Etsy Takes Down Legitimate Handmade Items In Automated Bot Dragnet

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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Etsy sellers report a sudden influx in automated takedowns for not being "handmade" but many innocent victims are being caught in the dragnet as well.

One particularly egregious example even hit a seller who was featured on Etsy's Quit Your Day Job blog.

100% HANDMADE BESTSELLER REMOVED!!
I cannot believe it. I make ALL my items. Each and every single piece. Today they took down my bestseller saying it isn’t handmade of all things? All the factory stuff on here and me selling here 15 years gets treated like this? No discussion. NO appeal. Nothing. Any suggestions? This is ju…

I cannot believe it. I make ALL my items. Each and every single piece. Today they took down my bestseller saying it isn't handmade of all things? All the factory stuff on here and me selling here 15 years gets treated like this? No discussion. NO appeal. Nothing. Any suggestions? This is just WRONG on every level. I heard there was a phone number but of course it's nowhere to be found.

HELP anyone?! I need to eat...

...In some ways it's a bit ironic as I was a Featured Artist in the Quit Your Day Job series. The photographers have been to my home!! I've been more than checked out!!! So much manufactured good on Etsy my customers always complain they have a hard time finding me. Ironic for sure. I'm hoping for the best but bracing for the worse.

In fact, this seller's Quit Your Day Job feature is still live on the site, with pictures taken by Etsy's photographers who visited her home to capture "action shots" in her studio.

Quit Your Day Job: MetalRocks
Toen door een auto-ongeluk de wereld van Sharon Dudka instortte, ging het metaalbewerken in de koelkast. Maar, dit jaar viert ze een jubileum: 10 jaar als ondernemer.

And it appears this is far from a one off "glitch" - there are many other similar reports in the Etsy community.

It's also very troubling these sellers are being told there is no way to appeal the decision.

My garments are all handmade by me but my best seller was deactivated today?
Hi, I have been selling on Etsy since 2014, have 3200+ sales and am a Star Seller. This morning, my best seller (long yoga pants) was deactivated, with Etsy’s email stating “It looks like some of your listings weren’t in line with our Handmade Policy, so we’ve removed them from our marketplace”. Eve…

I have been selling on Etsy since 2014, have 3200+ sales and am a Star Seller.

This morning, my best seller (long yoga pants) was deactivated, with Etsy's email stating "It looks like some of your listings weren’t in line with our Handmade Policy, so we’ve removed them from our marketplace".

Every stage of this garment (and all my garments) are performed by me- from designing, patternmaking, cutting, sewing and then shipping.

I have never used a production partner- all work is done by me.

I have looked through my listing and can't find anything that should be flagged. It's a pair of yoga pants, for goodness sakes!

There isn't anything there that is remarkably different than my other listings (tags, desciption etc).

I contacted Etsy via Community & Help>Contact us> Selling on Etsy>Managing my shop and listings>Etsy removed my listing.

After going to the effort of filling out this form and attaching pics (to prove I handmake my garments) of my yoga pant patterns, fabric cutters, industrial sewing machines and fabric supply, I received an auto response email from Etsy stating that

" I believe my listing was removed in error. Can I appeal this decision?

No, there is no appeals process for your listing at this time. We use a variety of factors to determine whether items comply with our policies, and we take this work very seriously."

This is incredibly frustrating to be losing sales daily because of this error and now, it looks like I can't even plead my case.

Very annoying that I have built up a business on Etsy over many years (with them taking fees for these sales) and now, a best seller with all it's 5 star reviews can be shut off in an instant.


Despite Etsy's most recent Transparency Report touting great strides in addressing counterfeits, IP violations, and non-handmade goods, Etsy continues to receive media and public scrutiny over these items flooding their marketplace.

Etsy Under Fire For Fake Handmade Items, Could It Be Opportunity For eBay?
Etsy faces brand damage as many “handmade” items are really mass produced goods dropshipped from big retailers.

Etsy absolutely must address these issues headon to preserve trust and safety on the platform, but automated bots are not the way - in order to accomplish their goal to "keep commerce human", Etsy is going to have to keep the policy enforcement process human too.

But as Etsy seller and ecommerce consultant Cindy Baldassi points out, that supposed focus on humanity is increasingly at odds with the company's corporate goals and so far the human sellers at the other end of those automated bot campaigns are left to suffer with no recourse.

Etsy claims its mission is to “Keep Commerce Human”, and unironically uses that tagline at the start of its 2022 Transparency Report - a report that details how the site’s automation is attacking legitimate Etsy shop owners with ever-increasing frequency.

The deeper you dig, the more you can see that acknowledging the humanity of the seller base is not part of the corporation’s game plan.


Have you had legitimate handmade items deactivated by Etsy for not being handmade? Let us know in the comments below!

Etsy

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.

6 comments
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bunnymama73
Etsy has tsken down several of my handmade listings that i have been selling for over 10 years. I have received no emails from Etsy to explain the reason. I wuit my day job over 15 years ago to sell on Etsy full time. I build my shop to be in the top 150 ranked shops. But, things have gotten so bad on Etsy, that I recently had to get a regular full time job to pay my bills. I don't think Etsy understands that they are killing the creative and hard working sellers that helped to build what Etsy is. Killing all of these creative artist's businesses will leave only the shops that buy cheap knockoffs from China.
The real artists can not complete. I recently had a buyer place an order and immediately tell me that she needed to cancel the order because she fou d it cheaper. She showed me a picture of what she found and it was a China copy of my design. She told me that she didnt care. She just wanted it cheap, even if it was a copy made in China. I will not have the time now to create new designs now that I have a full time job. But, Etst probably doesn't care.
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Etsymaker123
One thing that other etsy sellers may be interested to know...I had a listing flagged as not being handmade and it turned out that a third party website had stolen my product images and was "selling" my product on their website. I have a strong suspicion that the Etsy bots connected my listing to this website with the exact same image and that is what led them to mistakenly flag my product as not handmade. I discovered this by doing a google image search of my product listing images and that's how I found it. So now I not only have to deal with Etsy mistakenly taking down my listings, I have to deal with some fraudster trying to sell my product.
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Administrator
Liz Morton
Interesting discovery, thanks for sharing! That's a double whammy for sellers having to deal with fraudsters violating their intellectual property and then Etsy's bots using that against them.

Do you think the fraudster is dropshipping through you using Etsy if they sell the item or is it just a straight up fraud where they take people's money and never send anything?
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Jocelyn Serone
Hi, I am the owner of ClothingByLahay that you reference above.
It has now been 13 days since my listing was deactivated. I have sent mulitple emails, chat and support tickets and I still have not been able to talk to a human at Etsy about this frustrating issue.
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RudyL
Hello yes I am having the same issue, this month two of my best seller listing has been removed for no reason. I sold those for over 4 years and now the think they are not handmade. I open a claim attaching pictures of proofs but I received back an automated reply. Did you found any solution?
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Jordiob.com
And that's why you don't have to rely on an algorithm for those things. Same for Amazon's false positives 🤦‍♂️

Jordi Ordonez @ Amazon Seller Tools
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