One of my main problems with selling on Etsy is the lack of customer service vis a vis ensuring site information delivery to users. As with the 'blood from a stone' analogy, it can take hours of forum watching and trawling to get hold of important updates, vital shop maintenance info and current SOP's. Since there are no 'sticky' admin threads I would literally be glued to the forums all day in my early Etsy career.
Now, frequent attendance on forum might engender community spirit but in this user, who has witnessed some of the major customer service c*ck-ups on this site, it brings a warm fuzzy feeling of frustration as well as that niggling thought at the back of the mind that we might all be taking part in some huge social experience experiment (the "rat running on the wheel" image always pops into my mind whenever navigating thru Etsy now).
I've seen frustration boil over and sellers meet their breaking points over inconsistency, rudeness, dismissal, off-handedness and authoritative silence. Situations which could have been defused handled the smooth, community, 'human' way, have escalated into storms above and beyond what need have happened.
Now I see that some of this frustration is being channeled into services helping other sellers, namely Unofficial EtsyNews (UEN), EtsyTools and Etsy Shops. All are administrated by Etsy members and all provide the services which members feel are lacking on the parent site but none are officially sanctioned by it.
Now instead of forum trawling for news I visit UEN for easily accessible updates, I visit EtsyTools to check out how listings and sales are moving over the last 24h, week and month, and then EtsyShops for the nitty-gritty on selling on Etsy.
Voila! Time saved = inestimable, and a big thanks to the unassociated editors out there in lala off-Etsyland.
