1.07.2011

Holiday Season Worked Havoc with international parcels

(picture by National Postal Museum)




Yes, this holiday season has brought to our shops and our customers a great deal of confusion and disappointment that has carried over to the New Year. It has tested our well developed resourcefulness in and out of Etsy. It has and is continuously challenging our hard-earned reputation as Etsy sellers.

We are writing on behalf of the entire EsEtsy team. We want to be reassured of Etsy's support in this matter, for each individual Etsy seller in our team, who has come but too often for help, advise and answers, is doubting Etsy's willingness to side with us sellers.

Our shops have come with a list of international customers, who are mainly located in the USA, and their claims/ reports of non delivery, their threats for negative feedback, their reports on paypal, their back and forth convos for updates about packages/ orders that have not yet arrived.

During the holiday rush Etsy did publish an article that mentioned the delay in packages delivery, asking for extra patience while waiting for the order, and advising to purchase insurance and to mail with a tracking number (this information in many cases has not been updated properly during this season). This was a topic and a road all too familiar for shops housed abroad (out of the USA), which mailed out orders from purchases as early as November 2010.

These unforeseen delays, with tighten security due to terrorist threats and postal services regulations which tempt to vary from border to border, added to the usual expected time of delivery on regular packages.

For customers already in the peak of the holiday shopping anxiety, this article did not make sense (especially the Etsy newcomers and first timers). For many buyers the delay is just an unacceptable factor, not taking into consideration that the seller has no control over the package while in transit, that the delay is an Etsy wide catastrophe, that is not a particular seller's wrong doing-not in this case-!

We are left with two certainties from all this: that Etsy needs to pronounce itself standing by each seller -reviewing each case, because each case is one of a kind- and lacking this so far is adding up to our disadvantage. And that this will render us an infamous negative feedback, too many to keep running an up to now successful Etsy shop.

We feel our shops are in danger, we feel the need from Etsy to back us up in a consistent way in order to be able to confront this unfortunate situation successfully and keep doing our business that we love.
Thank you!