ACCOUNT SUSPENSION SAGA
I am sharing this to help those who have experienced Account Suspension
On May 19, 2021, I discovered much to my surprise that after 2 years of flawless performance as a Seller on Etsy (for Pino Shah Antiques) that my account had been suspended. No warning. No notification. Just another day and I logged in and saw that the account had been suspended.
I followed the links to reopen the account and got a reply within a few hours:
Thanks for contacting Etsy. Your email has been escalated to a specialist who will review your account.
It may take up to 48 hours to hear back from us. We’ll reply to your email once your account has been reviewed. There’s no need to respond to this message or follow up with us from another account.
We appreciate your patience.
Then, I received a message after 4 hours:
After a comprehensive review of your account, Etsy has determined it violates our Terms of Service or House Rules. As a result, Etsy has permanently closed your account.
Please do not open any additional accounts for buying or selling, as they will be closed without notice.
This decision is final and we will not respond to any further outreach about your account. This email constitutes our final communication on this matter.
I was quite amused. Seriously, I was. I chuckled. I thanked God that a few months ago when Etsy made it mandatory for me to join their ad program because I had exceeded their threshold of selling $10k the year prior, I made the wise decision to diversify my online presence by opening up a Shopify Shop, importing the listings and increasing my presence on other channels. In other words, Etsy was no longer my sole online sales channel.
The next day – May 20, 2021 – I repeated the step above and got the same response except, this time AFTER I got the second message about the comprehensive review, I wrote back:
So, I have been on Etsy for just over 2 years, never received any notification of a violation, no warning or indication of any kind, and just got kicked off…got a message after I contacted support saying that a comprehensive review was done and that I had violated TOS without any indication of any specifics… Can someone please clarify as to what is going on? Cheers!
Later in the day, I received this message from Etsy:
Hello,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
We have reinstated your shop and listings, and they should be searchable within the next 20 minutes. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Thanks for your understanding, and if there’s anything else I can help you with, please let me know.
Yes, my account was reinstated. No explanation as to what happened. And, that is fine. We are at Etsy’s mercy, it is their platform and they can kick anyone off anytime they damn well want to. Life goes on.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Continue to further diversify online sales channel listings and further reduce dependency on an
3 comments
Moral of the story: Esty sucks
It is now two weeks + since my etsy store was suspended only 4 months after opening and of course without warning or notification. After I mailed them for an inquiry I got a very general response that my account was permanently suspended for violeting Etsy’s terms of use. And there was no specific clarification for that. For me it was not amusing at all. I was chocked!! This was a last thing I was worried about when I started my shop. I was sure it was a mistake or maybe hackers attacked my account.
All the changes I’ve made to my shop since then have produced no results. I wonder if there are any humans there or am I interacting with computers.
The only thing that comforts me is that there are many other Etsy sellers who have gone through the same.
Thank You
Did they actually reinstate your account within 20 minutes? I got the email yesterday that they would reinstate my account but it’s been more than 24 hours but my store is still suspended.