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Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

engadget.com

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Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#21

Post by strict9 »

timdeneau wrote: post #20
strict9 wrote: post #15

Will echo others regarding China imports, but one last hope to bring me back to their marketplace is a revamp of the review system. After spending thousands of dollars on furniture, waiting a month for the guy to make it, and another two weeks to ship, I had maybe a few days to leave a review for something I spent a lot of money on. With this policy, reviews are for first impressions only. And I won't be coming back.…

They used to email prompt you for reviews, or prompt you for reviews whenever you signed in. Now they don’t do either, and even if I manually check the backlog of orders, the review time windows have all expired. So I never review anything anymore. Seems like a strange decision. I don’t understand how that is helping buyers or sellers.

Forgot they used to do that. The receipt emails also fail to mention the time limit policy, causing many more people to miss their chance. For one-off handmade products, reviews are more important than most other marketplaces.

The time limit also prevents you from calling out fraudulent import resellers when you later discover the fraud.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#22

Post by geofft »

086421357909764 wrote: post #19
geofft wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is economically rational, as Alan Greenspan pointed out in 1983: > ... the senior staff, including Miss Eickhoff, Judith Mackey and Lucille Wu, is mostly female. Mr. Greenspan explains the gender bias with the free-market pragmatism that has become his hallmark: "I always valued men and women equally, and I found that because others did not, good women economists were cheaper than men. Hiring women does two…

By that statement though, you're implying that men and women aren't paid equally within Etsy. Which is against the whole of diversity and equal pay for equal work campaign isn't it?

Yes, in the absence of strong evidence I would assume both Etsy and every other salaried company that permits offers to be negotiated is paying men and women non-equally for equal work, primarily because (as Greenspan points out) the market value of men is higher: they are receiving competing offers from places that are more blatant about paying men more (or extending fewer offers to women, or whatever). Hopefully this difference is pretty small at Etsy, but it almost certainly exists, and even a small arbitrage opportunity is economically rational to capitalize on.

I'm using "equal work" in an informal sense. (In the legal sense, yes, equal pay for equal work is the law, but also in the legal sense, you can't give an immigrant worker a green-card-path visa unless you can't find anyone in the States to do the same job, and we all know how creatively "the same job" gets defined.)

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#24

Post by perseusprime11 »

k3oni wrote: post #2

Etsy should go back at what they did initially and support the craftsmen instead of the china imports, maybe that would help bring them back on track.

Here's a contrarian point of view: What if they do embrace China imports, get acquired by Alibaba and become from a front of artistic goods made in China.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#25

Post by rhizome »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #24
k3oni wrote: post #2

Etsy should go back at what they did initially and support the craftsmen instead of the china imports, maybe that would help bring them back on track.

Here's a contrarian point of view: What if they do embrace China imports, get acquired by Alibaba and become from a front of artistic goods made in China.

Doesn't Amazon already have a lock on all that?

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#26

Post by 20years »

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made.

I will never again use or trust Etsy and I discourage every small seller I know that makes custom things to stay away.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#28

Post by 5ilv3r »

20years wrote: post #26

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made. I will never again use or trust…

Where should we go? I make little things frequently and friends have been telling me to start an etsy shop, but stories like this keep me away.

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#29

Post by kbenson »

20years wrote: post #26

I tried using Etsy only to have them close my shop due to my products "not being handcrafted" according to them. These were small things that I 3D printed and people were actually buying. They shut me down but allowed similar endless China produced products to stay. They were not too happy when I pointed out those China knockoffs. They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made. I will never again use or trust…

> They also kept my money hostage from the sales I made.

That seems illegal. Then again, Etsy does its own payment processing now, and Paypal's been using that same tactic for years. I wonder if Etsy could get in trouble for doing both, since they have more info and can generally confirm shipment, given you print labels from them, and the problem is not that your items were misleading or fraud, but that they prefer you not sell those types of items on their platform?

Re: Etsy slashes almost a quarter of its staff

#30

Post by coldpie »

strict9 wrote: post #15

Will echo others regarding China imports, but one last hope to bring me back to their marketplace is a revamp of the review system. After spending thousands of dollars on furniture, waiting a month for the guy to make it, and another two weeks to ship, I had maybe a few days to leave a review for something I spent a lot of money on. With this policy, reviews are for first impressions only. And I won't be coming back.…

I wanted to leave a review after owning an item for a few months, to get an impression for how well it held up and how I liked it. Finally, I was happy with it, and went to leave a review only to be told I couldn't?!? Why on Earth do they have that policy?
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