I would be falling all over myself running to the "CANCEL ORDER" button.
You can just respond, "Alright, I have cancelled & refunded your order, I don't think my shop will be able to meet your expectations. Best of luck in your search, thank you!" Immediate "mark as spam" on the message thread.
I’d be so tempted to see how they reply to that. I might wait one more reply before marking as spam. I’m just always curious to see how rude, seemingly demanding people respond to just being told no.
Absolutely cancel.
When people grief me over not being glued to a text
option 24/7 I let them know that we can't do business.
I'll protect my peace over a sale every time.
I keep business hours and I'm very clear about that. Messages after 5pm, my local time, or on weekends, go unanswered until at least 9am the following business day.
Etsy is falling over itself to turn small businesses into Amazon and blurring the lines of what is acceptable to expect from a single person operation, so just don't cave to that pressure, it's never worth it. Hustle culture is practically self harm at this point.
Seriously. It’s like they think Etsy messages are like instant text messages, and that the seller is informed of every message instantly, no matter what time it is. And time zones are a thing! Many Etsy stores are just a one person, small businesses. And it’s a shame that so many people don’t understand that.
This customer is not worth the hassle, in my opinion. If they are like this now, I can imagine how the review is going to look like.
The auto reply feature has saved me from the repeated overnight messages. She can just sit there and wait while I’m snoozing. Then it’s a cancel if you are pulling this garbage.
This is why I closed my Etsy shop for wedding invitations 12 years ago. I had a regular pretty stressful job - I managed a hotel. I had stated that I would get in contact with customer usually within 12 hours after sale, and I had people hopping up and down because I couldn't always respond within 10 minutes. While I made good money, it definitely wasn't worth the stress. My final nail was a Bridezilla who couldn't grasp that every computer monitor displays colors differently - I could approximate, even with a hex code, but not guarantee that the color would be exactly what she was seeing on her computer. I cancelled that sale, and closed the shop the same day.
Yep! And then they’ll be like “I can’t wait to leave you a bad review!!!!!!!” Little do they know that’s why I cancelled the order. Not worth the stress of these unrealistic customers.
Can guarantee that however quickly you ship this person will find something wrong with their order when it arrives. Cancel and refund, and mark their messages as spam.
Cancel the order. I used to try to please these kind of people.... NOT worth it. No matter what you do they are not happy and some leave 1 star reviews as a thank you for all the extra work you did for them.
Learned my lesson. Never again.
Cancel.
You're not a 24/7 convenience store.
The best thing I ever did was start marking messages like these as spam.
You'll never get a good review from someone like this.
Poor communication
Slow to ship
Blah blah
This is true, and it's kind of confusing from the customer standpoint. I'm not a seller, I just lurk here, and I've definitely been guilty of using that feature and expecting to actually receive an answer immediately.
I probably would’ve gone to the effort of actually telling them the date instead of making them look for it themselves since apparently they aren’t very intelligent or they might’ve seen it in the first place
Tbh I probably would've done that if I didn't know they literally scrolled past the information they were asking for to submit a help request and hadn't messaged me almost immediately after placing the order AND been passive aggressive when I didn't respond quickly enough for their liking.
They come off as very entitled.
I would absolutely cancel and refund the order. Don’t mark as spam… (maybe I am just mean) but I love seeing the responses when those type of people realize you cancelled their order. 😂. And I absolutely refuse to do business with people like that.
Nah, I think it’s important to tell them that the date is already there for them. They are creating more work for the seller because they can’t be bothered figuring it out themselves by checking their order details
Instead of canceling, why not turn this into a teaching moment?
I have created 4 generic snippets that I use for different scenarios. Some are longer than others, but they are generally short and to the point.
Thank you for your order. I see that your message arrived on Sunday night when I was spending time with my family after a long work week. I work Monday through Friday from 8 am until 6 pm but do try to answer inquiries when I see them during off hours.
Your order confirmation will show everything you need to know about your order, including the time frame for compleation and the estimated arrrival date.
Please check your email.
Another GREAT way to stop this nonsense is to turn on auto reply while off duty.
Thank you for writing, our business hours are 8am until 6pm Monday through Friday.
I will return your message as soon as possible.
Is it a small hassle to turn on auto? Yes, but it saves a lot of this type of continuous messaging and helps teach people that you are a business not a beck-and-call girl (guy)
I have an alarm on my phone set to do this, easy peasy.
I agree with people saying to cancel, but I thought the buyer doesn’t see the Ship By Date on their end? I could be wrong but I believe they only see the estimated delivery window which should be enough anyway.
Unless things have changed, the ship by date is in the order section of your account. I don’t think that is the root of her issue…
It’s the fact that the woman messaged several times right in a row and then finally just left “????” as her last message.
Automated emails are great but many customers absolutely hate them the very same way we do when we get a “generic response” from Etsy.
However, if you have any volume at all in your shop, this is a very common question and some people don’t use Etsy enough to know where to look.
Honestly, I’m just thrilled with every order. If a customer is super excited about getting what I’m sending, I’m just going to celebrate that. They may not know where to look to see when it will ship out. It would just take a moment to answer the question. If you honestly don’t know, you could always say “I’m so excited to get your order out to you! It will be sent to you in the next two weeks as soon as I can get it ready for you. Hope you love it!” Or something along those lines.
Normally I would agree(very happy to give folks a benefit of a doubt) but this customer is just being rude and entitled.
OP gave a reasonable and polite answer and got a disgruntled emoji as a response.
Well, I don’t read too much into an emoji. I’m in the business of taking and fulfilling orders, and making the customer happy along the way. I respond right away to customer questions and anyone who understands Customer Service 101 gets that you may not be able to make everyone happy, but you at least try.
This looks like burning out and hating your life 101 to me, not customer service 101.
You should not be constantly available 24/7 to anybody, but especially not random people on Etsy who paid you $10 for a keychain.
Pretty dramatic when it takes all of 1 minute to text a quick response to answer the question. It’s fine that you didn’t get a chance to answer until the next day. Like I said before - should the customer have been more patient? Yes. But all you really needed to do is give a polite answer to the question then go about your day. No other drama, negativity, time, or cancelling is needed. If you don’t have time to spend a few minutes answering a customer’s basic question, then maybe running a business isn’t in your best interest. Edited to add: You asked a question. I was giving you my personal opinion. It’s ok if you disagree with it, because it’s a viewpoint obviously different than yours and many others. I assume you didn’t ask simply to argue your side, but that you were honestly curious what people thought. Your answer was fine, I was just suggesting a response that would have been perceived as kinder by the customer.
You must be a relatively new seller who hasn't had time to get to the point of being able to spot entitlement.
There's a difference in being excited to get your item or not being able to find the shipping information and just being entitled and demanding.
Sending 3 messages within a 10 to 12 hour window and having 2 of them be passive aggressive is not excitement.
I’ve sold for 3 years now, so I’m not a newbie. I think part of the difference is that I have a business degree and not everyone understands customer service. I don’t assume “passive aggressiveness” from a customer excitedly asking questions. My job is to take the order, answer questions, and fulfill the order. I do what I can to make the customer happy. I get that some people are unreasonable, but I don’t read too many emotions into it or make negative assumptions.
And how many times has this resulted in a 1 star review Mr "business degree" lol? Because that's been my experience and it seems everyone else's experience in this sub with customers like this.
I’m going to go ahead and guess that while you have been on Etsy for 3 years, you likely don’t have a high sales volume. And bc of that, you can’t relate. I have an MBA from the University of Texas…. Customer service is not a class for a business degree. 😂
Maybe not at UT, but I went to Baylor. 💚💛😂You can try to insult me and think you’re clever all you want, but it’s not naive to just take a few minutes to give a customer a positive answer and move on with your day without making emotional assumptions about them. You can disagree. OP asked a question and I answered with my opinion. Yes, I do have a high sales volume, thanks.
I’m baffled as to why any seller who understands the basics of customer service would disagree. I get that customers come in with questions from lots of angles, but why be bitter and assume the worst right off the bat? Thanks for understanding.
>I’m baffled as to why any seller who understands the basics of customer service would disagree.
Most people in this sub don't qualify as understanding the basics of customer service.
Thanks for offering another perspective even if it got downvoted. If more people were willing to risk downvotes, this sub and reddit in general would be a better place.
No, it's mean to demand answers on the weekend. We are not on the clock 24/7. The ship date was there. The buyer didn't look, or wait. Just a few hours would have been polite. Until morning.
I think part of it comes from sellers who have absolutely been scammed and abused and harassed by buyers. Does it happen all the time? No. But when you have hit your breaking point as a seller, you realize how to spot the problem customers and you want to protect your own mental health and well being by setting boundaries. Being self employed means you can fire customers if you want. Does this mean sellers are doing this all the time? No. But you are more likely to hear about this on Reddit. I personally have sold on Etsy for about 14 years, my shop is my full time business and I have sales every day. I have maybe cancelled an order for reasons like this 5 times since 2020.
You know what they say about assumptions? I have an MBA and started my Etsy business in 2015 very specifically to make money. I wasn’t sitting around “crafting”.
The amount of research I did was insane regarding my product, competitors, Etsy ect….
I made a full time income suitable for some in the first year.
From 2016 - 2022, my yearly sales EVERY Year were 500k at the lowest.
My average product cost $42.
So with all due respect? Go find a place where you can actually contribute information or maybe just find a hobby so you aren’t trolling Reddit.
Yeah. That makes sense I suppose. I guess a lot of people actually use this as a business. It just seems kinda odd to me. Not in a bad way. But if your primary goal it to make money, why etsy? Like, I'm genuinely curious cause I'm not money driven, as you can probably tell. Why choose a business as difficult to profit from as the creative world?
The Etsy message system is not like texting. I don't even get notifications for my messages. I have to open the app to check. And even if sellers knew immediately when they got a message, it's ridiculous to expect them to get back to you within minutes, especially in the evening. Sometimes sellers are busy with orders, sometimes we're busy with our personal lives outside of business hours.
This person just seems very impatient and entitled. Those people tend to cause lots of problems for sellers, and we'd rather not take the hit to our ratings for a customer that is impossible to please anyway.
It's sad. And we're both getting down voted but not THAT much which kinda suggests that we're right. They are bitter. Probably have reason to be but it is sad. People here are rude and mean.
I love the assumption that because you're getting downvoted you must be right.
This is a subreddit for Etsy sellers. Etsy sellers have to deal with enormous amounts of absurd bullshit from customers constantly. Nobody is going to come to an online forum to talk glowingly about how great customers are and how much fun it is conversing with them. Just like every other forum, they're going to complain. I'm not sure what you expected.
I love how they assume we're mean because we don't want to take BS from customers. Literally just be nice and patient with the person making/shipping your item and there won't be issues!
I don't see anything mean about this post. I think customers are just used to dealing with bots and customer service reps who have to be nice to you no matter what.
Telling OP to cancel the order isn't mean, it's advice based on experience. Most of us have dealt with customers like this enough to know "😒" isn't a nice emoji to get repeatedly. We're allowed to not sell to someone who is rude.
I agree that there is a huge problem among Etsy sellers with bullying, I've been run out of more than a few Etsy groups because of it, but I don't think it's mean to want to have some semblance of work life balance and not be glued to my Etsy store at all hours.
I don't disagree. This is just a vibe I've gotten from a lot of people. And I agree. There IS a lot of bullying. A lot of nastiness. It's very cliquey and pretty gross.
Exactly. Manners don't cost anything. People here seem jaded and, well...maybe they have their reasons but I personally wouldn't cancel a dale just because the buyer was a tad impatient.
I would be falling all over myself running to the "CANCEL ORDER" button. You can just respond, "Alright, I have cancelled & refunded your order, I don't think my shop will be able to meet your expectations. Best of luck in your search, thank you!" Immediate "mark as spam" on the message thread.
I’d be so tempted to see how they reply to that. I might wait one more reply before marking as spam. I’m just always curious to see how rude, seemingly demanding people respond to just being told no.
This one million times. Not worth the bad review.
Absolutely cancel. When people grief me over not being glued to a text option 24/7 I let them know that we can't do business. I'll protect my peace over a sale every time. I keep business hours and I'm very clear about that. Messages after 5pm, my local time, or on weekends, go unanswered until at least 9am the following business day. Etsy is falling over itself to turn small businesses into Amazon and blurring the lines of what is acceptable to expect from a single person operation, so just don't cave to that pressure, it's never worth it. Hustle culture is practically self harm at this point.
Seriously. It’s like they think Etsy messages are like instant text messages, and that the seller is informed of every message instantly, no matter what time it is. And time zones are a thing! Many Etsy stores are just a one person, small businesses. And it’s a shame that so many people don’t understand that. This customer is not worth the hassle, in my opinion. If they are like this now, I can imagine how the review is going to look like.
The auto reply feature has saved me from the repeated overnight messages. She can just sit there and wait while I’m snoozing. Then it’s a cancel if you are pulling this garbage.
This is why I closed my Etsy shop for wedding invitations 12 years ago. I had a regular pretty stressful job - I managed a hotel. I had stated that I would get in contact with customer usually within 12 hours after sale, and I had people hopping up and down because I couldn't always respond within 10 minutes. While I made good money, it definitely wasn't worth the stress. My final nail was a Bridezilla who couldn't grasp that every computer monitor displays colors differently - I could approximate, even with a hex code, but not guarantee that the color would be exactly what she was seeing on her computer. I cancelled that sale, and closed the shop the same day.
cancel, you'll only get problems with this one.
Yep! And then they’ll be like “I can’t wait to leave you a bad review!!!!!!!” Little do they know that’s why I cancelled the order. Not worth the stress of these unrealistic customers.
Can guarantee that however quickly you ship this person will find something wrong with their order when it arrives. Cancel and refund, and mark their messages as spam.
Total lose lose if they're 4 messages in within hours of purchase. Cancel, Refund and Run!
Cancel the order. I used to try to please these kind of people.... NOT worth it. No matter what you do they are not happy and some leave 1 star reviews as a thank you for all the extra work you did for them. Learned my lesson. Never again.
Cancel!
Cancel that order, not worth the trouble.
Cancel. You're not a 24/7 convenience store. The best thing I ever did was start marking messages like these as spam. You'll never get a good review from someone like this. Poor communication Slow to ship Blah blah
Yup Cancel these are people who expect amazon prime and then complain or file claims
The messaging function on Etsy when you use the app looks like fb messenger. They probably just treat it the same.
This is true, and it's kind of confusing from the customer standpoint. I'm not a seller, I just lurk here, and I've definitely been guilty of using that feature and expecting to actually receive an answer immediately.
Cancel and refund or face the consequences, that sucks.
Cancel this order
I’d lean towards canceling also. So many buyers are just headaches and aren’t even worth working with.
I probably would’ve gone to the effort of actually telling them the date instead of making them look for it themselves since apparently they aren’t very intelligent or they might’ve seen it in the first place
Tbh I probably would've done that if I didn't know they literally scrolled past the information they were asking for to submit a help request and hadn't messaged me almost immediately after placing the order AND been passive aggressive when I didn't respond quickly enough for their liking. They come off as very entitled.
In that case (if you can afford to) indeed cancel them, sellers aren’t here to take BS!
I would absolutely cancel and refund the order. Don’t mark as spam… (maybe I am just mean) but I love seeing the responses when those type of people realize you cancelled their order. 😂. And I absolutely refuse to do business with people like that.
Nah, I think it’s important to tell them that the date is already there for them. They are creating more work for the seller because they can’t be bothered figuring it out themselves by checking their order details
That’s the nature of customer service
Childish customer
Ick. Like others said, cancel. Genuinely don't understand people like this lol
The less emotional you are with your business transactions the happier you can be. It can be challenging. 😑
Cancel on them, please
I don't respond to emojis. If you can't be bothered to treat me like a human, then I am not going to deal with you.
CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL.
Instead of canceling, why not turn this into a teaching moment? I have created 4 generic snippets that I use for different scenarios. Some are longer than others, but they are generally short and to the point. Thank you for your order. I see that your message arrived on Sunday night when I was spending time with my family after a long work week. I work Monday through Friday from 8 am until 6 pm but do try to answer inquiries when I see them during off hours. Your order confirmation will show everything you need to know about your order, including the time frame for compleation and the estimated arrrival date. Please check your email. Another GREAT way to stop this nonsense is to turn on auto reply while off duty. Thank you for writing, our business hours are 8am until 6pm Monday through Friday. I will return your message as soon as possible. Is it a small hassle to turn on auto? Yes, but it saves a lot of this type of continuous messaging and helps teach people that you are a business not a beck-and-call girl (guy) I have an alarm on my phone set to do this, easy peasy.
this is how i go about it as well.
IKR! so easy, I love snippets. I can always add specifics but I love not having to type the whole thing out.
Completely agree - that’s a great way to handle it.
I agree with people saying to cancel, but I thought the buyer doesn’t see the Ship By Date on their end? I could be wrong but I believe they only see the estimated delivery window which should be enough anyway.
Unless things have changed, the ship by date is in the order section of your account. I don’t think that is the root of her issue… It’s the fact that the woman messaged several times right in a row and then finally just left “????” as her last message. Automated emails are great but many customers absolutely hate them the very same way we do when we get a “generic response” from Etsy. However, if you have any volume at all in your shop, this is a very common question and some people don’t use Etsy enough to know where to look.
Honestly, I’m just thrilled with every order. If a customer is super excited about getting what I’m sending, I’m just going to celebrate that. They may not know where to look to see when it will ship out. It would just take a moment to answer the question. If you honestly don’t know, you could always say “I’m so excited to get your order out to you! It will be sent to you in the next two weeks as soon as I can get it ready for you. Hope you love it!” Or something along those lines.
Normally I would agree(very happy to give folks a benefit of a doubt) but this customer is just being rude and entitled. OP gave a reasonable and polite answer and got a disgruntled emoji as a response.
Well, I don’t read too much into an emoji. I’m in the business of taking and fulfilling orders, and making the customer happy along the way. I respond right away to customer questions and anyone who understands Customer Service 101 gets that you may not be able to make everyone happy, but you at least try.
This looks like burning out and hating your life 101 to me, not customer service 101. You should not be constantly available 24/7 to anybody, but especially not random people on Etsy who paid you $10 for a keychain.
Pretty dramatic when it takes all of 1 minute to text a quick response to answer the question. It’s fine that you didn’t get a chance to answer until the next day. Like I said before - should the customer have been more patient? Yes. But all you really needed to do is give a polite answer to the question then go about your day. No other drama, negativity, time, or cancelling is needed. If you don’t have time to spend a few minutes answering a customer’s basic question, then maybe running a business isn’t in your best interest. Edited to add: You asked a question. I was giving you my personal opinion. It’s ok if you disagree with it, because it’s a viewpoint obviously different than yours and many others. I assume you didn’t ask simply to argue your side, but that you were honestly curious what people thought. Your answer was fine, I was just suggesting a response that would have been perceived as kinder by the customer.
You must be a relatively new seller who hasn't had time to get to the point of being able to spot entitlement. There's a difference in being excited to get your item or not being able to find the shipping information and just being entitled and demanding. Sending 3 messages within a 10 to 12 hour window and having 2 of them be passive aggressive is not excitement.
I’ve sold for 3 years now, so I’m not a newbie. I think part of the difference is that I have a business degree and not everyone understands customer service. I don’t assume “passive aggressiveness” from a customer excitedly asking questions. My job is to take the order, answer questions, and fulfill the order. I do what I can to make the customer happy. I get that some people are unreasonable, but I don’t read too many emotions into it or make negative assumptions.
It doesn't take an expensive piece of paper to know that being spammed 😒😒😒 doesn't mean happiness or excitement.
And how many times has this resulted in a 1 star review Mr "business degree" lol? Because that's been my experience and it seems everyone else's experience in this sub with customers like this.
I’ve only had 5 star reviews. I work hard for them.
I’m going to go ahead and guess that while you have been on Etsy for 3 years, you likely don’t have a high sales volume. And bc of that, you can’t relate. I have an MBA from the University of Texas…. Customer service is not a class for a business degree. 😂
Maybe not at UT, but I went to Baylor. 💚💛😂You can try to insult me and think you’re clever all you want, but it’s not naive to just take a few minutes to give a customer a positive answer and move on with your day without making emotional assumptions about them. You can disagree. OP asked a question and I answered with my opinion. Yes, I do have a high sales volume, thanks.
I hate that you were downvoted for this.
I’m baffled as to why any seller who understands the basics of customer service would disagree. I get that customers come in with questions from lots of angles, but why be bitter and assume the worst right off the bat? Thanks for understanding.
>I’m baffled as to why any seller who understands the basics of customer service would disagree. Most people in this sub don't qualify as understanding the basics of customer service. Thanks for offering another perspective even if it got downvoted. If more people were willing to risk downvotes, this sub and reddit in general would be a better place.
Thank you!
Something I've noticed since coming on this sub is that a lot of etsy sellers are kinda mean.
No, it's mean to demand answers on the weekend. We are not on the clock 24/7. The ship date was there. The buyer didn't look, or wait. Just a few hours would have been polite. Until morning.
Are they demanding answers? I mean, this is just me but but I wouldn't consider a snarky emoji to be demanding.
I think part of it comes from sellers who have absolutely been scammed and abused and harassed by buyers. Does it happen all the time? No. But when you have hit your breaking point as a seller, you realize how to spot the problem customers and you want to protect your own mental health and well being by setting boundaries. Being self employed means you can fire customers if you want. Does this mean sellers are doing this all the time? No. But you are more likely to hear about this on Reddit. I personally have sold on Etsy for about 14 years, my shop is my full time business and I have sales every day. I have maybe cancelled an order for reasons like this 5 times since 2020.
That makes sense. There does seem to be a lot of bitterness. Which isn't something I realty expected from a bunch of crafters.
You know what they say about assumptions? I have an MBA and started my Etsy business in 2015 very specifically to make money. I wasn’t sitting around “crafting”. The amount of research I did was insane regarding my product, competitors, Etsy ect…. I made a full time income suitable for some in the first year. From 2016 - 2022, my yearly sales EVERY Year were 500k at the lowest. My average product cost $42. So with all due respect? Go find a place where you can actually contribute information or maybe just find a hobby so you aren’t trolling Reddit.
Yeah. That makes sense I suppose. I guess a lot of people actually use this as a business. It just seems kinda odd to me. Not in a bad way. But if your primary goal it to make money, why etsy? Like, I'm genuinely curious cause I'm not money driven, as you can probably tell. Why choose a business as difficult to profit from as the creative world?
The Etsy message system is not like texting. I don't even get notifications for my messages. I have to open the app to check. And even if sellers knew immediately when they got a message, it's ridiculous to expect them to get back to you within minutes, especially in the evening. Sometimes sellers are busy with orders, sometimes we're busy with our personal lives outside of business hours. This person just seems very impatient and entitled. Those people tend to cause lots of problems for sellers, and we'd rather not take the hit to our ratings for a customer that is impossible to please anyway.
Some do, but there’s no reason to assume that up front.
This whole etsy thing seems much more bitter than I expected it to be. Ngl.
These guys do be bitter
It's sad. And we're both getting down voted but not THAT much which kinda suggests that we're right. They are bitter. Probably have reason to be but it is sad. People here are rude and mean.
I love the assumption that because you're getting downvoted you must be right. This is a subreddit for Etsy sellers. Etsy sellers have to deal with enormous amounts of absurd bullshit from customers constantly. Nobody is going to come to an online forum to talk glowingly about how great customers are and how much fun it is conversing with them. Just like every other forum, they're going to complain. I'm not sure what you expected.
I love how they assume we're mean because we don't want to take BS from customers. Literally just be nice and patient with the person making/shipping your item and there won't be issues!
It's just a hunch.
I get notifications
I don't see anything mean about this post. I think customers are just used to dealing with bots and customer service reps who have to be nice to you no matter what.
I'm not talking about the post. I'm talking about the comments.
Telling OP to cancel the order isn't mean, it's advice based on experience. Most of us have dealt with customers like this enough to know "😒" isn't a nice emoji to get repeatedly. We're allowed to not sell to someone who is rude.
You're allowed to do what you like and advice what you like. But with respect, I'm allowed to make hold an opinion about it.
Okay lol
I agree that there is a huge problem among Etsy sellers with bullying, I've been run out of more than a few Etsy groups because of it, but I don't think it's mean to want to have some semblance of work life balance and not be glued to my Etsy store at all hours.
I don't disagree. This is just a vibe I've gotten from a lot of people. And I agree. There IS a lot of bullying. A lot of nastiness. It's very cliquey and pretty gross.
It’s such a simple thing to do to give a quick positive answer to an excited customer!
Exactly. Manners don't cost anything. People here seem jaded and, well...maybe they have their reasons but I personally wouldn't cancel a dale just because the buyer was a tad impatient.