| Home > Community > Forums > Announcements > Updates to Etsy's Site Policies (October 27, 2009) |
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| Updates to Etsy's Site Policies (October 27, 2009) |
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stellaloella says: |
Today Etsy has put into effect updated policies for the site in the DOs & DON'Ts of Etsy, the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy.
You can read more about this annual policy update - including an overview of the changes - on Etsy's blog, The Storque: http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/4974/
These are important changes that every Etsy member should review, so we're sending out an email notification to all members (with millions of members in our community, it may take a few weeks for the emails to reach everyone).
You can view Etsy's policies in their entirety at these locations:
* DOs & DON'Ts of Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/dosdonts.php
* Terms of Use: http://www.etsy.com/terms_of_use.php
* Privacy Policy: http://www.etsy.com/privacy_policy.php
* Copyright & IP Policy: http://www.etsy.com/copyright_policy.php
The policies are live and in effect as of today, October 27, 2009; therefore, all your activities or content on Etsy from today forward must be in line with these new policies. We are allowing all members a grace period to bring their existing content (for example: account information, shops, listings) up to speed with any changes in the policies. We also wanted to take into account the timing with the busy holiday season. All members have until the end of the day on December 31, 2009 to edit their content created prior to today's date (October 27, 2009).
Some of you may recall last week that we provided a preview of the proposed changes to the DOs & DON'Ts of Etsy, one of the main policy documents containing rules for using the site. A big sincere THANK YOU goes out to everyone who read the preview and participated in the resulting discussions in the Forums, email and Conversations. Your feedback was very helpful, and we even made a few tweaks based on your insights.
If you have questions or comments, please join us in the related discussion thread or send email to support [!at] etsy.com.
Discussion thread: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6330324 |
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Posted at 6:51 pm, October 27 2009 EST - Report this post
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stellaloella says: |
Last week on October 27, after taking time to provide a preview and gather feedback from the Etsy community, Etsy released updated versions of our site policies. Etsy reviews and revises our site policies annually to ensure clarity and keep the terms of the site up-to-date. You can read the announcement about this update in Etsy's blog, The Storque: http://www.etsy.com/storque/article/4974/
As that article notes, we are sending emails to every registered member of the Etsy community (sellers and buyers) to inform them of the policy update. As we have well over 3 million members currently, it's taking time to send out all those emails. In order to make sure these and other important messages from Etsy don't get caught up in spam filters or blacklists for internet providers, we are being cautious and exercising best practices for sending a mass email of this volume. This is a much, MUCH larger volume of messages than our daily emails for transactions, Convo notices, mailing lists (like Etsy Finds) and even the monthly billing notices for sellers. We appreciate everyone's patience as these policy emails are rolling out. As this is proving to not be an ideal method of communication for reaching every member, we have also begun investigating alternative methods for informing our community of future policy revisions.
There has been much discussion in the Forums regarding some points in the updated policies. We are always interested in and appreciate the perspectives of our community. I've been following these threads, and I have posted to answer questions and clarify things. I've brought back the community concerns to the internal team for further discussion.
With Etsy's policies, we aim to strike a balance for the interests of all involved: buyers, sellers and Etsy as a company. We realize that not everyone will love everything about the new policies, but we hope that you can understand the complexities of a venue such as Etsy.
Thank you for your attention to the Etsy's policies. |
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Posted at 5:43 pm, November 6 2009 EST - Report this post
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stellaloella says: |
In particular, the policies for canceling transactions have become somewhat of a hot topic. I'm going to repeat here some information I posted in one of the discussion threads to offer greater visibility for this information:
The DOs & DON'Ts of Etsy define transactions as such: "A transaction is created when a buyer completes Etsy's checkout process. [...] An Etsy transaction is completed when the buyer pays and the seller ships the item." (You can read the complete policies for Transactions in full here: http://www.etsy.com/dosdonts.php#transactions )
Canceling a transaction is linked to refunding a seller their listing and transaction fees, as well as removing the transaction record completely from Etsy and the ability to leave feedback (if not yet submitted).
In the case that the buyer wishes to return the item and the seller agrees to a refund, that is still a valid, completed transaction for which Etsy requires fees to be paid by the seller. Etsy has provided a completed transaction service to the seller. If the seller chooses to accept a return and possibly refund the buyer, that does not negate that Etsy has provided an agreed-upon service for which Etsy should be paid.
This was not clearly outlined in our policies in the past. Some sellers took advantage of the opportunity to cancel valid, completed transactions for the purpose of avoiding Etsy's fees or feedback from buyers. We determined it was important to clearly outline the only circumstances in which a transaction is eligible for cancellation in the revised DOs & DON'Ts. You can find these reasons in the DOs & DON'Ts of Etsy, under Transactions > Transaction cancellation: http://www.etsy.com/dosdonts.php#transactions_cancellation |
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Posted at 5:44 pm, November 6 2009 EST - Report this post
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stellaloella says: |
There have been a few posts indicating confusion about the email sent by Etsy to notify our members of the policy update. Some members are concerned that this message is a scam or a phishing attempt. In general, I think it's wise to be cautious of phishing and scam emails online.
In this case, the email is OK.
The email you received is a legitimate notice about Etsy's annual policy update. We are sending these emails with the assistance of a third-party company who specializes in email distribution to large groups. In part, we decided to use this third-party to ensure that this very large number of emails were sent in the best possible way. While this is an important notice to every member of the Etsy community, it's also important that other important Etsy emails don't end up designated as spam or on any service providers blacklists.
The web addresses (URLs) in the email (that begin with http://rs6.net) are special URLs used by the third-party company for tracking statistics related to the emails.
The email you received is from Etsy, and it is safe. |
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Posted at 10:36 am, November 9 2009 EST - Report this post
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