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Huh. I don't remember seeing any other blog posts from anyone dissatisfied with Etsy previously — is this their first negative publicity?

It'll be interesting to see how they respond. I am reminded of the smashed antique Paypal violin story ( http://www.regretsy.com/2012/01/03/from-the-mailbag-27 ), where PayPal adopted the standard PR strategy of "saying nothing at all so that the story will go away."

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>Huh. I don't remember seeing any other blog posts from anyone dissatisfied with Etsy previously — is this their first negative publicity?

Not exactly [0].

I had no idea "handmade" was such a big deal at Etsy.

Regardless, the way they've handled this case seems pretty terrible, right down to the aggravatingly detached language used to correspond with him. Something really irks me about humans seemingly trying to be robotic, particularly in the process of performing a subjective review.

0: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/etsy-handmade-facto...

"I had no idea "handmade" was such a big deal at Etsy."

Hell, all I've heard about is griping from other sellers how "handmade" ISN'T a big deal from overseas sellers.

Etsy is pretty aggressive. Try contacting any of their members with a request. They'll shut down your account without warning.

Seriously? This sounds like an outfit that's in dire need of some (more) competition.

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