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Post by michelle on Sept 27, 2022 21:30:16 GMT -6
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Post by DawninCal on Sept 28, 2022 13:14:34 GMT -6
I got an email from Etsy about this on Monday. They are claiming that to be in compliance with federal money laundering regulations, they have to verify that each US shop actually owns the account where money from their sales are deposited. Typical of Etsy, there was no announcement, no prior heads up, no explanation, just this email that went out with a link (aren't we all told never to click on links that ask for financial info?) to do this bank account verification. Oh, and the frosting on the cake was that sellers who do not comply within 30 days will have their shops suspended until they do comply.
Needless to say, sellers are in an uproar, and rightfully so, over this especially after going to the Plaid site and being asked for their bank account info such as user name and password. That is to do the instant verification.
There is another manual option for complying that does not involve giving out this info, but it takes longer because Plaid has to make a small deposit to the account and verify that it was received to the correct account before letting Etsy know that the bank account is valid. Unfortunately, the manual option was not easy to see and a lot of sellers did not realize they could do it this way.
Some of the sellers have contacted their banks about this and have been told by their banks to never, ever give out their user names or passwords.
Of course, nothing is ever easy or simple, and many sellers who went the manual route are reporting that their bank account numbers are being rejected by Plaid as not valid even though the sellers have had these accounts for years and entered them exactly as printed on their checks/bank statements. If you try too many times to enter your bank info, you get locked out for a period of time before you can try again.
I have not yet done the manual verification; I guess I'm putting it off because I just know something will go wrong.
It's just a giant s**t show right now. The Etsy forums are lit up like a Christmas tree over this. How I wish there was another viable selling platform out there besides Etsy. I had such high hopes for the now defunct Artfire. Zibbet looked promising, but they are gone now too. I have no desire to try to build my own website. I dunno, maybe I should take another look at Amazon Handmade. I was approved for a shop there, but never got around to doing anything with it. It's just one thing after another with Etsy and it is getting really old.
Cat seems to be doing ok with her FB groups, maybe that's something to look into.
Ugh, it's always something!
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Post by caeterle on Sept 28, 2022 13:50:45 GMT -6
Amazon isn't any better. I try to avoid Amazon like h*** as a customer because of how they deal with their marketplace sellers.
And non-German sellers just got so annoyed about the LUCID registration.
I'm thinking about getting my Etsy accounts (I had a very old buyer one at the beginning) deleted because I'm so tired of that crap even if I haven't been selling there for years. (And yes, I still get mad every time I see their TV commercial)
Dawn, FB groups are a lot of work, listing/deleting, listing/deleting, but I still think it's a pretty good option if you find the right sales group. And of course you can try to build your own group there, along or without your business page.
I hate FB groups with too many rules and micromanaging, so I left some, but if you have any questions, I'm here to help as much as I can.
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Post by DawninCal on Sept 28, 2022 15:57:55 GMT -6
Thank you, Cat. That's very nice of you. I do know one thing - I'm going to stay on Etsy until I reach 100 sales, darn it!  Dawn |
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Post by caeterle on Sept 29, 2022 0:02:36 GMT -6
I am a very nice person  |
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Post by DawninCal on Sept 29, 2022 2:20:12 GMT -6
Yes, you are! |
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Post by Irith-Rita on Oct 1, 2022 3:04:21 GMT -6
In June I had a lot of trouble with this. They took down my shop for about 3 weeks and I had a whole correspondence with them. I think I exchanged with them about 30 messages before they finally were convinced that my account for the last 40 years was really mine!  |
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Post by DawninCal on Oct 3, 2022 16:56:34 GMT -6
Irith, I'm so sorry you had such an ordeal getting that done. I had heard they verified international shops earlier. That's just awful that your shop was taken down. I'm glad you were able to get it straightened out, but it's ridiculous Etsy put you through all that. I did it today. The first part went through just fine. I did not have any of the problems that some people have reported. Now I have to wait a few days to make sure that Plaid is able to do what they need to do on their end. If that goes well, then I can report back to Etsy that my bank account has been verified. What a hassle! Dawn |
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