Dear Etsy

After trying for 4+ hours to purchase limited edition yarn from Goth Socks during their release today and dealing with Etsy's cart issues (and not getting any yarn!!), here is the letter I am planning to send.

Dear Etsy,

I am big fan of your site, or was until today. The fact that you support independent artists and artisans and give them an outlet for their talents and expressions is laudable. However, after trying for 4+ hours to purchase yarn during the Goth Socks release today and interacting with your cart system I have to say you need to work on how you interact with your customers. You may not know it, but knitters are a tight group and we talk to each other. How you treat us individually will get around quickly to the group. Your new and "improved" cart system failed and the customer service you provided was appalling. Abandoning the shop owner in the middle of her customer service chat, blocking her from being able to chat with you further and stripping control of her shop is bad service and just plain rude. Never mind your interactions with those of us trying to purchase said yarn. Your continued canned responses and denial of the situation made all of us only more frustrated. After waiting all of that time and dealing with your problems many of us were unable to get what we wanted due to your selective restocking of the shop in an attempt to "fix" the error. Instead most of us just continued to get the same error over and over and the shop continued to crash and then suddenly everything was gone. Obviously everything eventually sold, but the whole situation was handled exceedingly poorly by your staff. If you want sellers who sell limited products to continue to use your service you should seriously consider fixing your cart issues ASAP. Also, pointing the blame at PayPal rather than owning up to your issues is also unprofessional. Perhaps while your programmers are fixing the cart bugs, you could in service your customer service representatives on how to handle upset, frustrated and otherwise distraught people. Having worked in customer service myself, I know this can be difficult, but it is part of the job. I hope you take the time to read this and to learn from the situation rather than discarding it.