Hi there, I just wanted to share my story to see if anyone has any advice for me. I started building my Etsy store in late 2016 / early 2017 and spent so much time and money cultivating a presence on the platform. I sell high-end furniture / antiques and fine art. It was extremely slow at first, and mostly smaller sales, but by the summer months, I was regularly making 4 digit and even 5 digit sales. My feedback was 100 percent.
In November, someone from Austin purchased a chandelier from my store for around 1800 bucks. She purchased the item and in the days that followed asked a variety of questions about the light fixture. I thought this was a bit strange, questions after the purchase. In any case, I was happy to answer her questions about the provenance of the fixture, whether it had been used before, etc. etc.
Once she received the fixture, she began sending emails complaining about a variety of things. From "deformed" arms of the chandelier to "black spots" on front portion of the piece to lightbulbs that burned out to quickly to a cord that was shorter than advertised. Literally she would send me long emails with numbered lists of all of the major issues this fixture had. I examined and photographed the fixture prior to shipment. I don't send garbage out to anyone. I told her that she can either return the fixture or I will try to fix the issues that she described. She said she would keep it but only on the condition that I buy her some accessories and extra parts for the chandelier and have it sent to her directly from Italy (or she will file a dispute and leave a bad review.) I complied.
She then said I need to pay for the electrician to install the chandelier. I agreed to this as well.
Once she had the tracking number for the items coming from Italy, she changed her mind and said she wanted to return the light. I told her that this was not possible anymore. The items were on their way to her, non-refundable and we had agreed on a solution to the problem. She said, ok, then buy 2 whole sets of light bulbs for me and have them sent from Italy. The chandelier in question takes 30 bulb at a time at almost 10 dollars each. I had already sent her 3 extra bulbs as a courtesy. Bulbs are never guaranteed by the seller and are considered to be the responsibility of the buyer. She admitted that she installed the fixture, used it and then a few bulbs burned out (by this point it had been 4-6 weeks since this drama began). I said that I couldn't afford to buy her 2 whole sets of bulbs. She doubled down on the bulbs and said she would file a dispute.
She opened her bag of lies and sent a long list of complaints about the chandelier once the dispute process was under way. She sent a photo of the cord after she had installed it. Meaning she had installed it (remember how a few bulbs had burned out?) , taken it back down and took photos. By this point she had cut the cord to about 12" in length. On her list of lies, she said that I misrepresented the cord length and that she had received an item with a 12" cord.
Etsy dispute resolution decided in her favor despite the fact that she had bowed out of our prior alternate resolution and a photo of the fixture with a cord that was about 6 times the length of what she pictured, on the table, getting packed up and ready to be sent out. Etsy wouldn't even acknowledge this photo.
Dispute resolution, by the way, if you've never experienced it, is just a message board that you can go back and forth with the disputer, and then once a week a member of the Dispute Resolution team comes in and makes a completely superfluous statement that shows s/he has no idea what's going on.
Get this -- I was told that not only would I have to refund this scamming heap of shite, but I would have to refund the initial shipping cost and then pay her to have it shipped back to me. We're talking hundreds of dollars each way. I tried everything. I called, emailed, told anyone that could listen, that I had photographic evidence that this person was a scammer. I begged them to review the info and look at the evidence.
Nothing worked. She was refunded, etsy told her to keep the chandelier and they put all of the expense on my account. So now they want me to pay them about 2500 bucks. They said if I don't pay, my account would be suspended and suspended it has been for the last few months.
When I've tried to get in touch with Etsy, they send me a message that until I pay 2500 bucks, they have nothing to say to me.
What would you guys do or recommend? It pains me so much to have lost the chandelier and to have to pay another 2500 bucks just to start my store again, and begin paying 100's of dollars of promotional fees, etc.... seems ridiculous.
Couldn't this happen to me again, anyway? What's to stop another scammer from doing this? The nature of my particular business dictates that I can't take one too many random losses like this. I don't sell oven mits or key chains or earrings. A few scammers like this in the span of a few weeks or months will literally put me out of business or at least hurt me in a very bad way.
Does Etsy have that many stores that make 5-digit transactions that they can just afford to make them as disposable as I was? Is there any hope of every getting anyone to hear me out at Etsy and do the right thing, which is reversing the wrong decision made by the dispute person "ASHLEY?" if so, is it just a matter of time until Etsy does this to me again? Is it just not an amenable platform for higher-end items? Your thoughts and wisdom and assistance are very much appreciated.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Etsy/comments/8wwhpx/scammed_by_a_customer_and_suspended_by_etsy/