Monday, April 4, 2011

Etsy - From Bad to Worse with Every "Improvement"

Well, Etsy has done it again! They've made yet another "improvement" which has decreased functionality of the site! What have they done NOW???  They're rendered the feedback tool completely useless!

Feedback on Etsy used to have links to the item people bought. The name of the buyer and seller was visible depending on whether you were looking at the buyer's profile (seller's name visible) or the sellers (buyer names visible) and now... they are GONE! It's like the folks at Etsy have NO IDEA how buyers and sellers use feedback!

This is how my friend Giapet's (a/k/a Fire-n-Sand lampwork) feedback looks now:

Giapet is an up and up seller. Her feedback causes no concern to me as a potential buyer. But what if there were something there??? In the old format, I might flip over to the customer's feedback and see what that customer says about OTHER sellers. Maybe the customer is a grumpy grumperson who's never happy. Or what if they had a legitimate concern? Then I might not buy the item right away. I might wait for more feedback or look for another seller which is my right as a customer

But let's look at this from the seller's view point. This feedback is from my problem customer from last year. Name blurred her name for her privacy: 
You may immediately notice that her negative feedback is 123 and her neutral is 42 (gotta love seller's with NO guts!). The screwy thing about the feedback system is she buys so much that her feedback overall score is 96% positive. It's hard for me to fathom that 123 negatives can equal 96% positive! 

But do you notice what else is missing??? No  item pic, no description, no seller!!! Your ONLY option is to see the feedback she left for other people...no info at all on where / how those 123 negatives occurred. And don't you just imagine that she doesn't bother to leave feedback for the people she screwed over? She didn't for me!

As a seller, the minute I read her feedback, I KNEW I had a problem. I had to take action to get my seller fees back and relist my items (although, I cc'd my buyer on every email to Etsy and she not only paid me, she bought more stuff and paid for that too...after some prodding!). I could tell from the old feedback system that this person just went around buying and buying and buying and frequently didn't pay! Now, I would not have that knowledge as I can only see the positive feedback SHE left! 

I don't know what those folks at Etsy are smoking, but they just don't get it! And Artfire still has it's quirks (blaming Hughes net for some customer's failure to upload and now... twitterfeeds no longer work for AF, so it must be twitterfeed's fault, right?). But it's just so hard to get attention for my own glass bead website.... what's a lowly seller to do?

3 comments:

Karin said...

I just noticed this other day....I wonder what the reason is behind it?

Jane Perala said...

Yes, I noticed their "improvements" too. Sure wish they would stop doing theis type of thing.

CreekHiker / HollysFolly said...

Karin, I have a few ideas... but I think that may be a subject for tomorrow!

Jane, I so know what you mean. I really feel like the site gets worse each time they tweak it! But if no one complains....