05/21/2026
We had heard that Etsy was tricky since they switched to an AI moderator platform. We read that they were banning shops arbitrarily and removing listings without warning or reason.
But due to a few different features, we decided to try it out for our first foray into online selling and shipping of plants and seeds.
In just two months we made over 430 sales with a full five star rating and over 55 reviews!
We were packing up seeds and plants nightly, responding to messages, I was designing fun and artsy seed pack labels, Marc was working on SEO and tailoring the perfect verbiage for listings.
Then the listing deactivations started coming.
There were a couple that were deactivated fairly (I missed that foxglove was prohibited on the platform, so those listings were flagged) which was no problem at all.
But then some of our bundle listings started being removed, as well. And then some of our delphinium listings (Delphinium is NOT on the prohibited list, but in hindsight this was probably the nail in our coffin).
I scoured the policy and could NOT figure out why these were being removed. I thought it had something to do with color varieties being described as “mixed” or something, because mixes in which seeds are not clearly identified are prohibited. So we doctored all of the listings we needed to in order to correct the verbiage to make it incredibly transparent that these were simply color varieties of the same species, not a mix of different species.
But alas, one more listing was removed - and then the permanent suspension email came.
In the middle of all of this happening, I sent five separate emails to Etsy Support asking for clarification on what we were doing wrong, because we genuinely wanted to fix the issue.
No response. No customer service phone numbers. Nobody ever called me back when I requested a phone call. Nothing.
I swiftly appealed the suspension, because SURELY they’d reinstate our account after a human actually looked at our track record for customer service and saw that I’d been reaching out consistently for clarification and support.
I got a stock response this morning that they’d reviewed our account and were upholding the permanent suspension.
I can’t sell on Etsy EVER again. I can’t buy on Etsy EVER again.
And they will hold our money for 180 days before releasing it! I’ve had my account for years and have purchased countless items from sellers. Never opened a shop of my own in all of that time, and just supported other small businesses.
We are clearly real humans, not scammers, and we immediately attempted to rectify whatever the issue was that was getting our listings removed.
According to many internet threads, Etsy monitors IP address, tax numbers, bank accounts, mailing addresses, photos, etc, and will immediately suspend you if you attempt to open a new account to circumvent their decision. They've done this to countless sellers since switching to their weird, AI bot monitoring.
We aren’t even going to bother trying to work with the platform anymore.
We’re moving on!
The lesson here is that we want to have complete control over our product list, customer communications, finances, etc. because at any given notice, a platform could arbitrarily kill your business.
We’re thinking that we’re going to spread some of our business out across a few platforms, but ultimately, our own website handling everything is our end goal.
Keep an eye out for what comes next!
And as always, direct sales are possible! We can ship our items or you can arrange for local pickup or delivery!
Goodbye, Etsy!
