned that there are two main types of scams targeted at sellers. The first involves the sale of small items (generally crafting supplies, such as individual beads) for the purpose of stealing the tracking numbers. In other words, the buyer will use the tracking number you provided to "ship" an order they received but have no intention of fulfilling. The second involves high-quantity sales shipping to freight distributors (generally in Florida or California), which will forward the merchandise to another merchant who will then resell it. "Scams" might not be the right word for these transactions, which seem to be associated with overseas merchants from a certain country, but there's still something fishy going on.
I also learned that the knitting community on Etsy has a lot of drama. It's apparently not uncommon for someone to buy a digital pattern and then offer it for sale at a cheaper price on their own store, for instance. It's also not unheard of for someone to make something directly from a pattern they bought and then sell it at a premium without contacting or crediting the original artist. On top of that, there are people who will spend actual money to hurt another seller by purchasing a lot of inexpensive items and then using those orders to bomb the store with bad reviews and formal complaints. Even crazier, some people will order a ridiculous quantity of a custom-made listing (which generally don't have inventory limits), knowing that the seller will cancel the order and that they will be able to use the cancellation as an excuse to report the store to Etsy.
Along the way, I read a few horror stories about art and crafting commissions gone horribly awry. With two truly bizarre exceptions, every commission I've done has been as smooth as silk, and I was shocked by the behavior I read about. To summarize, many people seem to expect that, because they've paid the initial commission fee, an artist must devote endless hours to making a long series of requested changes to their work. People also seem to expect that, after this work is done, they can reject the finished piece and ask for a full refund.
In the cases involving individual people (as opposed to overseas businesses), the story generally included a lengthy lead-up in which the buyer raised all sorts of red flags in their conversations with the seller. I think there's a lot of pressure on people selling their creative work to be "nice" and "accommodating," and I think this pressure influences them to tolerate strange interactions with people who make them uncomfortable.
The take-away point from all of this is not that Etsy is broken (which is a different conversation altogether), but rather that setting clear boundaries is good professional behavior. The standard American customer service mentality that "the customer is always right" only makes sense as a social contract if both parties enter into it in good faith. If the customer is unbalanced, however, that level of accommodation is toxic, and sellers - especially young women selling their creative work - need to feel empowered to cut off communication and step away from bad transactions.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 08:25 pm (UTC)The entitlement with which people treat...well...everything horrifies me so much.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-13 03:20 pm (UTC)I'm very lucky to have received only two comments like that on AO3 (and I hope your own exposure to that sort of attitude has been similarly limited). Both comments hit me disproportionately hard, though. I really enjoy writing short stories based on people's prompts, but this is one of the main factors preventing me from opening fic commissions on a platform like Ko-fi, to be honest.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-13 04:11 pm (UTC)I can see that being a real challenge for fic commissions. I've only ever commissioned friends who were in a financial spot and thus I knew, like, what I was getting and that the person had knowledge of what I like and had reason other than money to make me nice things (not that money isn't a substantial motivator but like....I guess I'm saying the personal connection part was important).
no subject
Date: 2020-08-17 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-17 12:30 pm (UTC)I've also only had two commission go badly, both of which involved me never getting the end product. One was a plushie commission I gladly shelled out a bunch of money for as a holiday present to myself. The person said it would take 4 months to do, which was fine. But when 5 months rolled by and I heard nothing? I pinged them multiple times and was initially told they were busy with cons, but then they stopped replying to my emails. All the while, they continued to make new plushies to sell on Etsy along with taking commissions. This was back in 2015 and literally summer of last year, I got a refund email from PayPal from this person.
The other one was someone selling art of completed pieces they did. There was a watercolor of Setzer I absolutely loved. We talked for five minutes and I sent over the PayPal money immediately, figuring all that was left to do was, you know, ship it to me. Long story short, I never got it. Again, when I pinged the artist, they gave me a bunch of reasons from busy cons to not doing well health-wise. Which is fine, but again they stopped answering my emails after 6 months when I asked for my money back if they never planned to ship it to me. I never got my money back.
I guess it boggles me when artists offer to do something, like commissions or sell their art, then never follow through 100%. I like to think I didn't do anything out of the ordinary that would warrant such behavior. But yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is that Etsy and other avenues for selling art are just Weird.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-19 01:31 pm (UTC)I wonder what happened with those two artists, though. It sounds like, with the watercolor, the artist may have sold it twice? Or perhaps the physical painting became damaged in some way? And maybe the artist thought they'd paint a replacement and send it to you, but they just couldn't bring themselves to do it? Who knows.
Either way, it clearly would have been better for everyone if the artists felt empowered enough to communicate with you openly without having to worry about bad things happening. Not like you would leave bad reviews or anything, but still. Lord grant us all the strength to turn down sales and commissions with the self-confidence of a middle-aged man.
Speaking personally, I spent more than thirty entire years on this earth before I realized that it's okay to just delete weird or negative comments on AO3 and FFN, and I still feel a little guilty when I do it.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:40 pm (UTC)I think about those two artists now and then and hope they're ok, but also that they learned from that lack of communication and don't pull that on others :\ I totally get that life can be such A Thing that something as simple as driving to the post office to ship art is one too many spoons, but I'd also feel utterly guilty for taking someone's money and not following up on my end of the deal.
Also also, I feel more art programs or whatever need to have freaking classes going over business etiquette. For all the classes I had the went over Making The Thing, I had fuck all for real-life tools. We were expected to "learn" this from internships, none that were provided by the school, thus varied in quality. And that was if you were lucky to find one, let alone get accepted. Even when I did yoga teacher training, of the 200 hours required to finish the program, literally one hour was spent on "business practices" which involved how to make a website.
And they wondered why only the stay-at-home, middle-class wives actually took off with studios and practices.I just wish this world was more accessible with helping people figure this crap out instead of stumbling our way through shitty mistakes.And also I need "Lord grant us all the strength to turn down sales and commissions with the self-confidence of a middle-aged man" on a damn aesthetic poster to hang in my office because WHAT A MOOD.
Thanks for coming to my sleep-deprived 8:30am Ted TalkME TOO WITH THE FIC COMMENTS!!!! I am happy AO3 recently revealed the "no comments" feature. The moderated comments option is nice, but you still get notifications for them, which is super stressful if someone is spamming you with bullshit.