Oh the irony. . .

For years I have been reading in the forums as many sellers advised each other to just move out the ship date when cancelling an order to prevent the buyer from leaving negative feedback.  😕  I have seen many many many sellers advise this many many many times over my years on etsy, it is pretty standard advice, sadly.

I, however, have always had a bit of an ethical problem with this advice because regularly the seller asking how to stop the bad reviews is purely focused on maintaining their own perfect 5 star record and not at all concerned with what went wrong, why the buyer is unhappy, why their customer service sucked so bad the buyer asked to cancel.  Not that I think all cancellations are the fault of the seller, many of them are the buyers doing, not reading processing times, not reading descriptions, not providing personalization information needed to complete the order.

I found it really ironic reading the forums today to see a long time seller, that I know has given this advice before, complaining about poor customer service from other shops and not being able to leave feedback during a cancellation because the shop that is failing to ship has pulled this "move the ship date" BS to prevent the review. 😏  Then the ensuing discussion about why cancellations don't factor into the new ODR (order dissatisfaction rate) and how etsy needs better/more accurate reason selections for cancellations. The discussion included some saying "well at least shops like this will be caught out by the new ODR" but in reality they won't because cancellations don't count and moving the shipping date to prevent reviews means no negative reviews to count, and cancellations prevent cases too.  

So while the new ODR is meant to improve customer service, I suspect that it will only increase some sellers bad behaviors and those sellers who pull this ultimate BS move will have no problems while honest sellers who try to work with buyers will end up being the ones punished.  😔

Since cancellations do not count in the ODR and missing shipping dates and being over-due does not count, really the only thing that does count are cases and reviews, which is in no way a complete picture of a shops customer service. 

I just can't do it. . .

I simply cannot craft every day.  

RainbowMaille, art and making things is only 1 facet of my life.  I have husband, and a house to keep clean.  I have 3 cats begging for attention, play and lap time.  I have to do all the grocery shopping and meal planning, which with my gluten free diet does take considerable time and energy.  

Yesterday, I considered painting because my easel is clear but I had a list of other things to do first, paying bills, balance checkbook, ship order, grocery shopping, etc.  So I did all the other things which included making multiple batches of gluten free noodles to freeze, baking the last of the chocolate chip cookie dough and a bunch of cleaning.  😏  Not a creative day, but a productive day. 

Today I plan to work on a wire tree I have in progress, but I doubt I'll actually get it finished because it's a 7 inch and I can only hold the awkwardness with the wires sticking out all over for a limited time before my hands cramp up.  😕  

Blue and silver and butterflies with a cute little fairy door in the trunk and a bit of a double canopy, I think this one will be really cool when it's finished, in a few days. 😉

Ok, so I'm doing it all wrong. . .

I'll start with a confession. . .  I am a social media flop.  😏  

The most likely cause of this is I am actually anti-social by nature and have social anxiety mental issues, but at least I know it.  😉

Unfortunately for me business these days is all about marketing and marketing these days is all about social media so I'm at a bit of a disadvantage, but at least I know it.  😌

Etsy used to promote the idea that our about sections and descriptions should help buyers get to know the artist. So when I made my instagram I decided to show multiple facets. According to some my approach is misguided, while great for making friends and finding other interesting artists apparently my lack of "focus" seems to be a detriment to the business promotion aspect.  

I see others with thousands of followers on facebook and instagram and wonder how they did it, but in spite of reading, researching and asking directly I can't seem to make progress.  😓

Perhaps my inability to understand and follow the advice I've found is that most of it seems to contradict itself. One place says only post product related, only post really great photos, focus and be prefect. ~sigh~ Well first that's not me, second if I tried that then I have the inability to post consistently.  Others suggest the rounded approach post anything as long as you are consistently posting.  Well that's what I've been trying but it's not really working because there are times I just cannot get a great photo (my hands shake) or I get semi-depressed and just don't post for periods.  

I don't use the "Stories" thing mostly because I don't like my face and shooting video of myself seems weird to me.  I've tried but in spite of having hundreds of followers my stories are only seen by a handful of people.  😕

I post gluten free food stuff because my diet is a part of my life and has had a pretty big impact on my overall health which greatly impacts my ability to craft things. However, I can see where without a lengthy explanation no one is likely to understand the connection. 😐

So I am going through the archive process again and cutting back on the food posts and the pet posts and some of the general randomness.  I will try to focus and get better photos but I am disheartened and somewhat frustrated because I do not think I will ever be able to do what some others do. 

And now I've over-thought and made myself depressed and migraine headache-y.  😔

Black Friday Sales. . .

Yes, I am having a Black Friday sale and while the 25% off that I am offering may not seem like much of a discount next to the 60% 75% off offered by the big box stores perhaps a little small business perspective for y'all.

The handmade one of kind things I sell are not mass produced like DVDs. 😏  

My prices are based on a time + materials formula so when I offer discounts it is my time I am discounting, as the materials were already paid for at a set price. 😐  

As a small business my supplies are purchased in small amounts not exactly wholesale pricing. 

I have always tried to keep my prices reasonable, normally a 10% or 15% discount is all I offer, so actually a 25% discount is pretty substantial for my shop.  😇

Happy Holidays y'all

etsy backhand . . .

Just over a year ago I wrote a post about my shiny Super Seller trophy I knew it was just another etsy experiment/test but I really did like, unfortunately it only lasted about a week, thankfully I got screenshots before it disappeared.  😁

Well it's been a year so it was just time for etsy to try something else, I guess.  This time around instead of shiny trophies for "super" sellers they have gone the other direction and introduced a new metric they are calling ODR (order defect rate).  This is definitely the stick approach obviously the carrot (trophies) didn't impact how shops handle their buyers/customer service.  

So while we have all known for years that low reviews and repeated "cases" will get your shop in trouble. We now have a whole new level of detail, they have been revising the Handbook and wow. https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360036720093-Why-Did-My-Shop-Receive-a-Customer-Service-Warning-?segment=selling  

I doubt I will ever be in trouble but of course there is a lot of buzz in the forums right, many people are bothered by the wording, the vagueness, the standards themselves. 😏  Not at all surprising, I'm sure that there are a lot of shops in trouble, as a matter of fact last month there were several forum posts about warning emails from etsy apparently lots of shops got the email but didn't understand it or understand why they got it and the consensus became just "ignore it" "it must have been a error/glitch".  

Well guess what those warning emails were not a glitch or an error they were genuine warnings.  I read the Handbook stuff about the new stuff and one of the things that bugged me most was that sellers were to have no access to the "customer service performance" dashboard until they were in trouble, literally we weren't supposed to see/know our ODR until we were failing and in a position to be "under review" and up for closure. 😯

Unfortunately for etsy we (collective sellers) are smarter than etsy, so once 1 seller had access to the dashboard, someone else altered the link they posted and removed part of the url and now BAM! everyone has access to their Customer Service Performance dashboard.  You have to have a shop and you have to be logged in for this to work, notice the "your" and "me". 

https://www.etsy.com/your/shops/me/customer-service-performance

So you can see with no cases and no low reviews and no problems with my last 10 orders my ODR is 0.00% my shop is literally perfect. However I read someone else in the forums admit that her ODR was 3.70% so even though the dashboard says the threshold is 1% that is apparently a lie because Mrs. 3.7% is still open. 😕

I miss my trophy, at least that was public and shoppers could see it, this new hidden metric is useless for buyers.  

Facebook fail. . .

Upon logging into things this morning I found a notification on Facebook about a message for RainbowMaille.

I thought "hey, cool" I don't get messages on the Facebook page very often, but when I do I always try to answer in a timely fashion because Facebook tracks that and posts in right on your page. 😏 However, when I clicked the notice to go to my inbox and respond all I got was an error page. 😕

I went to RainbowMaille's actual page and clicked on the inbox but there was nothing there, I have tried every way I know and cannot find this phantom message.  😟  Perhaps the sender deleted it?  I don't know but when I checked my email there was an email from Facebook about the message for RainbowMaille but when I click the link to respond. . . same error page.

Now I'm concerned that somehow my failure to respond will negatively effect the rating and placement of RainbowMaille's page but, I can't respond to something that does not exist, that I have no way to access or respond to.  😞

Holiday sales season. . .

Well it is officially the holiday sales season.  I have a plan and a schedule in mind for my assorted upcoming Sales events including a "Pre-Thanksgiving Sale" of course a "Black Friday" event that will actually last all weekend thru to Cyber Monday which has a set sale and an optional free shipping coupon. Plus Christmas! 😁

• Pre-Thanksgiving Sale  -  20% off orders over $20  November 21st -28th
• Black Friday event   -   25% off orders over $10  November 29th  - December 3rd
• Free shipping coupon  -  FREESHIPBF2019  valid  November 29th  - December 3rd
• Pre-Christmas Sale   -   15% off all orders  December 4th - Christmas 

I will attempt to keep my pricing similar across platforms but I'm not sure that the A.C.Moore marketplace or Zibbet will allow a coupon on top of a sale the way etsy will. Both Zibbet and A.C.Moore have Paypal based payment systems, while Etsy has more payment options. 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/RainbowMaille
https://marketplace.acmoore.com/rainbowmaille
https://marketplace.zibbet.com/rainbowmaille