Etsy Ad Campaigns Set Up Without Seller Permission As New Listing Form Bugs Continue
Etsy sellers say ad campaigns are being set up without their permission, costing them extra fees and raising concerns about ongoing glitches with the new Etsy listing form.
The issue appears to be impacting on-site advertising, not offsite ads that automatically kick in after a $10,000/annual sales.
This evening Etsy have started up my ads with a $1 a day budget. Check your accounts folks because I didn't authorise this. I already pay through the nose for off-site ads, I'm not paying more! I only knew about it as I had an email in my spam file. Somehow they have managed to charge me for two days worth as well, even though I only got the email five hours ago.
The same happened to me an unauthorised ad campaign running for $1 a day.
Managed to spot it in time! This is a serious breach of trust.
I renewed 3 listings today: 1 expiring, 1 expired, and 1 inactive. The expiring listing (last day before expiration) had all its current settings, but both the expired and the inactive ones had Etsy Ads set to ON by default. I had to turn them off manually.
Some sellers believe the issue may be tied to Etsy retiring the old listing form on June 26 and forcing sellers to switch over to the new listing form despite there still being many reported bugs and technical glitches in the new experience.
Liz Morton
Others on Reddit wondered if the "glitch" was perhaps an intentional decision by Etsy executive leadership to try to boost revenue.
This has happened to me for the past year, but only with the new listing layout. Etsy has removed the old listing layout, forcing you to use the latest version. Etsy support says that using the Etsy app will automatically enable ads when you publish a new product. I do not use the Etsy app; I only list new products through the Etsy website, which allows you to disable marketing ads before you publish an item.
After listing each item, I go to the marketing tab to disable the ads. However, I sometimes forget because I am listing multiple items at once, resulting in ad fees being charged.
I contacted Etsy a year ago about this issue, and they said they would inform their engineers. As of today, a year later, the problem persists. I even took screenshots and screen recordings of the process, but they would only say they would inform their engineers.
I contacted Etsy support today, and they literally danced around the question and cut and pasted templates to frustrate us and make us give up. If we tried to get more information about the problem, customer support said this was not an issue other customers had reported and ended the chat with the following message:
Since I have provided all the information about Etsy Ads and how it was enrolled automatically, I will be disconnecting this chat now.
Feel free to check our help article on How to Turn Off Your Etsy Ads Campaign.
https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044099373-How-to-Turn-Off-Your-Etsy-Ads-Campaign?segment=sellingThank you for contacting Etsy’s support team
It seems the new CEO has purposely integrated this issue into their UI/UX, hoping their users will forget to disable ads. This will generate a lot of revenue for their shareholders, as not everyone will remember to disable ads each time they list products, especially if you list multiple items daily. Additionally, the fact that you cannot set a daily budget of $0.00 is very questionable. The minimum ad rate you can set is $1.00.
After conversing with multiple customer service representatives, it appears that they are attempting to conceal this issue until some form of class action is initiated regarding this practice.
Are you seeing Etsy ad campaigns set up without authorization or other strange glitches with the new listing form? Let us know in the comments below!
